"Do you leave--to-day?" she asked, in a low voice.

"To-morrow morning, early," he corrected. "To-day I found my
provisions packed and laid at my door. It is a hint I know how to
take."

"You have everything you need?" asked the girl, with an assumption of
indifference.

He looked her in the eyes for a moment.

"Everything," he lied, calmly.

Virginia perceived that he lied, and her heart stood still with a
sudden hope that perhaps, at this eleventh hour, he might have
repented of his unworthy intentions toward herself. She leaned to him
over the edge of the little rise.

"Have you a rifle--for _la Longue Traverse_?" she inquired, with
meaning.

He stared at her a little the harder.

"Why--why, surely," he replied, in a tone less confident. "Nobody
travels without a rifle in the North."

She dropped swiftly down the slope and stood face to face with him.

"Listen," she began, in her superb manner. "I know all there is to
know. You are a Free Trader, and you are to be sent to your death. It