Without a doubt, he reasoned, Aurore would have left their mid-day meal ready. She would not return, he knew, until the guest had gone. In the little overheated cook-house he found the meal set out. All was in order. Then his eye caught a singular decoration fastened to the door, a paper silhouette, blackened with charcoal, the shape of a cassocked priest. The little cut-out paper doll figure was pinned to the wood by a short, sharp kitchen knife driven viciously deep, and the handle, quivering with the closing of the door, gave the illusion that the hand that had delivered the blow must have only at that instant been withdrawn. Crossman shivered. He knew that world-old formula of hate; he knew of its almost innocent use in many a white caban, but its older, deeper meaning of demoniacal incantation rushed to his mind, somehow blending with the wizardry with which he surrounded his thoughts of the strange woman. A step outside crunching in the snow. The door opened, revealing Antoine Marceau. The huge form of the log-brander towered above him. He could not read the expression of the eyes behind the square-cupped snow spectacles. "She tell me, Aurore," he rumbled, "that I am to come. We have the company." "Yes, the Curé of Portage Dernier." Crossman watched him narrowly. Antoine took off the protecting wooden blinders and thrust them in his pocket. Crossman stood aside, hesitating. Antoine drew off his mittens with businesslike precision, and placed a huge, capable hand on a pot-lid, lifted it, and eyed the contents of the saucepan. "The Curé, he like ptarmigan," he observed, "but," he added in a matter-of-fact voice, "the Curé like not Aurore--he have tell you, _hein_? Ah, well, why not? For him such as Aurore _are_ not--_voilà_." "The Curé says she is a devil." Crossman marvelled at his temerity, yet he hung on the answer. "Why not? For him, as I have say, she _is_ not--for _me_, for _you_, ma frien', _that_ is different." Antoine turned on him eyes as impersonal as those of Fate; where Crossman had expected to see animosity there was none, only a strange brotherhood of pitying understanding. "For who shall forbid that the dawn she shall break--_hein_?" he continued. "The Curé? Not mooch. When the Dawn she come, she come; not with his hand can he hold her back. For me, now comes perhaps the sunset; perhaps the dawn for you. But what would you? Who can put the dog-harness on the wind, or put the bit in the teeth of the waterfall to hold him up?" "Or who with his hand can draw the Borealis from heaven?" Crossman cut in. He spoke unconsciously. He had not wished to say that, he had not wanted to speak at all, but his subconscious mind had welded the thought of her so fast to the great mystery of the Northern Lights that without volition he had voiced it.