Blooming,' and 'Allan Water'--the first my father had taught me, the
other an old Scotch trader. It's different with a woman and a man in a
place like that. Two men will go mad together, but there's a saving
something in the contact of a man's brain with a woman's. I got fond of
her, any man would have, for she had something that I never saw in any
heathen, certainly in no Indian; you'll see it in women from Iceland.
I determined to marry her in regular style when spring and a missionary
came. You can't understand, maybe, how one can settle to a life where
you've got companionship, and let the world go by. About that time, I
thought that I'd let Ridley Court and the rest of it go as a boy's dreams
go. I didn't seem to know that I was only satisfied in one set of my
instincts. Spring came, so did a missionary, and for better or worse it
was."

Sir William came to his feet. "Great Heaven!" he broke out.

His wife tried to rise, but could not.

"This makes everything impossible," added the baronet shortly.

"No, no, it makes nothing impossible--if you will listen."

Gaston was cool. He had begun playing for the stakes from one stand-
point, and he would not turn back.

He continued:

"I lived with her happily: I never expect to have happiness like that
again,--never,--and after two years at another post in Labrador, came
word from the Company that I might go to Quebec, there to be given my