the hewn logs that Bard McLellan had prepared a year back for his own
new house when he should have married the pretty Lila of old McKenzie,
who sickened suddenly in the early autumn when the leaves were dropping
in the forest and fled from his eager arms. No heart had been left in
the breast of the trapper after that and the logs lay where he had
felled them.

Now McElroy, tactful of tongue and gentle, touched the sore spot, and
Bard gave sad consent to their use.

"Take them, M'sieu," he said wearily; "my pain may save another's
need."

So the first new cabin went up apace.

Anders McElroy looked over his settlement day by day and there was
great satisfaction in his eyes. Fort de Seviere was none so strong that
it could afford to look carelessly on the acquisition of five good men
and hardy trappers, and, beside, somehow there was a pleasanter feeling
to the warm spring air since they had arrived-a new sense of bustle and
accomplishment.

Often he stood in the door of the factory and looked to where the women
sang at their work or carried the shining pails full of water from the
one deep well of the settlement, situated near the gate in the eastern
wall, and the smiles were ever ready in his blue eyes.

A handsome man was this factor of Fort de Seviere, tall and well
formed, with that grace of carriage which speaks of perfect manhood;
his head, covered with a thick growth of sun-coloured hair curling