iver, growing swifter as it neared the great
lake, leaped and plunged into the wide surface of Winnipeg, shooting its
burdens out upon the glassy breast of the lake like a spreading fan.

Here the blue sky was mirrored faithfully below with its lazy clouds,
the green shores rimmed away to right and left, and the swarming canoes,
with their gleaming paddles, made a picture well worth looking at.

The Nakonkirhirinons were going back to the Pays d'en Haut by another
way than that by which they had come.

Hugging the western shore, the flotilla strung out into the formation of
a wedge, with the canoe of the dead chief at the apex, and went on, day
after day, in comparative silence.

With the passing of the sleeping green shores, the ceaseless slide of
the quiet waters, a tender peace began to come into McElroy's soul.

With the gliding days he could think of Maren without the poignant pain
which had been unbearable at the beginning, could linger in thought
over each detail of her wondrous beauty, the clear dark eyes, sane and
earnest and full of the hope of the dreamer, the full red mouth with
its sweetness of curled corners, the black hair banded above the smooth
brow, the rounded figure under the faded garment, the shoulders swinging
with the free walk after the fashion of a man.

Verily, the wilderness held healing as well as hurt.

So followed each other the dawns and the summer noons and the marvellous
twilights, with pageantry of light and colour and soft winds attuned to
the songs of birds, and the two men neared the mystery of Fate.

CHAPTER XVII THE COMPELLING POWER

Back in De Seviere the gloom of the forest in bleak winter sat heavily
on every cabin.

Women went about with misty eyes and men were oddly silent.

Not one of all his people who did not love the whole-hearted factor with
his ready laugh, his sympathy in all the little life of the post, his
unfailing justice; not one who did not strive to keep away the haunting
visions of leaping flames above fagots, and all the ugly scenes that
imagination, abetted by grim reality, could conjure up.

On that fateful morning when the rising sun saw the slim canoes of the
Nakonkirhirinons trailing around the lower bend, Maren Le Moyne stood
by the little window in the small room to the east of the Baptiste cabin
and covered her face with her hands.

Great breaths lifted her breast, breaths that fluttered her open lips
and could not fill the gasping lu