o see if any observed. She drew the
faded sprig toward her and hid it in her breast.

Before the cabin of the Baptistes, Jean Saville touched his cap and
stopped.

"Yes?" said the factor; "what is it, Jean?"

"Assuredly, M'sieu, has the tide of the spring set in. Pierre but now
reports the coming of a band of strangers down the river. They come in
canoes, five of them, well manned and armed as if the country of the
Assiniboine were bristling with dangers instead of being the abode of
God's chosen. Within the hour they will arrive at the landing."

"Thank you, Jean," said McElroy; "I will prepare for the meeting."

The trapper touched his cap and passed.

"Ah," smiled the factor to himself, "I like this bustle of passage. It
is good after the winter's housing, and who knows? There may be those
among the strangers who bring word from Hudson Bay."

He turned briskly back and gave word to Jack de Lancy and his wife
Rette to cook a great meal, also to see that the store-room was cleared
sufficiently by the more orderly packing back of the goods to allow of
five canoe-loads of men sleeping upon the floor. Then he passed down
the main way, out of the gate in the warm sun and took his place at
the landing to look eagerly down stream for the first coming of the
strangers. Not far from the enthusiasm of boyhood was this young factor
of Fort de Seviere.

And within the hour, as Jean had said, they came, rounding the distant
bend in an even distanced string, long narrow craft, each bearing
the regular complement of five men, a bowman, a steersman, and three
middlemen whose paddles shone like crystal as they sank and lifted
evenly. Strangers they were in very truth, as McElroy saw at the first
glance.

Never had they been bred in the wilderness, these men, unless it were
the two guides in the first and fourth canoe, picked out readily by
their swarthy skins, their crimson caps, and their rugged litheness.
Fairer, all, were the rest, paler of skin, more loose of muscle, shown
by the very way they bent to their work. Their garments, too, as they
drew nearer brought a smile to the watcher's lips, a smile of memory.
Those coats, brave in their gilt braid, had assuredly come across seas.
Thus might one behold them on the Strand.

Ah! These were, without doubt, part of the fall ship's load of
adventurers come to the new continent filled with the fire of
achievement and excitement that brought so many youths over seas. They
ha