enay began moving ever so cautiously toward the priceless bit of
steel.

With that hidden in one's garments what not of hope might rise within a
daring heart?

What not, indeed! Life and liberty and escape and a home-coming to a
rival's very hearthstone, and more,--soft lips and arms of a woman.

The cavalier was smiling still as he edged inch by inch along the little
way, his back against the maple.

"See you, M'sieu," he whispered; "how loyal are the servants of the
North-west Company?"

McElroy did not answer. Bitterness was rife within him. Even his one
friend in the wilderness, Edmonton Ridgar, on whose sound heart he would
have risked his soul, had passed him by without a look.

Verily, life had suddenly been stripped, as the hapless birch, of all
its possessions.

He was thinking grimly of these things when a young squaw came lightly
up from somewhere and stopped for a second beside De Courtenay. She
looked keenly at him, and stooping, picked up the knife.

"Another turn to the wheel, M'sieu," said that intrepid venturer; "what
next?"

As if his thought had reached out among the shadows of the wood where
stood the death tepee and touched its object, Edmonton Ridgar appeared
among the lodges. He was bare-headed, and McElroy saw that his face
was deep-lined and anxious, filled with a sadness at which he could but
marvel and he passed within a stone's throw without so much as a glance
at his superior.

No captive was this man, passing where he listed, but McElroy noticed
the keen eyes watching his every move.

What was he among this silent tribe with their war-paint and their
distrust of white men?

It was a hopeless puzzle, and the factor laid it grimly aside. Next to
the closed and impregnable front of his own post what time he passed
from its sight, this cold aloofness of his chief trader cut to inmost
soul.

But these things were that life of the great North-west whose
unspeakable lure thralled men's souls to the death, and he was content.

It was chance and daring and danger which drew him in the beginning to
the country, love of the wild and breath of the vast reaches, something
within which pushed him forward among these savage peoples, even as the
same thing pushed Maren Le Moyne toward the Whispering Hills, sent De
Courtenay to the Saskatchewan.

At any rate he was very hungry, and when a bent and withered crone of a
squaw brought food and loosed his right hand, the young factor tossed