"Oh, but it is all so unjust, so terrible to be accused like this when because of your good heart you wished to bury Antoine decently in the spring instead of leaving him in the snow where they would never have found him. It is too——" Julie Breton's voice broke with emotion. Through tears her dark eyes flashed in protest at the pass to which a blind fate had brought an innocent man.
Marcel was deeply touched by this revelation of the girl's loyalty; but her tears roused his heart to a wild beating. Unable to speak, he faced her, his dark features illumined with the gratitude and love he could not voice. For a space he sat fighting for the mastery of his emotions. Then he said huskily:
"Julie Breton, you give me great happiness—when you say you believe me—are still my friend."
"Oh, la, la! Nonsense!" she cried, dabbing with, a handkerchief at her wet eyes as she recovered her poise, "you are a boy, so foolish, Jean. Do you think that we, your friends who know you, will permit this thing? It is impossible!" And changed the subject, nor did she allow him to return to it.
CHAPTER XXIII
IN THE EYES OF THE CREES
Day by day the ebb-tide brought in the canoes of returning Crees. Gradually tepees filled the post clearing. And with the coming of the hunters from the three winds, was heard many a tale of famine in far valleys; of families blotted out; of little victims of starvation and disease; of the aged too frail to endure through the lean moons of the rabbit-plague until the return of the caribou, which had spelt life to those who waited.
Tragedy there had been, as in every winter of famine; but however sinister were the secrets which, that spring, many a mute valley held locked in its green forests, no rumors of such, except the tale of the murders on the Ghost, had reached Whale River. Pitiless desertion of the aged and the helpless, death by violence, doubtless, the starving moon had shone upon; but none had lived to tell the tale, none had seen the evidence, except those who had profited with their lives, and their lips were forever sealed. And so, as Marcel had foreseen, to the gathering families of Crees who themselves had but lately escaped the maw of the winter, the tale of the Lelacs, expanding as it travelled, found ready acceptance.