All her red-rose beauty had gone from the little maid along with her dancing lightness.
These long weeks had turned her into a woman with a woman's heart.
They drew back and looked on with wonder, and then smiles of amusement, but Maren, gazing into the tragic little face, saw deeper.
“Why,—little one,” she said gently, unconsciously falling into McElroy's words after a trick she had, “I—I understand. You need not give up the dog,—I know what you would say.”
“No!” cried Francette fiercely. “No! Take him! Take him! I will make you take him! I will!”
She was whimpering, and Maren, stooping, laid a hand on the husky's collar.
Without more words she turned and followed her people down to the landing, half-dragging the brute, who hung back and turned his giant head to the little maid, standing with her hands over her face.
He snarled and bit at Maren's wrist, but she picked him up and flung him, half-dragging on the ground, for he was a mighty beast, into the first canoe.
“Push off,” she said; and, taking her place in the prow, she raised her face to the cool blue sky, and turned once more to that West whose voice had called from her cradle, but, with some strange perversity of fate, her heart drew back to the squat stockade slowly fading into the distance.
The sweet wind of the Whispering Hills was very faint on her soul.