to his sore heart that he in his blundering wrath had
wrought this fresh disaster. And his post, De Seviere, which he had won
by daring service and loyalty to the H. B. C., what would become of it?

Who after him would rule on the Assiniboine?

For well he knew that death, and death thrice,--aye, a million times
refined,--awaited so luckless a victim as he whose hand had killed the
great chief. But he had not killed Negansahima. It was the gun in De
Courtenay's hand. Ah, De Courtenay! Where was De Courtenay? A captive
assuredly, if he was one. They had both gone down together under the
foam of that angry human sea. And, if he was here, his antagonist must
be somewhere near. With exquisite torture, McElroy slowly turned his
head to right and left. At the second motion his face brushed something
close against his shoulder. It was cloth, a rough surface corrugated
and encrusted with ridges,--what but the braid on the blue coat of the
Montreal gallant!

There was no start, no answering movement at his touch. The rough
surface seemed strangely set and still.

He lay silent and thought a moment with strange feelings of new horror
surging through him.

Was De Courtenay dead?

Or was it by chance a stone under the braided coat, a hillock where it
had been thrown? That strange feeling of starkness never belonged to a
human body soft with the pulse of life.

For hours McElroy lay staring into the night sky with its frosting of
great northern stars, and passed again over every week, every day,--nay,
almost every hour,--since that morning in early spring when she had
stepped off the factory-sill to accompany little Francette to the river
bank where Bois DesCaut stood facing a tall young woman against the
stockade wall.

With dreary insistence his sore heart brought up each sweet memory, each
thrill of joy of those warm days. He saw every flush on her open face,
every droop of her eyes. Again he saw the white fire in her features
that day in the forest glade when she spoke of the Land of the
Whispering Hills. He pondered for the first time, lying bound and
helpless among savages, of that unbending thing within her which drove
her into the wilderness with such resistless force. Granted that she had
loved him as he thought during that delirious short space of time,
would love have been stronger than that force, or would it have been
sacrificed? She was so strong, this strange girl of the long trail, so
strong for all things