"Ingenious in perfectly useless ways! Featherheaded as schoolboys!"

"But I like schoolboys!" Ambrose protested. "It isn't so long since I was one myself."

"Schoolboys is too good a word," said Gaviller. "Say, apes."

"I have a kind of fellow-feeling for them," said Ambrose smiling.

"How long have you been in the north?"

"Two years."

"I've been dealing with them thirty years," said Gaviller with an air of finality.

Ambrose refused to be silenced. Looking around the luxurious room he felt inclined to remark, that Gaviller had made a pretty good thing out of the despised race, but he checked himself.

"Sometimes I think we never give them a show," he said with a deprecating air, "We're always trying to cut them to our own pattern instead of taking them as they are. They are like schoolboys, as you say.

"Most of the trouble with them comes from the fact that anybody can lead them into mischief, just like boys. If we think of what we were like ourselves before we put on long trousers it helps to understand them."

Gaviller raised his eyebrows a little at hearing the law laid down by twenty-five years old.

"Ah!" he said quizzically. "In my day the use of the rod was thought necessary to make boys into men!"

Ambrose grew a little warm. "Certainly!" he said. "But it depends on the spirit with which it is applied. How can we do anything with them if we treat them like dirt?"

"You are quite successful in handling them?" queried Gaviller dryly.

"Peter Minot says so," said Ambrose simply. "That is why he took me into partnership."

"He married a Cree, didn't he?" inquired Gaviller casually.

Colina glanced at her father in surprise. This was hardly playing fair according to her notions.

"A half-breed," corrected Ambrose.

"Of course, Eva Lajeunesse, I remember now," said Gaviller. "She was quite famous around Caribou Lake some years ago."

Ambrose with an effort kept his temper. "She has made him a good wife," he said loyally.

"Ah, no doubt!" said Gaviller affably. "Do you live with them?"

"I have my own house," said Ambrose stiffly.

Here Colina made haste to create a diversion.

"Aren't the Indian kids comical little souls?" she remarked. "I go to the mission school sometimes to sing and play for them. They don't think much of it. One of the girls asked me for a hair. One hair was all she wanted."

The subject of Indian children proved to be innocuous. They took coffee in John Gaviller's library.

"Colina brought these new-fangled notions in with her," said her father.

"They're all right!" said Ambrose soberly.

Colina saw the hand that held his spoon tremble slightly, and wondered why. The fact was the thought could not but occur to him: "How foolish for me to think she could ever bring her lovely, ladylike ways to my little shack!"

He thrust the unnerving thought away. "I can build a bigger house, can't I?" he demanded of himself. "Anyway, I'll make the best play to get her that I can!"

In the library they talked about furniture. It transpired that the trader had a pa.s.sion for cabinet making, and most of the objects that surrounded them were examples of his skill. Ambrose admired them with due politeness, meanwhile his heart was sinking. He could not see the slightest chance of getting a word alone with Colina.

In the middle of the evening a breed came to the door, hat in hand, to say that John Gaviller's Hereford bull was lying down in his stall and groaning. The trader bit his lip and glanced at Colina.

"Would you like to come and see my beasts?" he asked affably.

"Thanks," said Ambrose just as politely. "I'm no hand with cattle."

He kept his eyes discreetly down.

Gaviller could not very well turn him out of the house. There was no help for it. He went.

CHAPTER VII.

TWO INTERVIEWS.

The instant the door closed behind Gaviller, Ambrose's eyes flamed up.

"What a stroke of luck!" he cried.

It had something the effect of an explosion there in the quiet room where they had been talking so prosily. Colina became panicky. "I don't understand you!" she said haughtily.

"You do!" he cried. "You know I didn't paddle three hundred miles up-stream to talk to him! Never in my life had I anything so hard to go through with as the last two hours. I didn't dare look at you for fear of giving myself away."

There was an extraordinary quality of pa.s.sion in the simple words.

Colina felt faint and terrified. What was one to do with a man like this! She mounted her queenliest manner. "Don't make me sorry I asked you here," she said.

"Sorry?" he said. "Why should you be? You can do what you like! I can't pretend. I must say my say the best way I can. I may not get another chance!"

Colina had to fight both herself and him. She made a gallant stand.

"You are ridiculous!" she said. "I will leave the room until my father comes back if you can't contain yourself."

He was plainly terrified by the threat, nevertheless he had the a.s.surance to put himself between her and the door.

"You have no cause to be angry with me," he said. "You know I do not disrespect you!" He was silent for a moment. His voice broke huskily.

"You are wonderful to me! I have to keep telling myself you are only a woman--of flesh and blood like myself--else I would be groveling on the floor at your feet, and you would despise me!"

Colina stared at him in haughty silence.

"I love you!" he whispered with odd abruptness. "No woman need be insulted by hearing that. You came upon me to-day like a bolt of lightning. You have put your mark on me for life! I will never be myself again."