ngs beneath, that sounded in the little
room like tearless tearing sobs.

"Heavenly Mother!" she gasped between them; "Thou who art
woman...Mary..."

But the prayer hung aborted between the shuddering sighs.... Who shall
say that it is not such a cry, torn from the depths of the spirit
by instinct groping for its god, which reaches swiftest the Eternal
Infinite?

Until the last sound had faded into the morning, until the last little
ripple had widened to the shores and died among the willows, until the
screaming birds, startled from the edges of the river, had settled into
quiet, she stood so, fainting in her Gethsemane. She alone of all
the post had remained away from the great gate where was gathered the
populace at the nearest vantage point.

Silence of the young day hung in the palisade, a silence that cut the
soul with its tragic portent.

Even little Francette Moline, weeping openly, pressed close in the mass
and jerked with unconscious savagery of spirit the short ears of the
husky at her heels,--that Loup whom no man dared to touch save only the
master his fierce spirit must needs acknowledge. It had been DesCaut by
brutality. Now it was the little maid by love.

Strange cat of the woods, Francette could be as riotous in her
tenderness as in her enmity.

In the bastions Dupre and Garcon and Gifford watched the scene with the
grim quiet of men born in the wilderness, while at the portholes trapper
and voyageur and the venturers from Grand Portage handled their guns and
waited.

None knew what might happen, for these Indians were not to be judged by
any standard they knew.

Henri Baptiste held the trembling Marie in his arm, while Mora and Anon
and Ninette clung together in a white-faced group. A little way aside
Micene Bordoux comforted a frightened woman and held a child by the
hand.

Big Bard McLellan stood by a porthole, his eyes always pensive with his
own sadness, gazing with grave sorrow to where McElroy swung down the
slope between his captors.

Thus they watched his going, and he had been spared that sick pain had
he known.

When it was over, Prix Laroux turned back to the deserted factory and
stood hesitating on its step.

This was one of the crises which so commonly confronted the fur industry
in the North-west.

What had he a right to do?

The simple man considered carefully. What right but the right of
humanity to do the best for the many could send a servant into the seat
of po