"Twill be a wild week," said O'Hara. "Poor Jean!" said Kenyon.

When Randall discovered next day that Jean Feroux had gone to Groundhog alone he declared it time to close the books on the betting. "He's met her already," he asserted. But when O'Hara and Steve MacDonald went down to the town they could find no trace of Jean. Neither did they see The Dream, although they met Mrs. Lantry walking with two camp doctors. Bella Martin proved singularly uncommunicative and they left her with threats of vengeance, going to Molly Law's. Molly was human enough to resent their intense interest in another girl and even when they had excited her with the idea of the dance they acquired from her no information about Rosalie Burt. But when they came to the track on their way back to the Residency they found Jean lifting his speeder to the rails.

"Been here all evening?" Steve asked him.

"I've been canoeing," said Jean, pride struggling with reticence.

"I saw Mabel Klondike in some sort of a sailor costume," remarked O'Hara with a silkiness that should have put the boy on guard.

"I wasn't with her," Jean protested hotly. "You know I never asked her anywhere. To-night" he paused to give them the full effect of his surprising declaration-"I was with Miss Burt."

"How did you meet her?" gasped Steve. "Mrs. Montresor's sister took me to call," Jean said.

O'Hara sank down limply on his handcar and laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks. "You're wasthed on the engineering, me boy," he said when he could speak. "Tis in the diplomathic sarvice ye should be. Mrs. Montresor's sister!" Steve MacDonald's great laugh joined the Irishman's chuckles and their gigantic mirth followed the boy as he sent the speeder out with quick stroke.

But little Jean Feroux, speeding beyond sound of their jeering calls, had no thought of laughter. As swiftly as summer comes to the North Country love had come to the lonely life of the boy. Yesterday had been to him as twice ten-score other yesterdays, gray with dismal routine of employment that meant nothing and led nowhere; but

to-day was a day of glorious glow, for to the dark and dreary Bush had come a girl whose golden gleaming eyes and golden April laughter had banished the winter from the mood of Jean Feroux, unfolding like springtime sunshine all the hard-folded beauties he had cherished beneath the snowcrust of his youth. Last night she had come to Groundhog. To-night she had been at the prow of his canoe as he sent the birchbark upriver with sure paddle. She had asked him many questions of the land and of the life; and divining her interest he made the pictures he painted for her vivid with the old thrill that had been dead till the girl, stirred by the awe of the night of the north and swept by the throb of the boyish epic of labor in those wilds, had leaned toward him with eyes shining more brightly than the moonlight in the wake of their canoe.

"Oh, you're splendid," she cried, "you men who blaze the ways of the worldsplendid!"

Then all the old ambition, the old courage, and the old hope, intensified a hundredfold, came back to Jean Feroux. Now as he whirled the speeder down the wide path through the gloomy forest he made to himself a vow of service for the sake of the girl who was to be the one woman in his life. "I'll work," he told himself, and the pines, and the stars. "I'll work and I'll win-for her!"

The next day Jean commanded a grading gang with the zest of a captain of cavalry going into battle. Kenyon, who had, rightly or wrongly, estimated Rosalie Burt as a provincial belle with social ambition that no Bush engineer, even though he were a Quebec Feroux, would ever satisfy, showed his sympathy for Jean's infatuation by giving him unwonted praise for his work; and with the joy of a task well done added to the joy of anticipation Jean went down to Groundhog again that night. And again Rosalie Burt went with him on the river.

Fate, Gwen Lantry, and the absence of Ned Bannister gave the boy five glamorous nights of enchanted silences on the river with the girl. There came a last night of all when under a glistening sky where Northern Lights flamed and flared like towering thoughts of prayer he tried to tell her what she was to him. Once Rosalie

Burt strove to stem the tide of his speech when with the golden lights of her eyes clouded in misery and doubt she promised him his answer on the morrow.

"But the dance is to-morrow night," he protested, "and you'll go to that."

"I'll tell you then," she declared. "Answer me now," he begged. "Won't you let me work for you?" he persisted. "I'll win, win big, dear, honestly, I will." "I believe you will," said the girl, "but success is so long in coming in this work. Isn't there some other way?"

The boy puzzled a moment. "No," he said, "there is no other way. It's my work now. I've gone through too much for it to give it up. But I want it to be for you. Won't you let it be?"

"I don't know," she said. "I have to think. I'll tell you to-morrow," she repeated. And with that he had to be content. But as he went back to the Residency the remembrance of how her eyes had softened to tenderness as she bade him good-by made the way between the pines a path of light leading to the stars.

Through the days that Jean Feroux spent in work and dreams of work for Rosalie Burt, Bella Martin was rousing the camps of the North Country with the promise of a dance that should rival all other social functions Groundhog had ever aspired to. Donald Ferguson, returned to the Frederick House Residency, was dazzled by the ingenuity and pink dimity of Bella into giving active assistance. He engaged the fiddlers from the French town, ordered ice cream from Haileybury, and mineral water from Toronto, and zealously aided in the cleaning of the store, the waxing of the floor, and the negotiations for the loan of Mrs. Montresor's piano. He had help and hindrance in plenty from town and residencies, and with work, and play, and love, and laughter the great night of Groundhog rose in the zenith for some four-score boyish engineers, some half-score women, for Jean Feroux and for Rosalie Burt.

Ballantine from the Mattawishkwia, informed of the dance by an Indian from Conjuror's House, was the first of the men from the far camps to come to Groundhog. Cameron, and Veronceau, and Coleridge arrived from the west as the Abitibi contingent dropped from the Steel Train. An

hour later the train from the south, rushing in an hour ahead of schedule, brought the Matheson delegation just before the Frederick House crowd, all but Jean Feroux, threw their handcars from the track and made their way to the Widow's.

Mrs. Montresor's sister, Lily Kelly, Mabel Klondike, and Molly Law waited in armed truce in the store, while the sidewalk outside the Widow's resembled a roll-call of the Transcontinental residencies. Gwen Lantry, coming out with Rosalie Burt, called to her sister laughingly, "It's a summer resort turned inside out! Who ever saw so many men at a dance?" But Rosalie Burt's eyes went over the crowd as if seeking some one she did not find; and just then Jean Feroux came up the street with Ned Bannister.

Bella Martin, leading the crowd down the narrow walk, surveyed the result of her labor with swelling pride as she came to the door of the improvised ballroom. Under the light of six kerosene lamps the floor shone white with scattered wax. Pine boughs and flaring posters vied in concealing the bareness of the wooden walls. Blankets covered the line of trunks that served as seats. In a corner an oily-haired man ruthlessly pounded the piano of Mrs. Montresor. At his side two fiddlers sawed sharply on squeaky fiddles, calling out intermittently in nasal patois.

On the floor dancers were already moving. Mabel Klondike, waltzing with the manager of the Hudson Bay Company's store, gave Jean Feroux a glance of fiery scorn, remembering his curt refusal of her request to bring her to the dance. Lily Kelly shrilled her high-pitched laugh at the sight of sixty men filing through the low doorway and Steve MacDonald mimicked her boisterously. Mrs. Montresor's sister abducted Coleridge to a corner. The Widow, encircled by a dozen bronzed boys, was promising to dance with them all at once. Rosalie Burt, standing between Bannister and Jean Feroux, roused herself with visible effort to smile at the attentions of a score of other men.

A big fellow from the line beyond the Abitibi came through the doorway, bearing the only watermelon Groundhog had seen that summer. He pushed his way across the room to Gwen Lantry's court. "The fellows bought up all the candy in town for

She leaned toward him with eyes shining more brightly than the moonlight in the wake of their canoe. "Oh, you're splendid "-Page 728.

your sister," he told her gravely, "and so I've brought you this." And in the shout of laughter that greeted his gift the dance at Groundhog began.

The man at Mrs. Montresor's piano could play but one tune. The fiddles creaked on one key. But on the floor men who had danced in London ballrooms, men who had danced at court in St. Petersburg, men who had been taught in far-away Scotch homes that dancing is a device of the De'il, and men who had danced from childhood in the French carnivals of Lower Canada joined steps grotesque and steps graceful. Lucky was the man who won a girl for the dance, since, impartial as they might be, the few women could not distribute their dances to include all. "I was born unfortunate," mourned Ballantine as he took to whirling with a Russian nobleman whose daily work was bridge inspection at the Opazitika.

The floor was overcrowded, but the long line of watchers displeased Bella Martin. "We'll have a dance every one can be in," she cried in a pause of the breathless rounds of a Canadian waltz. "Come on, a square dance!"

"Right-O!" came the ready answer from the wallflowers and in another moment the sets had gathered. O'Hara and Kenyon alone refused Bella's invitation. "I'd rather watch," O'Hara said, nodding to the square where Gwen Lantry, and the Chief, Steve MacDonald and Molly Law, Randall and Mabel Klondike, and Jean Feroux and Rosalie Burt waited the fiddler's call to begin the old-fashioned quadrille.

"The Dream isn't as happy as you'd expect," O'Hara remarked to Kenyon, "with twenty men eager to serve her and two men ready to die for her."

"Who besides Jean?" Kenyon inquired. "I leave it to your perceptions to discover," O'Hara chuckled. 'Meantime, watch Mrs. Lantry amusing Neddie. How I wish the old Calgary crowd could see him dancing this!"

"Salut, messieurs et dames," rose the fiddler's call.

"Salute your partners!" A big engineer from the Abitibi translated the softer phrase. With the grace of a cavalier Jean Feroux went through the stately figures of the old dance with Rosalie Burt, speaking to her with low-toned earnestness, smiling

at her with wooing tenderness. Once they mistook a call and Mabel Klondike reproved them so sharply that Bannister, attracted by the incident, watched them closely. Once Rosalie Burt threw the Chief a little wide glance of understanding after she had pouted at her sister's refusal of her request to change the square dance to a two-step. His scowl seemed to rouse her pique, for in an instant seized from the advantage of Steve MacDonald's mistake in crossing Jean Feroux was guiding the girl in a rollicking gallop through the crowded room in and out between the dancers of the older measure.

"Tis young Lochinvar," said O'Hara. "Who would have thought that our little Jean could win her away from the many material charms of Neddie Bannister?"

"Bannister?" Kenyon puzzled. "I thought the Chief was to marry Mrs. Lantry."

"No, 'tis The Dream," said the Irishman. "Neddie himself told me, but I've been hoping she was young enough to be brave, though 'tis bred in the bone with her social set to kow-tow to the idols of place and power." He smiled genially at Feroux as he whirled the girl past them, but he turned back to Kenyon with whimsical sadness in his voice. "Dreams so seldom come true," he said, "that I know she can't come true for the boy. And he's the best of us all, Ken."

"Jean's a good boy," said Kenyon.

"Oh, you English!" sighed O'Hara. "You'd give a decade of your span of years to make Jean happy and you talk of him as if he were your caddy. Well, he's happy enough just now. He's forgotten Quebec's on the map of the world."

"He'll remember," said Kenyon.

"Britain, croak on!" laughed O'Hara, "but look at that while ye may. Perhaps, after all

Flushed with delight Jean had brought back Rosalie Burt to the side of the broken square where the other six waited for them, Steve MacDonald and Molly Law with amused sympathy, Mabel Klondike with distinct contempt, Randall with frank commendation of their defiance of the conventions of Groundhog society, Bannister with scowling indignation, and Gwen Lantry with reproving silence, though her eyes softened as they rested on Jean Feroux's radiant face.