There was comment, and the shaking of heads among the old trappers. The
wrong time of year to take the long trail with women,--the wrong time,
but, bon Dieu! who was to stop that woman with the sombre eyes? Voila!
A woman to thrill the blood in any man who was still warm with life!
"Love awakened in her would be a thing of flame and fury, they had
thought, that long past day," thought Pierre Garcon to himself; "he and
that friend of his heart, Marc Dupre,--it had been a thing of patient
servitude, of transcendent daring, and Marc Dupre; ah! He had been a
part of it. But there was much of mystery about it all, and no one
knew, nor would any know, all that it had meant."
So the changes came and passed, and when Anders McElroy again opened
his eyes to reason, the world was white against the pane of the one
window of the little room,--the long snows had arrived. Winter was upon
the Northland.
It was on a night when the wind without howled like a lost soul shut
out from the universe and the sucking of the chimney-throat roared to
heaven.
Edmonton Ridgar sat at the hearth gazing into the leaping flames, and
Rette de Lancy passed and repassed among the shifting shadows, busy at
some kindly task.
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