ack,
and see the wolves go in, head down, every wolf caught and drown in the
crack. It is two days before he come home, and the east wind have blow
to freeze that crack over--and there are all the wolf tails, stick up,
froze stiff in a row! He bring them home with him--but los them on the
way, though he show the knife that cut them off!"

"I have hear that," says Rosalin. "I think he lie."

"He say he take his out on a book," I tell her, but we both laugh,
and she is curl down so close to the fire her cheeks turn rosy. For a
camp-fire will heat the air all around until the world is like a big
dark room; and we are shelter from the wind. I am glad she is begin to
enjoy herself. And all the time I have a hand on my knife, and the cold
chills down my back where that hungry vild-cat will set his claws if he
jump on me; and I cannot turn around to face him because Rosalin thinks
it is nothing but a cowardly wolf that sneak away. Old Sauvage is uneasy
and come to me, his fangs all expose, but I drive him back and listen to
the bushes behind me.

"Sing, M'sieu' Pelott," says Rosalin.

Oh God, yes I it is easy to sing with a vild-cat watch you on one side
and a woman on the other!

"But I not know anything except boat songs."

"Sing boat songs."

So I sing like a bateau full of voyageurs, and the dark echo, and that
vild-cat must be astonish. When you not care what become of you, and
your head is light and your heart like a stone on the beach, you not
mind vild-cats, but sing and laugh.

I cast my eye behin sometimes, and feel my knife. It make me smile to
think what kind of creature come to my house in the wilderness, and I
say to myself: "Hear my cat purr! This is the only time I will ever
have a home of my own, and the only time the woman I want sit beside my
fire."

Then I ask Rosalin to sing to me, and she sing "Malbrouck," like her
father learn it in Kebec. She watch me, and I know her eyes have more
danger for me than the vild-cat's. It ought to tear me to pieces if I
forget maman and the children. It ought to be scare out the bushes to
jump on a poor fool like me. But I not stop entertain it--Oh God, no!
I say things that I never intend to say, like they are pull out of my
mouth. When your heart has ache, sometimes it break up quick like the
ice.

"There is Paul Pepin," I tell her. "He is a happy man; he not trouble
himself with anybody at all. His father die; he let his mother take care
of herself. He mar