s a heavy,
dark night in July, with thunder rolling in great shaking billows. It
was Jim, and he asked me if I would come with him. He had spoken to
the missionary at the post, who would marry us. Would I come? I did
not know whether he had a house, or even a blanket. I only knew I
loved him.

"Under cover of the storm Jim took out the window-frame, lifted me
out, and we were off through the rain and the storm. But when we got
to the missionary's he would not marry us--the factor had forbidden
him. Jim would have taken me back but I was afraid. The factor had
said he would shoot him if he ever came for me. He was a high-tempered
man and ruled the post and every one in it with his terrible rages.
What would you have done, Pearl?"

"Was there no one else?" said Pearl, "no magistrate--no other
missionary or priest?"

"There was a missionary at the next post, sixty miles away. We could
reach him in two days. What would you have done, Pearl?"

Pearl was living with her every detail, every sensation, every thrill.

"What would I have done?" she said, trembling with the excitement of a
great decision. "I would have gone!"

Annie Gray's hand tightened on hers.

"I went," she said, "and I was never sorry. Jim was a man of the big
woods; he loved me. The rain, which fell in torrents, did not seem to
wet us--we were so happy."

"At the missionary's house at Hay River we were married, and the wife
of the missionary gave me her clothes until mine dried. We stayed
there three days and then we went on. Jim had a cabin in a wonderful
hot springs valley, and it was there we were going. It would take us
a month, but the weather was at its best, hazy blue days, continuous
daylight, only a little dimming of the sun's light when it disappeared
behind the mountains. We had pack-dogs from the post--Jim had left
them there--and lots of provisions. I dream of those campfires and the
frying bacon, and the blue smoke lifting itself up to the tree-tops."

She sat a long time silent, in a happy maze of memory.

"I had as much happiness as most women, but mine came all at once--and
left me all at once. We reached the valley in September. I was wild
with the beauty of it! Set in the mountains, which arched around it,
was this wonderful square of fertile land, about six miles one way and
seven the other. The foliage is like the tropics, for the hot springs
keep off frost. The creeks which run through it come out of the rocks
boiling hot--