journey to the northeast; Rand of Fort Albany, a week’s travel to the northwest; Mault of Fort George, ten days beyond either, all grizzled in the Company’s service.  With them came their clerks, mostly English and Scotch younger sons, with a vast respect for the Company, and a vaster for their Factor’s daughter.  Once in two or three years appeared the inspectors from Winnipeg, true lords of the North, with their six-fathom canoes, their luxurious furs, their red banners trailing like gonfalons in the water.  Then this post of Conjuror’s House feasted and danced, undertook gay excursions, discussed in public or private conclave weighty matters, grave and reverend advices, cautions, and commands.  They went.  Desolation again crept in.

The girl dreamed.  She was trying to remember.  Far-off, half-forgotten visions of brave, courtly men, of gracious, beautiful women, peopled the clouds of her imaginings.  She heard them again, as voices beneath the roar of rapids, like far-away bells tinkling faintly through a wind, pitying her, exclaiming over her; she saw them dim and changing, as wraiths of a fog, as shadow pictures in a mist beneath the moon, leaning to her with bright, shining eyes full of compassion for the little girl who was to go so far away into an unknown land; she felt them, as the touch of a breeze when the night is still, fondling her, clasping her, tossing her aloft in farewell.  One she felt plainly—­a gallant youth who held her up for all to see.  One she saw clearly—­a dewy-eyed, lovely woman who murmured loving, broken words.  One she heard distinctly—­a gentle voice that said, “God’s love be with you, little one, for you have far to go, and many days to pass before you see Quebec again.”  And the girl’s eyes suddenly swam bright, for the northland was very dreary.  She threw her palms out in a gesture of weariness.

Then her arms dropped, her eyes widened, her head bent forward in the attitude of listening.

“Achille!” she called, “Achille!  Come here!”

The young fellow approached respectfully.

“Mademoiselle?” he asked.

“Don’t you hear?” she said.

Faint, between intermittent silences, came the singing of men’s voices from the south.

“Grace a Dieu!” cried Achille.  “Eet is so.  Eet is dat brigade!”

He ran shouting toward the factory.

Chapter Two

Men, women, dogs, children sprang into sight from nowhere, and ran pell-mell to the two cannon.  Galen Albret, reappearing from the factory, began to issue orders.  Two men set about hoisting on the tall flag-staff the blood-red banner of the Company.  Speculation, excited and earnest, arose among the men as to which of the branches of the Moose this brigade had hunted—­the Abitibi, the Mattagami, or the Missinaibie.  The half-breed women shaded their eyes.  Mrs. Cockburn, the doctor’s wife, and the only other white woman in the settlement, came and stood by Virginia Albret’s side.  Wishkobun, the Ojibway woman from the south country, and Virginia’s devoted familiar, took her half-jealous stand on the other.