She laughed lightly, tapping the ends of the logs with her finger-tips.

"Have you, then, never learned that a woman is full of whims,
Monsieur?" she questioned. "Why, this afternoon your eyes were so big
with wonder that they had forgotten to look at me. Truly, I spoke to
you twice to aid me from the saddle; but you heard nothing, and in my
desperation I was obliged to turn to the courtesy of Captain de Croix.
Ah, there is a soldier, my friend, who is never so preoccupied as to
neglect his duty to a lady."

"It was indeed most ungallant of me," I stammered, scarce knowing
whether she laughed at me or not. "Yet my surroundings were all new,
and I have the training of De Croix in such matters."

"Pah! 't is just as well. I am inclined to like you as you are, my
friend, and we shall not quarrel; yet, with all his love for lesser
things, your comrade has always shown himself a truly gallant
gentleman."

I made no answer to these flattering words, for I felt them to be true;
yet no less this open praise of him, falling from her lips, racked me
sorely, and I lacked the art to make light of it.

"The soldiers in the block-house tell me you come here often," I
ventured at last, for the dead silence weighed upon me. "You have
never seemed to me like one who would seek such loneliness."

"I am one whom very few wholly comprehend, I fear, and surely not upon
first acquaintance," she answered thoughtfully, "for I am full of