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420 dree? Why—that voyage was so much of delight—so much of the new."

Over her head the men smiled. This which was stagnation to the man who had lived was life itself to little Soeur Narcisse.

"Ah! She was si belle! Si grande! Et si triste. Elle me baise quand she say adieu. And moi, I was for her so sorry."

"Andree kissed you!" Dick was curiously upset at this, for he knew Andree's utter indifference to women.

"Then you can't tell me where she went?" he asked.

"To Chipewyan. But beyond that I do not know. There were many Indians on rafts. We begged of her—stay; be one of us. Mais elle n'en peut. Elle dit il y a le vent aux cheveux. I do not understand, moi. Perhap she jeter la plume au vent."

"Perhaps," said Dick. But he shivered a little. Would the death which he was bringing her ever so still Grange's Andree that she could not feel the wind of Life in her hair?

He looked at Père Melisand when the two went out to the sun again. "Didn't young Macrae of a Survey Party once try to carry off a nun from one of these places?" he asked. "You'd best look after Soeur Narcisse, sir. Men are men still. And she is meant to make some man happy."

"Because you have no religion you do not recognise your impiety," said Père Melisand composedly. "Existence means more than earthly happiness."

"My soul! D'you think I don't know that?" said Dick with a sudden flash. And through the long day's sleighing when the threatening squish of the packing mush-ice took the place of the clean burring hum of the runners, and the wind blew warm on his cheek, he remembered grimly what good cause he had to know it.

He dreaded this lone patrol as he never had dreaded one before. That night with Jennifer seemed to have slacked his physical and mental muscles. He had been knocked out in a fight for the thing he most wanted; knocked out completely, without a hope of return, and he could not forget it. There was no pride in him because he had not