And yet now as he looked backward he could remember a hundred little things that ought to have warned him--a word here, a look, a touch of the hand--little things, insignificant in themselves, but in the light of his present understanding, looming large as the danger signals of a well-ordered block system--signals he had blindly disregarded, to the wrecking of a heart. Well, he would make all amends in his power; would look after her as best he could, and in time she would forget. "They _all_ forget," he muttered aloud with a short, bitter laugh, as the memory of certain staring head-lines flashed through his brain. "I wish to God I could forget--_her!_" But the old wound would not heal, and far into the night he sat staring into the fire. "It's a man's game," he murmured as he spread his blankets, "and I will win out; but why?" Beyond the fire came the sound of a snapping twig. The man started, staring into the gloom, when suddenly into the soft light of the dying embers stepped Jeanne Lacombie. He stared at her speechless. There, in the uncertain glow, she stood, a Diana of flesh and blood, whose open hunting-shirt fell away from her rounded throat in soft, fringed folds. Her short skirt of heavy drilling came only to her knees; she wore no stockings, and her tiny feet were incased in heavily beaded moccasins. And so she stood there in the midnight, smiling down upon the man who gazed speechless from his blanket upon the opposite side of the dying fire; and then she spoke: "I have come," she said simply. "Jeanne!" cried the man, "why have you done this thing?" "I love you, and I will go with you." "But, girl, don't you realize what it means? This is the third night since I left the camp of Jacques----" The girl interrupted him with a laugh: "And I, too, have been gone three nights; have struck straight through the forest, and because the river makes a great bend of many miles I came to this place before you, and have waited for you here a night and a day. "And now I'm hungry. I will eat first, and then we will sleep, and to-morrow we will start together for the land of the white men." The man's mind worked rapidly as he watched in silence while the girl removed some bacon and bannock from his pack-sack and set the coffee-pot upon the coals. When she had finished her meal he spoke, slowly but firmly. "Jeanne, you have waited here a night and a day; you are rested, you have eaten. I will now make up the pack, and we will take the trail." "To-night?" "Yes, to-night--now. The back trail for the lodge of Jacques." The girl regarded him in amazement, and then smiled sadly, as a mother smiles on an erring child. "We cannot return," she said, speaking softly. "Wa-ha-ta-na-ta would kill me. She thinks we came away together. Wa-ha-ta-na-ta was married; we are not married; we cannot go back." The man rolled the blankets and buckled the straps of his pack-sack. He was about to swing it to his shoulders when the girl grasped his arm.