It was coming. Oh, yes. It was near. The brief hours of daylight warned that. So did the mock-suns which hovered in the sky, chained by the radiant circle which held the dying sun prisoned. Then in the north the heavy clouds were gathering. They gathered and dispersed. Then they gathered again. And always they banked deeper and darker. The wind was rising. That fitful, patchy wind which is so full of threat, and which bears in its breath the cutting slash of a whip.
There were moments in her solitude when An-ina read these warnings with some misgivings. They were not for herself. They were not even for Steve. The winter trail was no new thing to her great man. Besides, he was equipped against anything the Northern winter could display. Accident alone could hurt him. That was her creed. Marcel was different. He was only equipped for summer, and he should have returned before that first snowfall. How could his canoes make the waters of the river when they were already frozen?
Thus it was she speculated as each dawn she sought the sign of his return, and at the close of each day, with the last of the vanishing light.
For a week she went on with her endless labours in that cheerful spirit of confidence which never seemed to fail her. Then there came a change. She sought the gates of the fort more often, and stood gazing out longer, and with eyes that were not quite easy. Her unease was growing. She spurned it, she refused to admit her fears. And, in her defence, she redoubled her labours.
Thus ten days from the moment of Steve's going passed. It was the evening of the tenth day.
With a desperate resolve she had refused to allow herself her last evening vigil. Snow was in the air and had already begun to fall. So she sat over the great stove in the store, and plied her needle, threaded with gut, upon the shirt that was some day to cover Steve's body. Not once did she look up. It was almost as if she dared not. She was fighting a little battle with herself in which hope and confidence were hard pressed.
It was in the midst of this that the door was thrust open wide, and, with the opening, a flurry of snow swept in upon the warm atmosphere. But that which caused her to start to her feet, and drop the treasured garment perilously near to the stove, was the figure that appeared in the white cloud that blew about it. It was Marcel, with snow and ice about his mouth and chin, and upon his eye-lashes, and with his thick pea-jacket changed from its faded hue to the virgin whiteness of the elements through which he had succeeded in battling his way.
"An-ina!"
It was the glad cry of greeting she had yearned for in the big voice of a man whose delight is unmeasured.
"Marcel!" The woman's reply was full of joy. Then, with a sigh that was a deep expression of relief: "An-ina glad—so glad!"