f these was her hope of the Hudson's Bay brigade
which should be coming into the wilderness at this time of year.
Somewhere she must meet them and demand their help.

There was no rebellion in her, no hope of gain in what she did. Love was
of her own soul alone, since that evening by the factory when she had
seen the factor bend his head and kiss the little Francette.

No more did she think of his words in the forest, no more did she dream
of the wondrous glory of that first kiss.

Far apart and impersonal was McElroy now,--only she loved him with that
vast idolatry which seeks naught but the good of its idol.

Even if he loved Francette he must be saved for that happiness.

Therefore she knelt in a cockleshell alone on a rushing river and sped
through, a wilderness into appalling danger.

Such was the compelling power of that love which had come tardily to
her.

CHAPTER XVIII "I AM A STONE TO YOUR FOOT, MA'AMSELLE"

At dawn Maren shot her craft into a little cove, opal and pearl in
the pageantry of breaking light, and drawing it high on shore, went
gathering little sticks for a micmac fire.

The bullet pouch held small allowance of food. She would eat and sleep
for a few hours.

Deep and ghostly with white mist-wraiths was the forest, shouldering
close to the living water, pierced with pine, shadowy with trembling
maple, waist-high with ferns. She looked about with the old love of the
wild stirring dumbly under the greater feeling that weighted her soul
with iron and wondered vaguely what had come over the woods and the
waters that their familiar faces were changed.

With her arms full of dead sticks she came back to the canoe,--and face
to face with Marc Dupre. His canoe lay at the cove's edge and his eyes
were anguished in a white face.

"Ma'amselle," he said simply, "I came."

No word was ready on the maid's lips. She stood and looked at him, with
the little sticks in her arms, and suddenly she saw what was in his
eyes, what made his lips ashen under the weathered tan.

It was the same thing that had changed for her the face of the waters
and the wood. She had learned in that moment to read a man better than
she had read aught in her life beside the sign of leaf and wind.

"Oh, M'sieu!" she cried out sharply; "God forbid!"

The youth came forward and took the sticks from her, dropping them on
the ground and holding both her hands in a trembling clasp.

"Forbid?" he said and his voice quivered