had been kind to his lonely winter trapping, for he brought to the spring trade a rare winter's hunt; but it mattered little to him how rich was his fur pack, for he was not bringing it to Marie at Coocoocache, Marie—how often he had lived over again the black days of his home-coming the year before! Night after night, day after day, throughout the long snows of the bitter winter, as he smoked by his lonely fire or followed his trap lines, he had thought and thought of the days that would come no more to him and Marie. Like a wolf they had driven him, an outcast, into the wilderness, and what had they done with her? The thought that her body, undiscovered, might still await decent burial seared into his brain.
Day by day as he pushed on through the forest, waking with life, to the headwater lakes of the great river, one idea obsessed him: that never again would he turn the bend above Coocoocache to behold Marie waiting on the shore for his return. All that was passed forever. All hope and life and love were gone now from François Hertel, outlaw, hunted from Timiskaming to the Labrador border for the killing of the black-hearted drunkard, Walker.
Such had been the thoughts that daily, through the long winter, had become his ceaseless torment, which companioned him on his long voyage; and with such was his brain tortured when, at last, he reached the waters of the St. Maurice.
He had resolved to go to Lost Lake Post to trade his fur and then to Coocoocache secretly. From there he would journey on down the river, even to the settle-
