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It was Bois DesCaut, and he did not lift his evil eyes. The white lack on his temple gleamed with a sinister distinctness amid his black hair. "Double foe," thought McElroy; "I am to pay for my own words and Maren's blow." As the trapper passed he sidled swiftly near the Nor'wester and something dropped from a legstrap.
It was a dagger thrust, and it found its mark even as the girl glanced slily at her victim. Maren's full mouth twitched and she looked dully away to the fort gate. Dupre gave Francette an ungallant push. "Begone!" he cried angrily; "you little cat!" With a ringing laugh the maid danced away in the sunshine, and Dupre faced Maren. "It is that imp of le diable, Francette?" he asked.
Since Sören's death sorrow and tears had reddened Maren's eyes with inflammation and turned her eyelids, but her neighbors only took it as another sign of her hardened witchcraft. Her sight was failing too, and she often had to depend upon Ditte's young eyes; and then it would happen that the child took advantage of the opportunity and played pranks.
No one in the wide world cared for the little one, not even the old people for that matter. But all the same Maren went up into the attic and brought out an old wooden cradle which had for many years been used for yarn and all kinds of lumber; Sören put new rockers, and once more Maren's old, swollen legs had to accustom themselves to rocking a cradle again.
The infinite sadness in Dupre's voice was as a wind across a harp of gold, and it struck to Maren's heart with unbearable pain. Her eyes, looking straight into his, filled slowly with tears, and his white face danced grotesquely before her vision. "M'sieu," she said quite simply, "I would to God it had been given me to love you. We have ever seen eye to eye save in that wherein we should have.
And why should not the little one have her own way? Perhaps it was the will of Providence, speaking through her, in her obstinate desire to enter her father's house. All the same, Maren's conscience was not quite clear while standing with Ditte beside her, waiting for some one to come. The farmer apparently was out, and for that she was thankful.
"Has he many children?" interrupted Hans. "Only one daughter; but what the deuce ?" "Good-bye, uncle! I must get home to my books." "Stop a bit! Aren't you going to Aunt Maren's this evening? She asked me to invite you." "No, thanks, I haven't time," shouted Cousin Hans, who was already several paces away.
Eastward through the little lakes, across the portages where McElroy was carried by means of pole and blanket swung from sturdy shoulders, they went at hurried pace, and never a man of Maren's small command but watched the sadness of her face, that seemed to grow with the days and to feel an aching counterpart of it within his own heart.
Anethe was young, fair, and merry, with thick, bright sunny hair, which was so long it reached, when unbraided, nearly to her knees; blue-eyed, with brilliant teeth and clear, fresh complexion, beautiful, and beloved beyond expression by her young husband, Ivan. Mathew Hontvet, John's brother, had also joined the little circle a year before, and now Maren's happiness was complete.
True, De Courtenay was his latest master, and his spoiling of Maren's aim might as easily send the blade into the black as the red, but in either case he would cause her to decide the death she was trying so bravely to postpone. DesCaut, surely.
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