B. C.'s from York?"
"To-morrow, most like, or in a few days at most."
This evening luck had deserted his fishing, so the trapper took a rifle
and went into the woods after a fool-hen. Thoughts kept him company;
thoughts of love and its strangeness, of the odd decrees of Fate and
the helplessness of man. How all the world had changed with its coming,
this love which hail been born in an hour what time he had listened to
a woman's voice beside the stockade wall, and how the very soul within
him had changed also.
Where had been lightness and the recklessness of youth there was now a
wistful tenderness so vast that it covered his life as the pearly mist
covered the world at dawn.
Where he had taken all of joy that post and settlement, friend and foe
could give, lived for naught but his sparkling pleasures, he was now
possessed of a great yearning to give to this woman, this goddess of
the black braids; to give, only to give to her; to give of his
strength, of his overwhelming love; aye, of even his heart's blood
itself as he had told her in the beginning.
He was long in finding a fat grouse this evening, and when he returned
night was thick on forest and shore.
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