married,--the work of the good church which I love like a son.

"But mark you, for this is the strangeness of woman, the way of which no
man may understand. One of the saddles I emptied was that of her
father's, and the hoofs of those who came behind had pounded him into the
earth. This we saw, the girl and I, and this I had forgot had she not
remembered. And in the quiet of the evening, after the day's hunt were
done, it came between us, and in the silence of the night when we lay
beneath the stars and should have been one. It was there always. She
never spoke, but it sat by our fire and held us ever apart. She tried to
put it aside, but at such times it would rise up till I could read it in
the look of her eyes, in the very intake of her breath.

"So in the end she bore me a child, a woman-child, and died. Then I went
among my mother's people, that it might nurse at a warm breast and live.
But my hands were wet with the blood of men, look you, because of the
church, wet with the blood of men. And the Riders of the North came for
me, but my mother's brother, who was then chief in his own right, hid me
and gave me horses and food. And we went away, my woman-child and I,
even to the Hudson Bay Country, where white men were few and the
questions they asked not many. And I worked for the company a hunter, as
a guide, as a driver of dogs, till my woman-child was become a woman,
tall, and slender, and fair to the eye.

"You know the winter, long and lonely, breeding evil thoughts and bad
deeds. The Chief Factor was a hard man, and bold. And he was not such
that a woman would delight in looking upon. But he cast eyes upon my
woman-child who was become a woman. Mother of God! he sent me away on a
long trip with the dogs, that he might--you understand, he was a hard man
and without heart. She was most white, and her soul was white, and a