wealth of wampum and elk teeth, so much that
they are rich beyond any other tribe. Their young men are tall and heavy
of stature and wonderful in the casting of their great carven spears.
Also do they excel in the use of the bow. Warlike and suspicious,
scouting every inch of country before them, they come down by way of
Dear Lake,--and the young Nor'wester at Fort Brisac has already sent
forth his messengers to meet them."

McElroy frowned.

Double anger swelled suddenly within him. In two ways had De Courtenay
crossed his plane at opposing angles. It was evidently war that the
adventurer wanted, the hot war of the two fur companies coupled to that
of man and man for a maid. He stood a while and thought. Then he turned
to Dupre.

"You have done well, Dupre," he said shortly. "Get you to your cabin
and rest, for I may want your wit again. Only, on the way, send Pierre
Garqon to me."

The young man touched his red toque, symbol of safety to all trappers
in a land where the universal law is "kill," for no wild animal of the
woods bears a crimson head save that animal man who is the greatest
killer of all, and turned away. He was draggled and stained from a
forced march through forest and up-stream, over portage and rapid,
carrying his tiny birchbark craft on his head, snatching a short
sleep on a bed of moss, hurrying on that he might learn of the
Nakonkirhirinons travelling slowly down from that unknown land to the
far north, even many leagues beyond York factory on the shores of the
great bay.

As he went toward his own cabin he glanced swiftly at the open door of
the Baptistes. Always these days he glanced that way with a sick feeling
in the region of his heart. Who was he, Marc Dupre, trapper of the
big woods, that he should dare think so often of that woman from Grand
Portage, with her wondrous beauty and her tongue that could be like a
cold knife-blade or the petal of a lily for softness? And yet he was
conscious of a mighty change that had come over him with that day on the
flat rock by the stockade when she had talked to him of the trapping,--a
change like that which comes to one when he is so fortunate as to be in
distant Montreal and sits in the dusk of the great church there among
the saints and the incense.

There was no longer pleasure in flipping jests and love words with the
red-cheeked maids, and something had happened to the dashing spirit of
the youth. All through those long days in the forest,