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Updated: June 9, 2025
When McElroy took his last look backward at the blue lake from the northern end, Maren and Dupre were making their last camp before the Big Bend on the eastern shore. "How soon, think you, M'sieu?" she asked that night, standing beside the little fire; "how soon will they come, the H. B. C.'s from York?" "To-morrow, most like, or in a few days at most."
Eleven years had passed with its varied life, at Grand Portage and he had never returned, only vague rumors that had sunk in tears the head of gentle Marie, the younger of the two sisters, and lifted with sympathetic understanding that of Maren the elder. Why not? She had asked herself in the starlit nights of those years, why not?
Then Maren would slink out round the corner and beckon to Sören to make haste and come, and Sören would throw down his ax and come racing over the grass of the downs with his tongue between his lips. "Heaven only knows what she is up to now," said he, and the two crept after her down the road.
In the morning she seemed better, and fancied she was strong enough to go to her work again. But no sooner did she feel the cold water than a shivering seized her, she felt about convulsively with her hands, tried to step forward, and fell down. Her head lay on the dry bank, but her feet were in the water of the brook, her wooden shoes were carried away by the stream. Here she was found by Maren.
And Maren, oh, blameless as the winds of heaven was Maren! What had she given him that he could construe as love? Only a look, a blush to her cheek, the touch of a warm hand. In his folly he had hailed himself king of her affections when perchance it was but the kindliness of her womanly heart.
He had seen it many a time down in the yard, and now he had to squeeze himself together to get hold of it, it had crept so far under the bed. There! He had knocked down the tin kettle with his back! He fled in terror to the door. But Maren picked it up quite quietly; there was not a word of scolding, a thing he wondered more at than either the tin things or the cat.
The summer day dreamed by in drowsy beauty, like a woman or a rose full-blown, and Maren, who would at another time have seen each smallest detail of its perfection through the eye of love, saw only the rushing water ahead and counted time and distance. Dupre, kneeling in the bow, his lithe brown arms bare to the shoulder, where the muscles lifted and fell like waves, was silent.
"That's little enough to drive through the country for," said Maren laughingly. And then they were at the end of their journey. It was quite a shock to them, when the nag suddenly stopped and Lars Peter sprang down from the cart. "Now, then," said he, lifting them down. Sörine came out with the boy in her arms; she was big and strong and had rough manners.
When Maren looked up it was to find his eyes fixed on the messenger whose tall figure swung away up the river's bank toward the north forest, and they were coolly impersonal. She was unversed in the ways of men where a maid is concerned, this woman of the trail and portage, and she only knew vaguely that something had gone wrong with sight of the little flower.
But Maren, wise as she had grown since the coming of the little one, again found a way. She threw her kerchief over her head and went down to the hamlet with Ditte, to let her play with other children. All that Sören possessed with the exception of the house was a third share in a boat and gear.
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