“St. Pierre!” he groaned.  “If there were no St. Pierre!”

“I should be lost,” she broke in quickly.  “I should want to die!”

Through the open window came the sound of a voice.  It was the weird monotone of Andre, the Broken Man.  Marie-Anne went to the window.  And David, following her, looked over her head, again so near that his lips almost touched her hair.  Andre had come back.  He was watching two York boats that were heading for the bateau.

“You heard him asking for Black Roger Audemard,” she said.  “It is strange.  I know how it must have shocked you when he stood like that in the door.  His mind, like his body, is a wreck, M’sieu David.  Years ago, after a great storm, St. Pierre found him in the forest.  A tree had fallen on him.  St. Pierre carried him in on his shoulders.  He lived, but he has always been like that.  St. Pierre loves him, and poor Andre worships St. Pierre and follows him about like a dog.  His brain is gone.  He does not know what his name is, and we call him Andre.  And always, day and night, he is asking that same question, ’Has any one seen Black Roger Audemard?’ Sometime—­if you will, M’sieu David—­I should like to have you tell me what it is so terrible that you know about Roger Audemard.”

The York boats were half-way across the river, and from them came a sudden burst of wild song.  David could make out six men in each boat, their oars flashing in the morning sun to the rhythm of their chant.  Marie-Anne looked up at him suddenly, and in her face and eyes he saw what the starry gloom of evening had half hidden from him in those thrilling moments when they shot through the rapids of the Holy Ghost.  She was girl now.  He did not think of her as woman.  He did not think of her as St. Pierre’s wife.  In that upward glance of her eyes was something that thrilled him to the depth of his soul.  She seemed, for a moment, to have dropped a curtain from between herself and him.

Her red lips trembled, she smiled at him, and then she faced the river again, and he leaned a little forward, so that a breath of wind floated a shimmering tress of her hair against his cheek.  An irresistible impulse seized upon him.  He leaned still nearer to her, holding his breath, until his lips softly touched one of the velvety coils of her hair.  And then he stepped back.  Shame swept over him.  His heart rose and choked him, and his fists were clenched at his side.  She had not noticed what he had done, and she seemed to him like a bird yearning to fly out through the window, throbbing with the desire to answer the chanting song that came over the water.  And then she was smiling up again into his face hardened with the struggle which he was making with himself.

“My people are happy,” she cried.  “Even in storm they laugh and sing.  Listen, m’sieu.  They are singing La Derniere Domaine.  That is our song.  It is what we call our home, away up there in the lost wilderness where people never come—­the Last Domain.  Their wives and sweethearts and families are up there, and they are happy in knowing that today we shall travel a few miles nearer to them.  They are not like your people in Montreal and Ottawa and Quebec, M’sieu David.  They are like children.  And yet they are glorious children!”