ale of his escape from the camp with his puppy, and
later from the ambush, Julie Breton's dark eyes were wet with tears.

"Oh, Jean Marcel, why did you take such risks? You might have
starved--they might have killed you!"

His eyes lighted with tenderness as they met the girl's questioning
face.

"I had to have dogs, Julie. I must save my credit with the Company. It
was the only way."

"Let me see your puppy! Where is she?" demanded the girl.

Jean led his friends outside the Mission, where he had fastened his
dog. The wild puppy shrank from the strangers, the hair bristling on her
neck, as Julie impulsively thrust a hand toward the dog's handsome head.

"Oh, but she is cross!" she exclaimed. "What is her name?"

"Fleur; it was my mother's."

"Too nice a name for such an impolite dog!"

Jean stroked Fleur's head as she crouched against his legs muttering her
dislike of strangers. At his caress, her warm tongue sought his hand.

"There," he said proudly, his white teeth flashing in a grin at Julie,
"you see here is one who loves Jean Marcel."

At the invitation of Pere Breton, the _voyageur_ shut his dog in the
Mission stockade, where she would be free from attack by the post
Huskies and safe from some covetous Cree, and gladly took possession of
an empty room in the building.

CHAPTER V

THE MOON OF FLOWERS

As the grim fastnesses reaching away to the north and east and south in
limitless, ice-locked solitude, had wakened to the magic touch of
spring, so the little post at Whale River had quickened with life at the
advent of June with the spring trade. For weeks, before the return of
Marcel, the canoes of the Crees had been coming in daily from winter
trapping grounds in far valleys. Around the tepees, which dotted the
post clearing like mushrooms, groups of dark-skinned women, heads
wrapped in gaudy shawls, laughed and gossiped, while the shrill voices
of romping children filled the air, for the lean moons of the long snows
had passed and the soft days returned.

Swart hunters from Lac d'Iberville, half-breed Crees from the Whispering
Hills and the Little Whale watershed, belted with colored Company
sashes, wearing beaded leggings and moccasins, smoked and talked of the
trade with wild _voyageurs_ from Lac Bienville, the Lakes of the Winds,
and the Starving River headwaters in the caribou barrens. From a hundred
unmapped valleys they had journeyed to the Bay to trade their fox and
lynx, their