"Yes! I did not know it at the time, but we found her afterwards, Jean Bènard and I. It was a dreadful discovery. Jean had come back to his cabin, hoping to marry her, and she had died for me!"
"Oh," sobbed Helen in a sudden accession of grief. "I would have done as much!"
"I know," answered Stane quietly.
"And last night when you were in the wood together, and I heard your voices, I was jealous of that girl; last night and at other times."
"But," said the man, a note of wonder in his voice, "there was no need, Helen. You must know that?"
"Oh yes, I know it now. But she was very beautiful and Gerald Ainley had suggested that you—that you——. And I am sure that she loved you. But not more than I, though she died for you!"
"I am very sure of that," answered Stane, earnestly, putting his arm about her and trying to comfort her.
Helen sobbed convulsively. "I shall always be grateful to her, though I was jealous of her. She saved you—for me—and she was only an Indian girl."
"She had a heart of gold," said Stane. "She came to warn me and then stayed to do what she did!" Both were silent for a long time, the girl thinking of Miskodeed in her flashing beauty, the other of Jean, bent over the cold face of his dead love, and then Helen spoke again.
"But tell me! The attack on the cabin, was that man who captured me—that man Chigmok—was he the inspirer of that?"