"That's it," he said hoarsely, while his body thrilled at the girl's warm clasp in his. "What's the use? Neither you nor I can say the things we feel. That's so. There's a great big God of this Northland looking on and fixing things the way He sees. As you say 'Some day'! Meanwhile there's the start back to-morrow morning. Just get right along and sleep, and dream good, and be sure you're aren't alone in the world—ever again."
CHAPTER X
THE FAREWELL
A burden of grey hung depressingly over the world. A bleak north wind came down the river gorge. The sun's power had weakened before the advance of the Arctic night. Beaten, dismayed, it lived only just above the skyline.
The sightless sockets of the old moose stared wide-eyed down the river. They were fulfilling the task that had been set them. The howling of the gale, the polar cold, the blinding storm of snow; these things would have no power to turn them from their vigil. The wide-antlered, bleaching skull was the guardian of the tryst, and its sole concern was its watch and ward.
The chill and cheerlessness of it all was reaching at the hearts of the boy and girl who were at the moment of parting. Marcel was silently whittling a stout twig of tamarack, whose toughness threatened to dull the keen edge of his sheath-knife. Keeko was standing a few feet from him, within a yard or so of the precipice which dropped sheer to the waters below. Her eyes were following the direction of the gaze of the old moose, and the picture her mind was dwelling upon was far removed from what she beheld.
It was of the long, lonesome winter, with her mother dying by inches, while she, herself, spent her days in the avoidance of her step-father whom she had learned to fear as well as to hate. Marcel had no such bitterness to look out upon. But he was none the less weighted down that the farewell must be spoken.
The hot blood of youth was surging through his veins. Manhood's reckless passion was beating in heart and brain. A desperate desire to yield to the call of Nature was urging him mercilessly. Yet, through it all, he knew that the farewell must be said now, for both their sakes, for the sake of honour, of loyalty, for the sake of Love itself.
Oh, yes. He knew how easy it would be to sweep along on the tide of passion. But he loved Keeko. Loved her with all his simple heart and body, and his love was bound up with an honour which he had no power to outrage.