“Yes, I love her, M’sieur,” replied Pierre, softly.  “I love her, not as a brother, but as a man whose heart is broken.”

“Now—­I understand,” said Philip.

He dropped Pierre’s hand, and his voice was cold and lifeless.

“I received a note—­from her, asking me to leave Fort o’ God in the morning,” he went on, looking from Pierre out beyond the rock into the white barren.  “I will go to-night.”

“It is best,” said Pierre.

“I have left nothing in Fort o’ God, so there is no need of even returning to my room,” continued Philip.  “Jeanne will understand, but you must tell her father that a messenger came suddenly from Blind Indian Lake, and that I thought it best to leave without awakening him.  “Will you guide me for a part of the distance, Pierre?”

“I will go with you the whole way, M’sieur.  It is only twenty miles, ten by canoe, ten by land.”

They said no more, but both went to the canoe, and were quickly lost in the gloom into which the other canoe had disappeared a few minutes ahead of them.  They saw nothing of this canoe, and when they came to the Churchill Pierre headed the birch-bark down-stream.  For two hours not a word passed between them.  At the end of that time the half-breed turned in to shore.

“We take the trail here, M’sieur,” he explained.

He went on ahead, walking swiftly, and now and then when Philip caught a glimpse of his face he saw in it a despair as great as his own.  The trail led along the backbone of a huge ridge, and then twisted down into a broad plain; and across this they traveled, one after the other, two moving, silent shadows in a desolation that seemed without end.  Beyond the plain there rose another ridge, and half an hour after they had struck the top of it Pierre halted, and pointed off into the ghostly world of light and shadow that lay at their feet.

“Your camp is on the other side of this plain, M’sieur,” he said.  “Do you recognize the country?”

“I have hunted along this ridge,” replied Philip.  “It is only three miles from here, and I will strike a beaten trail half a mile out yonder.  A thousand thanks, Pierre.”

He held out his hand.

“Good-by, M’sieur.”

“Good-by, Pierre.”

Their voices trembled.  Their hands gripped hard.  A choking lump rose in Philip’s throat, and Pierre turned away.  He disappeared slowly in the gray gloom, and Philip went down the side of the mountain.  From the plain below he looked back.  For an instant he saw Pierre drawn like a silhouette against the sky.

“Good-by, Pierre,” he shouted.

“Good-by, M’sieur” came back faintly.

Light and silence dropped about them.

XIX