Menotah turned to him in her liveliest manner, and again drew him back to shelter. 'We two have looked on much to-night, old Father. We have seen and spoken with the evil one himself.'
Then her joyous laughter rose again and circled in the night.
CHAPTER IX
THE LAUGH THAT DIED
That short season, which northerners compliment by title of summer, had almost come to its last day of warmth. There were wonderful colours by day, with clouds of floating gossamers at night. Occasionally the wind veered, then brought along from the Arctic shores icy blasts, which angrily bit with foretaste of approaching winter.
The last boat of the season, leaving that year later than usual, lay along the log stage ready for departure, with its fur and feather freight. Soon after sunrise on the coming morning she would leave the Saskatchewan, to escape the ice fields which would rapidly form along her wake. For the sharp cold of that evening was sufficient to drive anxiety into the pilot's heart. Already the greater part of the trees, that shed the green mantle in winter, had parted with summer beauty; the long grass shivered in dry white stems; birds of bright colour had escaped to the more hospitable south, leaving in their place clouds of dainty snow-birds, that broke the silence of the cold air by the sharp hissing of constant short flights. Earlier in the day a slight frost flurry had suddenly fallen, which the dry wind had drifted in pools of fairy crystals beneath the sheltering rocks, and in thin, white line along the rugged fringe of the desolate forest.
Little matter of importance had occurred since the day Antoine had made ineffectual appeal to Menotah in the bush-trailed hut. The girl had left the people of her life to dwell with her nominal husband in a small forest shanty some distance from the fort. Here, during those few short weeks of dying summer, she found continuation of that perfect heart-whole happiness she had lived upon always. This was all she wished for, with the addition of love, and she was granted both. Never had she so entirely proved her right to the name of 'heart that knows not sorrow,' as she flitted along from morning to night, a bright ray of pure joy, with the face of laughter and fresh mind of confiding love.
For a short time Lamont was altogether satisfied that he would never wish for change. His young girl—she was wife in the sight of heaven and earth, for what is a ceremony when hearts respond?—fascinated him with her childish ways and caressing affection, her enticing laughter and joyous bursts of song. During those days the withered Antoine always heard, as he snuffled daily alongside of the hut, the clear music of her perpetual joy. She was like unfading sunshine as she lavished worship of limb and tongue upon her heart's god, so it may readily be conceived how Lamont fell for the time beneath the glamour of attraction, until he came to feel that he might contentedly live thus for ever, away in the summer forest, with the bright, beautiful girl, laying aside all association, forgetting the call of civilisation. But, to a man of his temperament, this, could be nothing beyond a dream, from which he must awake gradually, yet surely. There are other seasons than summer, and there are times when the flower is scentless, the tree no longer green.
So the rapturous heart-warmth in his body faded with the cold approach of Nature's winter, and as the days grew shorter, the north wind keener, desire became re-awakened, the roving spirit of adventure called to him from distant lands. At length the surrounding desolation, growing more intense as autumn lengthened, became wearisome. Following on this he discovered for the first time a restraint on his movements. Then came the passionate longing for change, that indefinite and empty resource of the vacillating mind. He longed desperately for southern connections, actuated not unentirely by a curiosity to learn the actual fate of Riel and his followers, with whom he felt a sympathetic interest. There was but one more boat—a final chance for escape. If he allowed it to slip, he would be chained down to the lonely regions for many months during the intense cold of the Arctic winter. Days and weeks of monotony in such a spot! The very thought was intolerable. This hopeless prospect settled, without a shade of remorse, the wavering balance of his determination.