"Is she not worth it?" cried Jean in rapture. "You are welcome to every look that you can get, Jan Thoreau. But the foreigner—I will skin him alive and spit him with devil-thorn if he so much as peeps at her out of the wrong way of his eye!"
Croisset spoke.
"There was once a foreigner who came. You remember?"
"I remember," said Jan.
He looked to the white cross which marked Mukee's grave in the edge of the forest, where the shadow of the big spruce fell across it at the end of summer evenings.
"And—he—died," said Jean de Gravois, his dark hands clenched. "God forgive me, but I hate these red-necked men from across the sea."
Croisset shrugged his shoulders.
"Breeders of two-legged carrion-eaters!" he exclaimed fiercely. "La charogne! There are two at Nelson House, and two on the Wholdaia, and one—"
A sharp cry fell from Jan's lips. When Croisset whirled toward him, he stood among his dogs, as white as death, his black eyes blazing as if just beyond him he saw something which filled him with terror.
As the man turned, startled by the look, Jean sprang to his side.