“That’s Montell all over,” he drawled. “Marrying a Charbonne stands out as one of the big things he has accomplished. He can’t help boasting of it now and then. I imagine that if he were dying in a snowbank that thought would cheer him in his last hour. He regards it as a distinct achievement. He was a big, perfectly-formed, good-looking brute when he met her, and from all I know it was a case of two strong natures brushing aside all obstacles. I’ve heard that the Charbonnes were furious over what they considered the rankest sort of mesalliance—but they were married, and so far as I know she never discovered his very obvious clay feet. She died in child-birth—the second child. The family has kept up a desultory intercourse with him for the girl’s sake. They recognize her as their own blood, and tolerate him on that account.” A day or two after this Barreau rigged up a dog-team and left the post, bound for a point down the river, where they had established two Frenchmen with some trading goods, on the chance of getting into touch with some few lodges that hunted in that territory. He took one man, and I tramped a few miles with them, for the sake of the snowshoe practice of which I was sadly in need. It looked easy to go stalking over the drifts on those webbed ovals, but it was trying work for a novice I discovered at my first attempt. There was a certain free, swinging stride, which I had yet to master. So it happened that I did not return to the post until that chill hour between sundown and dark. I was aware that the fire in our cabin was long dead, and the room corresponding in temperature to an ice-box, but I was in no mood for the ultra-friendly conversation Montell had been favoring me with of late. For which reason I eschewed the blaze that I knew was crackling on the store hearth and made straight for my own quarters. The day’s work was at an end. Besides myself not a soul moved within the frosty area of the stockade. The doors of every building were shut tight against the sharp-toothed cold. This I noted almost mechanically. I was beginning to develop the woodsman’s faculty of observing detail, without conscious purpose. With my mind busy about the prospect of getting a fire started in the shortest possible space of time my gaze for a moment rested on the Montell cabin, as I stopped at my own door. At that instant Jessie Montell stepped outside, a shawl thrown over her head, carrying in one hand some object covered with a white cloth.