saw with a strange thrill that the hand, yet doubled, was flecked with
blood.

"Ma'amselle," he said, "is of the new people who arrived last night
from Portage la Prairie?"

Then they were lifted for the first time to his face, those dark eyes
smouldering like banked fires, and he saw their marvellous beauty.

"Of a surety," she said slowly, and there was a subtle tone in her
deep-throated voice that made the blood stir vaguely within the
factor's veins, "does M'sieu have so many strangers passing through his
gates that he is at loss to place each one?"

And with that word she turned deliberately away, walked down toward the
gate, and entered the stockade.

McElroy watched her go, until the last glint of her sober dress, plain
and clinging easily to the magnificent shoulders that swung slightly
with her free walk, had passed from view. And not alone he, for the two
voyageurs alike gazed after her, this new-comer from the farther ways
of civilisation who dared the brute DesCaut and struck like a man.

Then the factor bent above the little Francette.

"Sh!" he said gently, "little one, let go. The dog is dead, poor beast.
Come away."

But the maid would not give up the battered body, and with the audacity
of her beauty and life-long spoiling, besought the young factor for