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46 Jennifer laughed and flushed with the consciousness of her young wifehood, and again Tempest's face was troubled as he looked at her. As yet there was no flaw in the warp and woof that Life was spinning her. But it must come soon. It could not fail to come, and the snarl might be such that no patient fingers and no brave eyes that kept the tears back would unravel. It could not fail to come. He knew Ducane too well for that, and he knew Life too well.

The dread of grim tragedy broke before the indefinable sensation of something tense in the air. He turned from the window to see Slicker with a saskatoon between thumb and finger, regarding Jennifer very much as he might have regarded a chick which had just emerged from a duck's egg. The light from without struck one side of Jennifer's small face and the blurr of copper hair as she leant forward, speaking with that soft, quick voice which was characteristic of her.

"You don't know! How should a boy like you know what it means to lie awake at night and feel that you have got into the heart of things at last—the real core—right back to the beginning where men stood with bare feet on the bare earth, as it were"

Slicker removed his eyes to his sock.

"I've stood with bare feet" he began. Then he looked at Tempest. "Isn't she the most surprising thing that ever happened?" he said.

Jennifer swung round. Her eyes and her hair glowed in the light.

"Out here men do things," she cried. "It is the land of romance and the real picturesque. Here one can believe—and do. It's like coming out of a novel and getting into history. It brings out all that is brave and good and noble in men and women. Look at those women at the English Mission, making Christians of the little half-breed children! Look at the Mounted Police scouring the land with their old khaki uniforms, year in and year out, to enforce the law! Look at the half-breeds submitting themselves to that awful labour of tracking, season by season. Look at men such as my Harry, battling for his home