"Well, she is, if ye call it silly," said Mrs. O'Mara from where she stood with her partner in all the glory of a maroon satin that fitted her as if she were an upholstered sofa. "I'd no more go live in that clearin' with the Wendigees, or whatever 'tis the Canucks talk about, than in Purgatory itself. Wendigees is Injun goblins," she explained to her partner, "and there's worse nor them, too." She crossed herself expertly, and in almost the same movement swept her partner, not of the tallest, away in a fox-trot. She fox-trotted very well. Marjorie went on dancing, and hoping that Mr. Logan would go to bed and to sleep, or have a fit of nerves that would incapacitate him from further interfering with her. But the hope was in vain, for Francis appeared from nowhere in about fifteen minutes, and beckoned her to follow him to where she knew Logan was waiting. The two men sat down gravely in the little wooden room where Logan had been shown. It was Francis who spoke first. "Mr. Logan insists, Marjorie, that you appealed to him for rescue. He puts it to me, I must say, very reasonably, that no sensible man would travel all this way to bring back a girl unless she had asked him to. He says that you wrote him that you were being treated severely." "I didn't! I never did!" exclaimed outraged Marjorie, springing up and standing before them. "Show me my letter!" "Unfortunately," said Mr. Logan wistfully, "I destroyed it, because I have always found that the wisest thing to do with letters. But I am prepared to take my oath that you wrote me, asking me to help you. I am extremely sorry to find that you are in such a position as to--forgive me, Mr. Ellison, but it seems rather like it--to be so dominated by this gentleman as not to even admit----" "You see what it looks like," broke in Francis, turning to his wife furiously. "Never ask me to believe you again. I don't trust you--I never will trust you. Nobody will, if you keep on as you've begun. Go back with him, then--you're not my slave, much as you may pretend it." "I won't!" said Marjorie spiritedly. "I've had enough of this. I'll stay here, if it takes ten years, till you admit that you've treated me horribly, and misjudged me. I've played fair. I've no way of proving it, against you two men, but I have! I'll prove it by any test you like." "There's only one way you can convince me that one word you've said since you came up here was the truth," he told her, suddenly quiet and cold. "If you stay, of your own free will, out there in the clearing; if you take over the work that Pierre fell down on this evening, and stay there looking after me and my men--I'll believe you. There's no fun to doing that, just work; it stands to reason that you wouldn't do that for any reason unless to clear yourself. If you don't want to do that, you may go home with this gentleman; indeed, I won't let you do anything else. Take your choice."