"Nay," she said gently, "fret not. It is spring-and you have at last a
home."

True, it was spring.

Did not each breath of the south wind tell it, each flute-like call
from the budding forest without the post, each burst of song from some
hot-blooded youth with his red cap perched on the back of his head, his
gay sash knotted jauntily?

It stirred the heart in the breast of Maren Le Moyne, but not with the
thought of love. It called to her as she stood at night alone under the
stars, with her head lifted as if to drink the keen, sweet darkness;
called to her from far-distant plains of blowing grass, virgin of man's
foot; from rushing rivers, bare of canoe and raft; from high hills,
smiling, sweet and fair, up to the cloudless sky--and always it called
from the West.

Spring was here and cast its largess at her feet,--fate held back her
eager hand.

A year she must wait, a year in which to win those necessaries of the
long trail, without which all would fail.

Travel, even by so primitive a method as canoe and foot, must demand
its toll of salvage.

At Rainy Lake they had been held by thieving Indians and a great part
of their provisions taken from them, leaving them to make their way in