Pete sat opposite Sylvie on the floor, his back against the corner of the fireplace, his knees drawn up in his hands, his head a little bent. He too--from under his long level brows--looked for the most part at Hugh, not devotedly, not wistfully, but with a somber wondering. It was only now and then, and as though he couldn’t help it, that the blue, smouldering Northern eyes were turned to Sylvie on her throne. Then they would brighten painfully, and his lips would tighten so that the dimple, meant for laughter, cut itself like a touch of pain into his cheek. The firelight heightened his picturesqueness--the dull blue of his shirt, open at the round, smooth throat, the dark gold-brown of his corduroy trousers, against which the long, tanned hands, knit strongly together, stood out in the rosy, leaping light--beautifully painted against the background of old brown logs. Yet it was Hugh, after all, who dominated the room by right of his power, his magnetism, the very distortion of his spirit. Here in this lonely square of light and warmth, surrounded by a world of savage, lawless winds heightening the voices of vast loneliness, these three people were imprisoned by him, a Merlin of the West. He sat up to begin his story, pressing tobacco into his pipe. “Oh, it’s not so much of a story, Sylvie. It was last spring when the river was high and I’d been out with my traps. I was coming home along the river edge, pretty tired, a big load on my back. I came around a bend of the river, and not far below me a little black bear, round as a barrel, was trying to scramble over the flood on a very shaky log. The mother was on the other side, but I didn’t know that then. Well, there’s nothing in God’s world, Sylvie, so beguiling as a baby bear. This little fellow was scared by what he was doing, but he was bound he’d get across the river. He’d make a few steps; then he’d back up and half rise on his hind legs. I watched him a long time. Then he made up his mind he’d better make a dash for it. He began scrambling like a frantic kitten, and it was just in the most ticklish spot that he heard me and jumped and went rolling off into the river. I tell you, my heart came right up into my mouth.” “Oh, _was_ he drowned?” wailed Sylvie. Hugh rose and stood with his back to the fire, dominating the room even more convincingly, with his vivid ugliness. Sylvie’s face turned up to him like a white flower to the sun it lives by, without seeing. It was strange to watch the adoration, the worship on that small face, and at the same time to behold the grotesqueness toward which it was directed. Bella was listening with her lowered eyes and tightened lips. She was interested in spite of herself; and Pete’s inscrutable face followed the story with absorption.