part at Hugh, not devotedly, not wistfully, but with a somber
wondering. It was only now and then, and as though he couldn't help
it, that the blue, smouldering Northern eyes were turned to Sylvie
on her throne. Then they would brighten painfully, and his lips would
tighten so that the dimple, meant for laughter, cut itself like a
touch of pain into his cheek. The firelight heightened his
picturesqueness--the dull blue of his shirt, open at the round, smooth
throat, the dark gold-brown of his corduroy trousers, against which
the long, tanned hands, knit strongly together, stood out in the rosy,
leaping light--beautifully painted against the background of old brown
logs.

Yet it was Hugh, after all, who dominated the room by right of his
power, his magnetism, the very distortion of his spirit. Here in this
lonely square of light and warmth, surrounded by a world of savage,
lawless winds heightening the voices of vast loneliness, these three
people were imprisoned by him, a Merlin of the West.

He sat up to begin his story, pressing tobacco into his pipe. "Oh,
it's not so much of a story, Sylvie. It was last spring when the river
was high and I'd been out with my traps. I was coming home along the
river edge, pretty tired, a big load on my back. I came around a bend
of the river, and not far below me a little black bear, round as a
barrel, was trying to scramble over the flood on a very shaky log.
The mother was on the other side, but I didn't know that then. Well,
there's nothing in God's world, Sylvie, so beguiling as a baby bear.
This little fellow was scared by what he was doing, but he was bound
he'd get across the river. He'd make a few steps; then he'd back up
and half rise on his hind legs. I watched him a long time. Then he
made up his mind he'd better make a dash for it. He began scrambling