head with its
running curls was low to the log step.

McElroy strained his eyes to see what he held.

It was a dried spray of the blossoms of the saskatoon.

For a moment he sat in stupid wonder. Then swiftly, more by intuition
and that strange sense which recalls a previous happening by a touch, or
a smell, than by actual memory, he saw that golden morning when he had
stopped by the Molines' cabin and watched the great husky balance on his
shaky legs. He had twirled in his fingers the first little spray of
the saskatoon, brought in by Henri Corlier to show how the woods were
answering the call of the spring.

"Why," he said, astounded beyond measure, "why, Francette,--little one,
what does this mean?"

But Francette had lost her tongue and there was no answer from the bowed
figure at his knees.

He put out a hand and laid it on her shoulder and it was shaken with
sobs,--the sobs of a woman who has cast her all on the throw of the die
and in a panic would have it back.

Off in the forest a night bird called to its mate and the squeaky fiddle
whined dolorously and a profound pity began to well in the factor's
heart. She was such a little maid, such a childish thing, a veritable
creature of the sunlight, like those great golden butterflies that
danced in the flowered glades of the woods, and she had brought her one
great gift to him unasked.

Some thought of Maren Le Moyne and of that reckless cavalier with his
curls and his red flowers crept into his voice and made it wondrously
tender with sympathy.

"Sh, little one," he comforted, as he had comforted that day on the
river bank when she had wept over Loup; "come up and let us talk of
this." He lifted her as one would lift a child and strove to raise the
weeping eyes from the shelter of her hands, but the small head drooped
toward him so near that it was but a step until it lay in the shelter
of his shoulder, and he was rocking a bit, unconsciously, as the sobbing
grew less pitiful.

"Sh-sh-little one," he said gently; "sh--sh."

Meanwhile Maren Le Moyne sat in the doorway of her sister's cabin with
her chin on her hands and stared into the night. Marie and Henri were at
the cabin of the Bordoux, laughing and chattering in the gay abandon of
youth. She could hear their snatches of songs, their quips and laughter
rising now and again in shrill gusts. Also the wailing fiddle seemed a
part of the warm night, and the bird that called in the forest.

All the