A noise at the door made him turn—made Father John pause with his mouth open and his hand outstretched in denial or acceptance. They heard the servant’s voice raised indignantly, and a short scuffle in the hall. Then the door opened and a girl ran into the room; a rough girl from the river front, with a shawl over her shoulders and the rain lying like a net of pearls on her solid flaxen hair. She ran to the priest like a dog, and caught his cassock with her square tanned hands, and began to wail, strangely, softly.
“Father, Father,” she besought him, “come to M’Cabe. O, come quick to poor M’Cabe. He’s remembered. . . . .”
THE STOVE
“I’ll be back the third day at latest with the doctor. I’ve left you wood enough for three days and more and you’ve grub for a month.” Garth looked at her anxiously; his strong mouth twitched. Suddenly he leaned forward and brushed her cheek lightly with his yellow beard. “I—hate to leave you, little girl,” he said, with a gentleness not common with him, “but I guess it’s Derek’s only chance.”
“Of course you must go. It’s Derek’s only chance.” Dorette faced him steadily. She was pale, slight, sleepy-eyed, but wilderness born and bred, for all that; one guessed a spirit of steel in that fragile sheath. She finished wistfully: “There’ll be nothing for me to do—nothing, but—wait.”
“Only look after yourself and keep the stove up.”
“I’ll do it. And you—if you meet Maxime . . . .”
Rage blazed suddenly in her brother’s eyes. The barrel of his rifle gleamed blue as he gripped it. “If I meet Maxime,” he said, through his teeth, “it’s a finish for him or for me!”
He turned about without another word, and swung down the forest trail on his long run to Mandore.
Dorette watched him until he was no more than a dark shadow among the heavy blue shades that hung from spruce to spruce like tangible banners. All life, all sound, all motion seemed to go with him. Mile after mile, she knew, on each side of her was nothing but the same silence, the same stillness, league after league of the desolate fir forest of the North. She went into the cabin and bolted and barred the door behind her, as if the solitude were an enemy which she must keep out.