"Well," said Jean, smiling proudly at the encomiums of his father's prowess, "Jean Marcel, hees son, will start to-night."
Argument was futile to dissuade Marcel from his mad venture. His partners of the previous winter who had waited impatiently for his return refused to delay longer their start for Ghost River and left at once.
Then Jules took Marcel aside and quietly talked to him as would a brother.
"Jean, you stay here wid Ma'm'selle Julie till de steamer go. Dat M'sieu Wallace, he sweet on you' girl w'en you were up de coast. You stay till he leeve."
For this Jean had an outward shrug of contempt, but the rumored attentions of Wallace to Julie Breton, during his absence, sickened his heart with fear. Was he to lose her, too, as well as Fleur?
Before supper, at the Mission, Père Breton urged him to return to his trapping grounds and spare himself the toil of a hopeless quest down the coast in the face of the coming winter. Julie was adding her objections to her brother's, when a knock on the door checked her. Her face colored slightly as Jean glanced up, when she turned to the door.
"Bon soir, Monsieur!" she greeted the newcomer, a note of embarrassment in her voice.
"Good evening, Mademoiselle. I hope I'm not late?" And Inspector Wallace entered the room.
The Inspector, a handsome, well-built man of thirty-five, was dressed in the garb of civilization and wore shoes, a rarity at Whale River. Chief of the East Coast posts of the Great Company, he had been sent the year previous, from western Ontario, and put in command of men older in years and experience who had passed their lives in the far north. And naturally much resentment had manifested itself among the traders. But that the new chief officer looked and acted like a man of ability, the disgruntled factors had been forced to admit.
As Wallace sat conversing of the great world outside with Père Breton, who was evidently much pleased by his attentions to Julie, he seemed to Jean Marcel to embody all that the young Frenchman lacked. How, indeed, he asked himself, could he now aspire to the love of Julie Breton when so great a man chose to smile upon her?