He returned her coaxing smile. "I'll see." And as the men were all away, clearing a slough for skating, he stayed long enough to drink a toast with Mrs. Leslie.
That lady's eyes shone with soft approval as, standing by the table that was already spread with glass, silver, and white napery, he bowed. "To your continued health and beauty."
"Now wasn't that pretty?" she exclaimed, after he was gone. "Do you know, standing there in his furs, so tall and strong, he reminded me of one of those old Norsemen who sometimes strayed into degenerate southern courts. You are happy in your cavalier, my dear. If he asked me, I believe I'd run away with him." And there was a sigh in her laugh. For though a good fellow, Leslie was prodigiously chuckle-headed, and she had moods when his simple foolishness was as unbearable as her own frivolity—dangerous moods for a woman of her light timber.
"I wish," she added, a little later, "that we could have persuaded him to stay."
He knew better. Striding, a conqueror, into southern halls, the Norseman cut a mighty figure where he would have made but a poor appearance as an invited guest. A thought that was expressed in Carter's meditation on the homeward drive.
"She meant it, shorely! But, bless her! you ain't to be drawn into such a brace game. You'd look nice among those dudes."
He had left no fire in his cabin, but he was not surprised when, afar off, he saw his stove-pipe flinging a banner of smoke to the crystal air. As yet the northland had not achieved refinements in the shape of locks and bolts, and, coming in from a forty-mile drive from a Cree village, Father Francis, the priest of the Assiniboin mission, had put in and brewed a jug of tea.
Easy, courteous in bearing, upright despite his silvered years, the priest came to the door and welcomed Carter home. "Not much travel beyond the settlements," he said. "It was pretty heavy going and my ponies are tired. So I'll just accept the old invitation, son, and stay the night—that is"—his mellow laugh rang out—"if my presence won't make you anathema maranatha unto your neighbors."
Carter knew them, their rigid dogmatism, the bigotry which made them look askance at this man who, for thirty years, had fought the devil over the face of a parish as big as an Eastern State.
"I don't allow that they'll more than excommunicate me," he grinned, "and if they do I reckon that you'd drop the bars of your fold."