asure that surpassed
the pain.

"Sweet We-sec-e-gea," she sighed, "good god of my dead, I thank thee for
the gift of this great love that stays the steel when my aching heart
yearns for it. I shall not destroy myself and distress him, disturbing
him in his great work, whatever it is; but live--live and love him, even
though he send me away."

She kissed the burnished blade and returned it to her belt.

When Jaquis, circling the camp, failed to find her, he guessed that she
was gone, and hurried after her along the dim, starlit trail. When he
had overtaken her, they walked on together. Jaquis tried now to renew
his acquaintance with the handsome Cree and to make love to her. She
heard him in absolute silence. Finally, as they were nearing the Cree
camp, he taunted her with having been rejected by the white man.

"And my shame is yours," said she softly. "I love him; he sends me away.
You love me; I send you from me--it is the same."

Jaquis, quieted by this simple statement, said good-night and returned
to the tents, where the pathfinders were sleeping peacefully under the
stars.

And over in the Cree camp the Belle of Athabasca, upon her bed of
boughs, slept the sleep of the innocent, dreaming sweet dreams of her
fair god, and through them ran a low, weird song of love, and in her
dream Love came down like a beautiful bird and bore her out of this life
and its littleness, and though his talons tore at her heart and hurt,
yet was she happy because of the exquisite pleasure that surpassed all
pain.

PATHFINDING IN THE NORTHWEST

It was summer when my friend Smith, whose real name is Jones, heard that
the new transcontinental line would build by the way of Peace River Pass
to the Pacific. He immediately applied, counting something, no doubt, on
his ten years of field work in Washington, Oregon, and other western
states, and five years pathfinding in Canada.

The summer died; the hills and rills and the rivers slept, but while
they slept word came to my friend Smith the Silent, and he hurriedly
packed his sleds and set out.

His orders were, like the orders of Admiral Dewey, to do certain
things--not merely to try. He was to go out into the northern night
called winter, feel his way up the Athabasca, over the Smoky, follow the
Peace River, and find the pass through the Rockies.

If the simple story of that winter campaign could be written out it
would be finer than fiction. But it will never be. Only S