Part 41 (1/2)

”Nay, boy, hus.h.!.+ It is all as G.o.d wills. We are but shuttles in the web of this tangled life.”

”But--tell me,--what does she now? How looks her dear face?”

Ridgar was silent a moment, and McElroy repeated his question, with his face still turned away:

”Does she pa.s.s among them,--the vipers? Does she seem to care for life at all now?”

”Lad,” said Ridgar gently, ”I know not, for she is gone.”

”Gone!”

The pale man on the pillow sprang upright, staring at the other with open mouth.

”Aye, softly, boy; softly! She has been gone these many weeks; even while summer was here she gathered her people, outfitted by our men, all of whom were so glad for your deliverance that they gave readily to their debt, and took up again her long trail to the Athabasca. Rette, I believe, has a letter which she left for you.... Would you read it now?”

McElroy nodded dumbly, and Ridgar went out in the night to Rette's cabin for this last link between the factor and the woman he loved.

When he returned, and McElroy had taken it in his shaking hands, he sat down and turned his face to the fire.

There was silence while the flames crackled and the chimney roared, and presently the factor said heavily:

”I cannot! Read...”

So Ridgar, bending in the light, read aloud Maren's letter.

At its end the man on the bed turned his face to the wall and spoke no more.

From that time forth the tide of returning life in him stopped sluggishly, as if the locks were set in some ocean-tapping channel.

The bleakness of the cold north winter was in his heart and life was barren as the eastern meadows.

So pa.s.sed the days and the weeks, with quip and jest from Ridgar, whose eyes wore a puzzled expression; with such coddling and coaxing from Rette as would have spoiled a well man, and, with not the least to be counted, daily visits to the factory of the little Francette, who defied the populace and came openly.

With returned consciousness to McElroy, there came back to the little maid much of her damask beauty. The pretty cheeks bloomed again and she was like some bright b.u.t.terfly flitting about the bare room in her red kirtle.

Sometimes McElroy would smile, watching her play with a young bob-cat, which some trapper had brought her from the woods, and whose savage playfulness seemed to be held in leash under her small hands. The creature would mouth and fawn upon her, taking her cuffs and slaps, and follow her about like a dog.

Rette tolerated the two with a bad grace, for, since the day when Maren Le Moyne had stood at the door with her haggard beauty so wistfully sad, her sympathies had been all with the strange girl of Grand Portage.

Light and flitting, sparkling as an elf, full to the brim of laughter and light, little Francette was playing the deepest game of her life.

With the cunning of a woman she was trying to woo this man back to the joy of earth, to wind herself into his heart, and so to fill his hours with her brightness that he would come to need her always.

So she came by day and day, and now it would be some steaming dainty cooked at her father's hearth by her own hands, again a branch of the fir-tree coated with ice and sparkling with a million gems, that she brought into the dull blankness of the room, and with her there always came a fresh sweet breath of the winter world without.

McElroy smiled at her pretty conceits, her babbling talk, her gambols, and her gifts.

”What have you done with Loup, little one?” he asked, one day. ”Does he wait on the steps to growl at this usurper purring at your heels?”

The little maid grew pearly white and looked away at Rette fearfully, as if at sudden loss, in danger of some betrayal.