y, and his mind, again dropping into the dulness of
his early awakening, refused to concern itself with aught save the blue
sky and the sound of water lapping on birchbark. That sound was sweet to
his befuddled brain, suggesting something vaguely pleasant.

Ah, yes, it was the deep voice of the maid of the long trail speaking
of the streams and the waving grass of that visionary Land of the
Whispering Hills.

He fell to wondering at broken intervals if she would ever reach it, to
see drowsy visions of the tall form leading its band of venturers into
the wilderness beyond Lac a la Croix, penetrating that country which
tried the hearts of men, and with the visions came a sadness.

She would go without love, mourning her cavalier of the curls, and who
would be responsible for the desolation of the heart he would fain have
made happy but himself?

McElroy sighed, and the visions faded.

When he again awakened it was evening and camp had been made. Fires
danced and crackled all up and down the reach of shore set like a
half-moon of pearl in a sea of emerald, where the forest shouldered down
to the stream, and the smell of cooking meat was poignantly sweet. Women
were busy at the work of the camp, carrying wood, mending the fires,
tending the kettles swung from forked sticks, and scolding the
scrambling children.

Here and there a half-naked Indian stalked silently, his long feather
slanting in the light, but for the most part the warriors were gathered
in a silent mass a little way apart where the big tepee had been set up.

The clouds were gone from his brain, and he was keenly conscious of
hunger.

He was still bound, though not so tightly, some of the thongs having
been taken off entirely, and he found that he could sit up with
comparative ease, though his hands were still fast behind him and his
ankles tied.

There was no pacing guard this time, distance and possession making such
precaution needless, for well the Nakonkirhirinons knew that none from
the little post on the Assiniboine would attempt rescue in face of so
great a horde as an entire tribe.

McElroy sat up and looked around.

One of the first things he encountered was the face of the cavalier,
still smiling and looking very much as it had looked in the dawn.

Like that encounter, too, De Courtenay was the first to speak in this.

"Aha, my fighter of the H. B. C.," he laughed from his seat against a
towering maple, "have your laggard wits come