“Nay,” said Francette, “but I know of one who sickens inwardly and I would give her the charm.”
“Go into the flats of the Beaver House after Marci and her Indian, whither they went,” Tessa laughed. “I know not the charm. But it was good, for she got him, and went to the wilds with him. Follow and learn, Francette.”
But Francette, with a gesture of disgust, turned away.
The warm spring days passed in a riot of song from the depths outside the post, the Assiniboine rippled and whispered along its shores and over the illimitable stretches of the wilderness there hung the very spirit of the mating-time.
Within the stockade, mothers sat in the doors crooning to the babes that clutched at the sunbeams, dogs slept in the cool shadows of the cabins, and here and there a youth sang a snatch of a love song.
“Verily, Marie, it is good to be here,” sighed Micene Bordoux, sitting on her sill with her capable arms folded on her knees, and her eyes, cool and sane and tolerant, roving over the settlement lolling so quietly in the sun. “After the trail the rest is good, and yet I will be eager long before the year has passed to follow Maren,—may Mary give her grace!—into that wilderness which so draws at her heartstrings.”
“Oh, Micene!” cried Marie, a trifle vexed, “if only she might forget her dreams! What is it like, the heart of a maid, that turns from thought of love to that of these wild lands, to the mystery of the Whispering Hills that lie, the good God knows where, in that dim and untracked West! I would that Maren might love! Then would we have peace and stop forever at this pleasant place.”
Good Micene, with her brave heart and her whole-souled sense, smiled at Marie.
“Love,” she said,—“and think you THAT could turn that exalted spirit from its quest? Still the stir of conquest within her bosom, hush the call of that glorious country which we know from rumor, and plain hearsay lies at the heart of the Athabasca?
“Little do you know Maren, Marie, though the same mother gave you birth. There is naught that could turn the maid, and I love her for it. It is that undaunted faith, that steadfast purpose, that white fire in her face which holds at her heels the whole of us, that turns to her the faces of our men, as those legions of France turned to the Holy Maid. Love? She would turn not for it if she could not take it with her.”