Maren's head was up and she was looking at the little woman with an eager wistfulness.
“The Land of the Whispering Hills!”
“Thrue,—'tis th' Injun word,—but a woild, woild land f'r all that.”
“But beautiful, Madame,—oh! it is beautiful, is it not?”
“Fair,—wid high hills an' a great blue lake an' woildness!—Ah!”
But the tall leader was calling and camp was breaking for another stretch.
And under the travelling stars of that night there awoke in the heart of the maid of the trail something of the old love, the old longing for that goal of her life's ambition.
She had turned aside from it, only to be taught a lesson whose scars would stay deep in her soul so long as life lasted.
At last came an hour when the party under O'Halloran must turn to the east, where the bottle-neck of Winnipeg split in two, going down that well-worn way which led to Lake of the Woods, Rainy River, and at last to the wide lakes, whose sparkling waves would waft them on to the great outside world.
There was a scene at parting, when the warmhearted Irishwoman clung to Maren and wept against her bosom, calling her all the hundred words for “darling” in the Celtic and vowing to remember her always.