Instantly a warm flush leaped up to the dark cheeks, and McElroy felt
its answer in his own.
"Ma'amselle," he stammered, far from that glib "Maren" of the glade,
"there is one at the gate who demands speech of you."
The words were commonplace enough and the girl did not get their import
for the intensity of her gaze into the eyes whose blue fire had set her
first wondering and then a-thrill with these strange emotions.
"Eh, M'sieu?" she smiled, and McElroy, revived through all his being
with that smile, repeated his message.
She took her hands from the yellow meal and dusted them on a hempen
towel, and was ready to go forth beside him.
That short walk to the stockade gate was silent with the silence of shy
new joy, and once the factor glanced sidewise at the drooped lashes
above the dusky cheeks.
"Had you expected any messenger, Ma'amselle?" he asked indifferently as
they neared the portal with its fringe of peeping women and saw beyond
them the tall figure of the Bois-Brule, his lank hair banded back by a
red kerchief.
"Nay, M'sieu," replied the girl, and went forward to stand in the gate.
The messenger from the woods asked in good French if she were Maren Le
Moyne, and being answered in the affirmative, he took from his hunting
shirt a package wrapped in broad green leaves and placed it in her
hands.
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