Jean Fitzpatrick rose from the breakfast-table at Fort Severn, and asked for the Winnipeg papers. Three days before, the mail-carrier had dashed in with dogs on the gallop, and ever since the white folk at the fort had been having a riot of joy. Months-old letters from almost forgotten friends, and papers many weeks behind their dates had been perused over and over again, until they could almost be recited from memory.

Tongues wagged in gossip over personages perhaps dead by this time, and sage opinions settled questions that had long since passed from the minds of men in the glamourous cities of far-off civilization.

Jean passed from the dining-room into the drawing-room, where many days before she had sent Donald McTavish from her presence. Her father, who, had eaten earlier, had retired into his private study, pleading business matters of urgency, and the girl settled herself luxuriously near a square, snow-edged window, with a pile of newspapers beside her easy chair.

She had not been reading long when voices raised in argument at the front door distracted her attention.

“No,” the servant of the house was saying, “you can't see the factor. He has given orders that he cannot be disturbed.”

“But I must see him!” replied a croaking voice, using the Ojibway dialect. “I have come many miles to see him, and must go away to-day.”

“Who are you?” asked Butts, the British butler, who served the factor's table with all the ceremony to be found in an English manor.

“Maria.”

“Maria who?

“Just Maria. I don't need any other name.”

“Tell me your message, and I'll give it to him. Then, you can come around later in the day for your answer.”

“No, I can't do that. This is something I must say to him myself, and in private,” croaked the voice.

“Well, you can't see him, and that's all there is about it,” snapped Butts with finality, and he slammed the door full in the old Indian woman's face.

At that, Jean sprang up and hurried from the drawing-room into the hallway, her eyes flashing with resentment.

“Here, Butts,” she said sharply, “call that woman back, and bring her to me in the sitting-room. I will hear what she has to say, if she will tell me.

“Yes, miss,” and the butler, showing vast disapproval in his tone, opened the door.

A minute later, Jean looked up to see a bent, wizened old hag standing in the doorway, bobbing respectfully.

“Come in close to the fire. You must be cold,” suggested the girl kindly, noting the pinched brown features. “Then I will talk to you.”

A leer of thanks and gratitude spread over the ugly, wrinkled face, and the creature acted on the suggestion.

“Can't you wait to see my father until later? asked Jean.

“No, I go with my son to the hunting-grounds this afternoon,” the woman answered.

“Well, if you will tell your message to me, I will see that he gets it.”

The squaw made no reply, but searched Jean's face with her bright little eyes. Then, she said suddenly:

“So, you're the one he is in love with?” The girl, taken aback, bristled at the words and tone.

“To whom do you refer?” she asked.

“Captain McTavish. Ha, you start and blush! Then, there are two sides of the matter. It's a pity! It's a pity!”

Jean, now thoroughly angered, both by the woman's temerity and her own involuntary coloring at the mention of Donald McTavish's name, turned on her visitor sharply.

“You will kindly keep to the matter that brought you here, Maria,” she said, “and leave both myself and Captain McTavish out of it.”

“I can leave you out of it, but not McTavish,” was the stolid reply.

“What do you mean?”

“Ha, ha! That's it. What do I mean? Sometimes I hardly know myself, but at others it conies back to me clearly enough. But I warn you, pretty miss,” and the squaw suddenly pointed a shaking finger at the girl. “Never marry him, this McTavish. Never marry him!

“I haven't the slightest intention of doing so,” returned the girl coldly; “but I would like to know why you say what you do, and why you wanted to see my father and tell him all this nonsense.”

“Nonsense, you say!” The old woman chuckled. “No, it ain't nonsense. Your father knows something already, but probably he won't tell you; such things aren't for the ears of young girls, particularly when they blush and grow angry at the mention of a man. But he'll marry you if he can, stain or no stain. That's a man's way.”

Jean Fitzpatrick's hands wandered to her throat as though to ease her dress. Her eyes were wide with wonder and her fear of something half-hinted, and the color had gone out of her face. Here they were again, these rumors that had disturbed her mind from time to time. But, now, they were almost definite—and they were not pleasant!

And her father knew I She had suspected the fact, and yet he had not told her anything, even denying his knowledge when forced to the point.

What was it, this thing that was the prized property of a glittering-eyed Indian hag? She dared hear no more from the crafty, insinuating creature. She would go to her father himself, and find out. She turned to the old woman, who was watching her closely.

“Maria,” she said, “I will do what I can to have my father see you before you leave this afternoon. If he will not, then you may know that everything possible has been done. If he will see you, I'll send a boy to find you.”

The squaw knew enough of white etiquette to realize that this was a dismissal, and started toward the door.

“He knows, he knows!” she croaked. “Tell him this time that there is money in it, and, if he won't see me now, I'll be back in the spring.”

She went out, leaving Jean bewildered and spent with emotion, trying to collect her scattered thoughts. Knowing that her father was busy, she returned to the papers, and tried to read. But the words passed in front of her eyes without meaning, and, after fifteen minutes of this, she rose determinedly.

The knock on her father's study door elicited a growl of inquiry, and she went in without answering. Old Angus Fitzpatrick sat bent over his desk writing, his white beard sweeping the polished wood. He wore large horn spectacles.

“Father,” began the girl, coming straight to the point, “do you know an old Ojibway squaw by the name of Maria?”

Neither the bulk of the man nor his stolidity could hide the involuntary start the words gave him. He looked searchingly at his daughter from beneath his beetling brows.

“Yes, I have seen her, I think,” he replied cautiously after a moment. “Why?”

“She came here to-day, and insisted, almost violently, on seeing you. Butts was about to send her away when I interfered and talked to her myself. I don't like her; she frightens me.”

“You talked with her?” asked the factor hastily, his agitation undisguised this time.

“Yes, but I couldn't learn anything definite. She has a lot of nasty rumors in her head. Maybe they're facts, but she only spoke in hints. She said the facts she would tell only to you.”

Angus Fitzpatrick heaved an inaudible sigh of relief. The old squaw, then, had been discreet.

“What was the subject of her conversation?” he asked, sharply.

The girl hesitated and flushed.

“Horrid hints regarding Don—Captain McTavish,” she said, finally. Then, her indignation rising once more, she went on swiftly: “Just the sort of thing I have heard from you, from Tee-ka-mee, from every one who has a right or privilege to mention such things. Now, father, I have come in here to find out just what this thing is. You can tell me in five minutes, if you will. Ah, yes, you can,” she insisted, as the factor started to deny. “Yes, you can; old Maria said so, and I believe her. After last summer when he was here, and I—when I grew to be very fond of his company, you suddenly began putting things into my mind, uncertain hints, slurring intimations, significant gestures—all the things that can damage a character without positively defaming it. Something had happened! Something had come to your notice that made you do all that. You never liked Donald, but you didn't really oppose him before that time. Now, I want to know what this is.” Her voice hardened. “I'm tired of being treated like a schoolgirl; I'm twenty-four, and old enough to think for myself, and I demand to know what mystery has forced a black shadow between us.”

She stopped, breathless, the color going and coming in her cheeks like the ebb and flow of northern lights in the sky.

Old Angus Fitzpatrick, amazed at the vehemence of his usually passive daughter, had risen to his feet. To make him furious, it was only necessary to demand something. This the girl, in excellent imitation of his own manner, had done, and he resented it highly, glaring at her through his spectacles.

“Do you mean to stand there and say that you demand that I tell you something?” he roared. “Well, I refuse, that's all.”

And he turned angrily away from her. The girl mastered herself, and asked in a cold, even voice:

“Will you tell me this? Is there anything definite against Donald McTavish?

“Do you demand to know?

“No, I ask it.”

“Well, then, there is. A perfectly good reason why you can never marry him.”

“What is it?”

“I can't tell you. And, if I can't, no one else can. Respect him all you will for himself, but don't love him. I tell you this to spare you pain later. And, if you please, Jean,” he added more gently as his temper went down, “never let us speak of this painful subject again.”

“Very well, father,” she replied, calmly. “Oh, by the way, do you wish to see that woman? She leaves this afternoon.”

“No, I never want to see her again.”

“She said for me to tell you there was money in it this time,” added the girl, a slight note of contempt in her tone.

The factor hesitated.

“No,” he said finally; and, without another word, Jean left the room.