Follow and
learn, Francette."
But Francette, with a gesture of disgust, turned away.
The warm spring days passed in a riot of song from the depths outside
the post, the Assiniboine rippled and whispered along its shores and
over the illimitable stretches of the wilderness there hung the very
spirit of the mating-time.
Within the stockade, mothers sat in the doors crooning to the babes
that clutched at the sunbeams, dogs slept in the cool shadows of the
cabins, and here and there a youth sang a snatch of a love song.
"Verily, Marie, it is good to be here," sighed Micene Bordoux, sitting
on her sill with her capable arms folded on her knees, and her eyes,
cool and sane and tolerant, roving over the settlement lolling so
quietly in the sun. "After the trail the rest is good, and yet I will
be eager long before the year has passed to follow Maren,--may Mary
give her grace!--into that wilderness which so draws at her
heartstrings."
"Oh, Micene!" cried Marie, a trifle vexed, "if only she might forget
her dreams! What is it like, the heart of a maid, that turns from
thought of love to that of these wild lands, to the mystery of the
Whispering Hills that lie, the good God knows where, in that dim and
untracked West! I would that Maren might love! Then would we have peace
and stop forever at this pleasant place.
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