u, Jean Marcel--and how thin you
are!"

She led man and dog into the building.

"Henri! Come quick and see whom we have with us!"

"Jean, my son!" cried the priest, embracing the returned _voyageur_,
"and you brought back your dog! It will be a brave tale we shall hear
to-night!"

The appearance of Marcel and Fleur at the trade-house was greeted with:

"Nom de Dieu! Jean Marcel! And de dog! He return wid hees dog, by Gar!"
as Jules Duroc sprang to meet him with a bear hug.

"Welcome back, my lad!" cried Colin Gillies, tearing a hand of Jean from
the emotional Company man. While Angus McCain, joining in the chorus of
congratulations, was clapping the helpless Marcel on the shoulder, the
perplexed puppy, worried by the uproar of strangers about her master,
leaped, tearing the back out of McCain's coat, and was relegated by Jean
to the stockade outside.

"Well, well, how far did they take you, Jean? Did you have a fuss
getting your dog?" asked the factor.

"I was one day behind dem at Rupert Bay----"

"What, you've been to Rupert?" interrupted the amazed Gillies.

"Oui, M'sieu. I go to Rupert and see M'sieu Cameron."

"And with one paddle you gained a day on them? Lad, you've surely got
your father's staying power. Where did you come up with them?"

Then Jean related the details of his capture of Fleur to an open-mouthed
audience.

"So there's one less dog-stealer on the Bay," drily commented Gillies,
when Marcel had finished his grim tale.

"Why you not put de bullet een dat oder t'ief, Jean?" demanded the
bloodthirsty Jules.

"Eet ees not easy to keel a man, onless he steal your dog an' try to
keel you. I had de dog. One of dem was enough," gravely answered the
trapper.

"That's right; you had your dog which I thought you'd never see again,"
approved Gillies. "But your travelling this time of year, with the
headwinds and sea, up the coast in thirty days, beats me. I was five
weeks, once, making it with two paddles. You must have your father's
back, lad. It was the best on this coast in his day; and you've surely
got his fighting blood."

Basking for three days in the hospitality of the Mission; resting from
the strain and wear of six weeks' constant toil at the paddle, Marcel
revelled in Julie's good cooking. To watch her trim figure moving about
the house; to talk to her while her dusky head bent over her sewing,
after the loneliness of his long journey, would have been all the heaven
he asked, ha