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Keep it until M'sieu the factor is in his right mind, then give it him with your own hands. If he if he should burn it, Rette, unopened." And she gave into the woman's keeping the only letter she had ever written to a man. It was in French, and the script was fine and finished.
Edmonton Ridgar sat at the hearth gazing into the leaping flames, and Rette de Lancy passed and repassed among the shifting shadows, busy at some kindly task. Long he lay, this man returned from the Borderland of the Unknown, and stared weakly at the familiar sights that were yet touched with a puzzling strangeness.
The figure upon the bed, half-risen, worked its lips and then fell back, and the little maid raised her voice and screamed again and again in mortal terror. It brought Rette running from where she had waited in the trading-room. She raised him, and her face was red with rage. "What have you done! You evil cat! What have you done to the man?"
McElroy smiled at her pretty conceits, her babbling talk, her gambols, and her gifts. "What have you done with Loup, little one?" he asked, one day. "Does he wait on the steps to growl at this usurper purring at your heels?" The little maid grew pearly white and looked away at Rette fearfully, as if at sudden loss, in danger of some betrayal. "Nay," she said, "Loup...is an ingrate.
Like men hungry and athirst from the hardships of the trail and the stream, the camp and the portage, the guests did justice to the savoury viands, and at last leaned back in repletion, while Rette took off the plates and cups; the spoons and forks, and set in their stead a huge pot of crumbled tobacco with a tin box containing pipes.
As he passed the lintel the not insignificant form of Rette blocked his exit, en route for a cup she had left behind. With an instant flourish the hat in his hand swept the logs of the floor, he seized the woman's toil-hard fingers and bore them to his lips. "Excellent, Madame, was that meal," he murmured, "and never to be forgot so long as one unused to hardship faces privation. I thank you."
Rette, I believe, has a letter which she left for you.... Would you read it now?" McElroy nodded dumbly, and Ridgar went out in the night to Rette's cabin for this last link between the factor and the woman he loved. When he returned, and McElroy had taken it in his shaking hands, he sat down and turned his face to the fire.
Comely Rette flushed to her sleek hair and some flicker of a girlhood that had its modicum of grace, flared up in the swift curtsy with which she acknowledged the compliment. And with a last flash of his blue coat Alfred de Courtenay was gone. McElroy ran his fingers helplessly through his tousled light hair and faced his friend.
A dozen candles, lit in his honour, where three were wont to suffice, shone mellowly in the little room, and Rette de Lancy, still comely despite her forty years and a certain lavishness in the matter of avoirdupois, set down in the midst of the table a steaming dish with a cover.
So passed the days and the weeks, with quip and jest from Ridgar, whose eyes wore a puzzled expression; with such coddling and coaxing from Rette as would have spoiled a well man, and, with not the least to be counted, daily visits to the factory of the little Francette, who defied the populace and came openly.
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