Lapierre's light banter acted as a tonic to the girl's nerves, harassed
as they were by a month's travel through the fly-bitten wilderness.
More--he interested her. He was different. As different from the
half-breeds and Indian canoemen with whom she had been thrown as his
speech was from the throaty guttural by means of which they exchanged
their primitive ideas.

"Pray pause, Sir Cavalier," she smiled, falling easily into the gaiety
of the man's mood. "I have ventured into your wilderness upon a most
unpoetic mission. Merely the establishment of a school for the
education and betterment of the Indians of the North."

A moment of silence followed the girl's words--a moment in which she
was sure a hard, hostile gleam leaped into the man's eyes. A trick of
fancy doubtless, she thought, for the next instant it had vanished.
When he spoke, his air of light raillery was gone, but his lips
smiled--a smile that seemed to the girl a trifle forced.

"Ah, yes, Miss Elliston. May I ask at whose instigation this school is
to be established--and where?" He was not looking at her now, his eyes
sought the river, and his face showed only a rather finely moulded
chin, smooth-shaven--and the lips, with their smile that almost sneered.

Instantly Chloe felt that a barrier had sprung up between herself and
this mysterious stranger who had appeared so opportunely out of the
Northern bush. Who was he? What was the meaning of the old factor's
whispered warning? And why should the mention of her school awake
disapproval, or arouse his antagonism? Vaguely she realized that the
sudden change in this man's attitude hurt. The displeasure, and
opposition, and ridicule of her own people, and the surly indifference