The face of Jean Marcel twisted with pain.
"Mon Dieu! Stole my Fleur—my puppy?"
"Yes, they took her from the stockade, two nights ago—two men who came up the coast after dogs."
With face buried in his arms to hide the tears misting his eyes, he leaned against the door jamb, while the girl rested a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.
"Poor Jean!"
"I worked so hard to get her. I loved that puppy, Julie; she was my child," he groaned.
"I know, Jean, how you feel; after what you have been through—to have lost her——"
"But I have not lost her!" the boy exclaimed fiercely, drawing a deep breath and facing the girl with features set like stone. "I have not lost her, Julie Breton! I will follow them and bring back my dog if I have to trail those men to Rupert House."
The tears had gone and in the eyes of Jean Marcel was a glint she had never known—a glitter of hate for the men who had taken his dog, so intense, so bitter, that she thrilled inwardly as she gazed at his transformed face. Instinctively, Julie Breton knew that the lad who faced her was no longer the playmate of old to be treated as a boy, but the possessor of a high courage and unbreakable will that men in the future would reckon with.
Jean entered the trade-house to find Gillies in conversation with a tall stranger, who, Jules whispered, was Mr. Wallace, the new inspector of the East Coast posts, who had come with the steamer.