ar there is something troubling you. Is there bad news
from Athabasca?"

Always there lay behind Maren's eagerness a fear, sleeping like a
hidden fawn but ever ready to quiver into life, a fear of news from
the Whispering Hills, news that should make the promise of the trail a
sudden void.

"Nay, Micene," smiled Maren, "these latest Indians come from the south."

"And all is well with the plans?"

The vague uneasiness was not stilled in Micene.

"All is well with the plans. There is not a year now."

The girl looked straight in her friend's eyes without a trace of the
dazed misery which Marc Dupre had surprised in her own.

Micene smiled back, but that night she lay far into the dark hours
thinking of the subtle change in the maid of the trail. With a woman's
intuition she knew that the girl had lied, that all was not well with
her.

And one other there was of that small party of venturers housed in
the new cabins of De Seviere who knew vaguely that something had gone
wrong-Prix Laroux, the sturdy prow of that little vessel of progress of
which the girl was the beating heart, the unresting engine.

He had felt its coming even before it fell, that mighty shadow which
blotted out the heavens and the earth, for to Maren, once given, there
was no recalling the gift, and with that day in the glade she had lost
possession of her soul and body forever.

Dazed in all the regions of her being, enshadowed in every vista of hope
and scarce-tasted joy, she went quietly about the cabin, her mind a dark
space in which there flashed sudden, reiterated visions,--now McElroy's
blue eyes, anxious and eager as he held up the doeskin dress at the
door-sill, burning with fire and truth and passion in the glade in the
forest, again tender and diffident what time they walked together to the
gate to meet De Courtenay's messenger, and again it was that scene
at the factory steps that haunted her,--McElroy with his arms about
Francette Moline, the grey husky crouching in the twilight. Throughout
the whole sick tangle there went a twisting thread of wonder, of
striving for understanding. What was this thing which had come clutching
sweetly at her heart, which had stilled the very life in her with holy
mystery, and whose swift passing had left her benumbed within as some
old woman mumbling in the sun on a door-sill? Where was the glory of the
spring? What had come upon the face of the waters, that the light had
gone from them? What was