Northern Lights

t a perilous task had been set his rescuer. It was only when the angry roar of the great rapids floated up-stream to them, increasing in volume till they could see the terror of tumbling wat

Bright as the moon was, it was not bright enough for perfect pilotage. Never in the history of white men had these rapids been ridden at night-time. As they sped down the flume of the deep, irresistible current, and were launched into the trouble of rocks and water, Jenny realized how great their peril was, and how different the track of the waters looked at night-ti

w many hours was it since they had been cast into this den of roaring waters?-at last, suddenly, over a large fall, and here smooth waters again, smooth and untroubled, and strong and deep. Then, and only then, did a word escape either; but the man had passed through torture and unavailing regret, for he realized that he had had no right to bring this girl into such a fight. It was not her friend who was in danger at Bindon. Her life had been risked without due warrant. "I didn't know, or I wouldn't have asked it," he said, in a low v

arm," she answered. "They hit you

his knife ripped up the seam of his sleeve. Her face was alive with the joy of conflict and elated with triumph. Her eyes were shining. She ba

as a man could do it

any doctor,"

king of your

say there ain't a man that could have done it and come through like yo

sharply, and picked up her padd

. "I didn't mean any harm by what I said. Take this if

was doing before I started," she said. "Put it

it means going all night and all morning

nd which lay Bindon. And now it seemed to the girl as though this race to save a life, or many lives, was the one thing in existence. To-morrow was to-day, and the white petticoat

anks, and now and then a horseman watched them from the shore, but they could not pause. Bindon-Bindon-Bindon-the Snowd

their canoe into the bank beyond which were the smokestacks and chimneys of the mine. Bindon was peac

. The man drew ahead of her, for she had paddled for fifteen hours, practically with

entered, shouting the name of his f

n of the mine where Dingley had been told the machine was plac

e grew faint and leaned against a tree, s

done it; it was a girl. Here she is-J

nderstanding now. Jake-what Jake? She l

my Jake!" s

s caught her

It's you that

thunder, and a cloud of dust and

the girl's waist. "That's what I misse

here, and not at Sel

me-to stop th

wedding to-day?" she

o come down here and be married. I suppose he got drunk, or had an accident, and d

this'll be the end of it. You got them miners soli

he same," the mine-boss said, as

as thinking of a white petticoat i

e married to-day,"

rrow," said

is to-morrow," she answered. "You can wai

APP

cal

was a white man. I've been brought up as a wh

ment, then stood still, facing her mother-a dark-faced, pock-marked woman, with hea

too, I have killed when they came to steal our horses and crept in on our lodges in the night-the Crees! I am a Blackfoot. You are the d

n, then she sat down suddenly on a great couch covered with soft deer-skins and buffalo robes. There was deep in her the habit of obedience to this sombre but striking woman. She had been ruled firmly, almost oppressively, and she had not yet revolt

y years, but had been swallowed at last by the great wave of civilization streaming westward and northward, wiping out the game and the Indian, and overwhelming the rough, fighting, hunting, pioneer life. Joel Renton had made money, by good luck chiefly, having held land here and there which he had got for nothing, and had then almost forgotten about it, and, when reminded of it, still held on to it with that defiant stubbornness which often possesses improvident and careless natures. He had never had any real business instinct, and to swagger a little over the land he held and to treat offers of purchase with contempt was the loud assertion of a capacity he did not possess.

he West; and her pride in him had given a glow to her cheek and a spring to her step which drew every eye. In the chief street of Portage la Dr?me men would stop their trafficking and women nudge one another when she passed, and wherever she went she stirred interest, excited admiration, or aroused prejudice-but the prejudice did not matter so long as her father, Joel Renton, lived. Whatever his faults, and they were many-sometimes he drank too much, and swore a great deal, and bullied and stormed-she blinked at them all, for he was of the conquering race, a white man who had slept in white sheets and eaten off white tablecloths, and used a knife and fork, sinc

hters twain of pure white blood got from behind the bar of a saloon in Winnipeg, she had thrown open her window at night, with the frost below zero, and stood in her thin nightdress, craving the death which she hoped the cold would give her soon. It had not availed, however, and once again she had ridden out in a blizzard to die, but had come upon a man lost in the snow,

heart which had driven her into the plains that other tim

on her ears with a cold, deadly smother. There came a chill upon her which stilled the wild pul

of her half-breed child, almost white herself and with the feelings and ways of the whites, to turn always to her father, as though to a superior guide, to a higher influence and authority. Was not she herself the descendant of Blackfoot and Piegan chiefs through generations of rulers and warriors? Was there not Piegan and Blackfoot blood in the girl's veins? Must only the white man's blood be reckoned when they made up their daily ac

nd all day there is singing. Somewhere out beyond the Muskwat the feasts go on, and the old men build the great fires, and tell tales, and call the wind out of the north, and make the thunder speak; and the young men ride to the hunt or go out to battle, and build lodges for the daughters of the tribe; and each man has his woman, and each woman has in her breast the honor of the tribe, and the little ones fill the lodge with laughter. Like a pocket of deerskin is every house, warm and small and

a sudden patience which stilled the agitation in her breast and gave a little touch of rigidity to her figure. Her eyes withdrew from the wild storm without and

, and then she spoke almost as

you to go on with him, but you would not go. I was young, but I saw, and I said that in all things I would go with him. I did not know that it would be hard, but at school, at the very first, I began to u

y look came into her eyes, her finger

things-only from my father, and he did so much in an Indian way. So I was sick at heart, and sometimes I wanted to die; and once-But there was Manette, and she would laugh and sing, and we would play together, and I would speak French and she would speak English, and I learned from her to forget the Indian ways. What were they to me? I had loved them when I was of them, but I came on to a better life. The Indian life is to the white life as the

from the look fixed on her. Once or twice she made as if she wou

housand live where one lived before. It is peace you want, my mother, peace and solitude, in which the soul goes to sleep. Your days of hope are over, and you want to drowse by the fire. I want to see the white man's cities grow, and the armies coming over the hill with the ploughs and the reapers and the mowers, and the wheels and the belts and engines of the great factories, and the white woman's life spreading ev

ockings on an ankle as shapely as she had ever seen among all the white women she knew. She drew herse

me were too blind, too prejudiced, to see all that she really was, and admiring white men could do little, for Pauline would have nothing to do with them till the women met her absolutely as an equal; and from the other half-breeds, who intermarried with one another and were content to take a lower place than the pure whites, she held aloof, save when any of th

len stubbornness. "I will go back beyond the Warais. My

r?" she asked. "I did not come into the world of my own will. If I had I would have come all

y man, your father, when I was seventeen. You can marry. There a

and a voice asking admittance. An instant later, a huge, bearded, broad-shouldered man stepped inside, shaking himself free of

d at once the reason for the visit, though no warning thought crossed the mind of the girl, who placed a chair for their visitor with a heartiness which was real-was not this the white man she had saved from deat

d? It wasn't safe. It doesn't seem po

hat I was lost out back"-he jerked a thumb over his shoulder-"and you picked me up and brought me in; and what was I to do but come out on the anniversary and say thank you? I'd fixed up all year to

ned silent, placing a little bottle of cordial before their visitor, w

great mustache and beard, like some vast animal washing its face with its paw. Smiling, and yet not at ease, he looked at the

e man bending to a half-breed girl. He was not conscious of the condescension and majesty of his demeanor, but it was there, and his untutored words and ways must make it all too apparent to the girl. The revelation of the moment made her at once triumphant and humiliated. This white man had come to make love to her, that was apparent; but that he,

there will not be many anniversaries." Laughing,

the only thing to do is not to keep comin

mstances they could not control, would each work out her own destiny after her own nature, since John Alloway had come a-wooing. She would go back on the Warais, and Pauline would remain at the Portage, a white woman with her white man. She would go back to the smoky fires in the huddled lodges;

nd moved heavily from the room, with a parting look of encourage

ave the room, saw the look she gave Alloway. When the d

you?" she ask

ously. "Why, fifty, about,"

ersaries in blizzards, when they're few at the b

de up my mind I would. You saved my life, that's dead sure; and I'd be down among the moles if it wasn't for you and that Piegan pony of yours. Piegan ponies are wonders in a

gh the tornado and over the blind prairie like a bird reaching for the hills. It was as easy to you as picking out a maverick in a bunch of steers to me. But

ing on his face, yet not seeing him; for it all came back on her, th

" He paused and chuckled to himself, thinking he had been witty, and continued: "And I was that court, and my judgment was that the debt of that life you saved had to be paid to you wi

sked, putting the bottle of cordial away,

vided the honors," he answe

et any pay, with or with

o do with it? I'm stony broke. I owe a hundred dollars, and I wouldn't be owing it if you hadn't saved my life. When you saved it I was five hundred to the good, and I'd have left that much behind me. Now I'm on the rocks, because you insisted on saving my l

risk yourself, not as a rule, can you?"

You took on a bit of risk with

table and drawing faces on a piece of paper before

" he rejoined. "If

," she in

ou're done for, it's the same at ni

d. "You leave so much more that you

o. I never th

to you. You've been married,

himself. "I got one girl-she's East w

but at the face of a man on the paper before her-a young man with abundant hair, a strong chin, and big, eloquent eyes; and al

gh there was plenty of fuss because they let you do it, and let you stay there, being half-Indian. You never heard what was going on outside, I s'pose. It didn't matter, for you won out. Blamed foolishness, trying to draw the line between red and white that way. Of course, it's the women always, always the women, striking out for all-white or nothing. Down there

ulien, Julien and Manette; and there came into her eyes the youth and light and gayety of the days when Jul

tly going to throw the lasso of his affection and take her home with him, y

Alloway pays his debts. When the anniversary comes round I'll put things right, I sez to myself. She saved my life, and she shall have the rest o

a hundred times intensified, a look that belonged to the flood and flow of generations of Indian life, yet controll

The storm had suddenly ceased, and a glimmer of suns

oice, turning to him at last. "Well, you have paid it. You have given me a book

," he answered, dazedly. "I

ssary," she replied, suggestive

ting it. I want to make you my wife. I got some position, a

ould not have taken it all as a matter of course. But my father was a white man, and I am a white man's daughter, and I would rather marry an Indian, who would think me the best thing there was in the light of the sun, than marry you. Had I been pure white

nd gloves, and handed them to him. He

ood to you and proud of you, and I'd love you better than anything

said those last words

y the

ave been too late in any case," she a

d the doo

humbly. "I understand better n

," she answered, g

ouldn't ever be," he said. "You're-you

out into th

losed; then, with a wild gesture of misery and despair, she threw herself upon the couch in a passionate outbu

the true understanding of the problem which Pauline represented got into her heart and drove the sullen selfishness from her face and eyes and mind. She came over heavily and, sinking upon her knees, swept an arm around the g

o John Alloway

e of the girl's hands. "You think because he w

right, li

rd before-at least, not since she was a little child and swung in a deerskin hammock in a tamarac-tree by Renton's Lodge, where the chiefs met

use my man is gone, and the life is not my life, and I am only an Indian woman from the Warais, and my heart goes out there always now. But some great Medicine has been poured into my heart. As I stood at the door and saw you lying there, I called to the Sun. 'O great Spirit,' I said, 'help me to understand, for this girl is bone of my bone and flesh of my

erstanding of the words came to her, she panted with excitement, her breast heaved, and the blood flushed her face. When the slow voice ceased, and the room became still, she la

e Warais, had she called her mother by her Indian name, which her father had humorously taught her to do in those far-off happy days by

d, old times," she added, softly. "Ah, it

ly. "I am not white, and there is a different way of thinking; bu

in which the air bit like steel and braced the heart like wine. Then, at last, before it was nine o'cloc

aw no further than this day, and all that it had brought; yet she was as one that has crossed a direful flood and finds herself on a strange shore in an unknown country, with the twilight abo

ning, leaning toward the window, through which the moonlight streamed. Sh

air. But as she stood intently listening, the red glow from the fire behind her, again came the cry-"Pauline!"-not far away. Her he

ll night air came the tre

sound of the voice. The same intuitive sense which had made her call out in French, without thought or reason, had revealed to her who it was t

ut that she was coming. Presently she stood above the declivity, and peered over. Almost immediately below her, a few feet down, was a man lying in the snow. He had strayed from the obliterated road, and had fallen down the crevasse, twisting his fo

D, FEEBLY, AND FA

t was as her heart had said-it was Julien, Manette's brother

e was speeding to the house, and, rousing her mother and two of the stab

alight with all that had brought him there. And once again the Indian mother with a sure instinct knew why he had come, and saw

ing-he had a trick of laughing lightly; "but I'

a great thing, but to please others is better; and so you will s

table," he said-"never so happy.

o place near his elbow one of the scraps of paper on which Pauline had drawn his face, with that of Manette. I

e?" Pauline asked him, as his eye

eigneury my father left me, and I'm going to live in it. It will be a fine place, when I've done with it, comfortable and big, with old oak timbers and walls, and deep fireplaces, and carvings

ll live with you

t. You see, Manette is to be married.

nette's courtship, and added that the

gayly; "and so she's not going to live with me at the Seigneury, you see. No, there i

efore the eyelids drooped over them and she turned her head t

sked, puzzled, yet

n Manette goes into her new house-in

hurriedly and said: "You must sleep n

it's quiet like this, and the stars shine," he answered. "I'm

goes with her man to the white man's home far away. O great Spirit, when I return to the lodges of my people, be kind to me, for I shall be lonely; I shall not have my c

AND THE

on a tournament for her heart and hand; but she was not for them. All her fine faculties of tact and fairness, of harmless strategy, and her gifts of wit and unexpected humor were needed to keep her cavaliers constant and hopeful to the last; but she never faltered, and she did not fail. The faces of old men brightened when they saw her, and one or two ancient figures who, for years, had been seldom seen at social functions now came when they knew she was to be present. There were, of course, a few women who said she would coquette

Kingdom of Two. I don't know how she did it. I was like a tap, and poured myself out; and when it was all over I thought she was the best talker I'd ever heard. But yet she'd done nothing except look at me and listen, and put in a question here and there, that was like a baby ask

s charms had inspired him to write. His view of her was shared by most men who knew the world, and especially by the elderly men who had a real knowledge of human nature, among whom was a certain important member of the United States executive called John Appleton. When the end of all things at Washington came for Sally, these two men united to bear her up, that her feet should not stumble upon the stony path of the hard

he grip of a lever which can lift the eternal hills with the right pressure. Leave her alone-leav

hat was blurred and a little broken, urging her against the course toward which she was set; but it had not availed; and, realizing that he had come upon a powerful will underneath the sunny and so human surface, he had ceased to protest, to

r which they can command, and the power which you have. And there are others. Your people have told you they will turn you off; the world will say things-will rend you. There is nothing so popular for the moment as the fall of a favorite. But that's nothing-it's nothing at all compared with the danger to yourself. I didn't sleep last night thinking of it. Yet I'm glad you wrote me; it gave me time to t

nterrupted, in a far-away voice

e. The thing has fastened on him; he will never give it up. And penniless, too-his father has cast him off. My

rue, and you think you are right. But, but"-her eyes took on a deep, steady, far-away look-"but I will save him; and we shall not be pennile

that he might help her, be with her the next day, when she was to take a

be mentioned in his presence. Jim had had twenty thousand dollars left him by his mother, and a small income of three hundred dollars from an investment which had been made for him when a little boy. And this had carried him on; for, drunken as he was, he ha

America. Even yet he had a remarkable face: long, delicate, with dark-brown eyes, as fair a forehead as m

He knew his Horace and Anacreon and Heine and Lamartine and Dante in the originals, and a hundred others; he was a speaker of power and grace; and he had a clear, strong head for business. He was also a lawyer, and was junior attorney to his father's great business. It was because he had the real business gift, not because he had a brilliant and scholarly mind, that his father had taken him into his concerns, and was the more unforgiving when

terward go off on a spree, in which he quoted Sappho and Horace in taverns, and sang bacchanalian songs with a voice meant for the stage-a heritage from an ancestor who had sung upon the English stage a hundred years before. Even in his cups, even after his darling vice had submerged him, Jim Templeton was a man marked out from his fellows, distinguished and very handsome. Society, however, had ceased to recognize him for a long time, and he did not seek it. For

te corner of her nature where none other had reached; and in all her gay life, when men had told their tale of admiration in their own way, her mind had gone back to Jim, and what he had said under the magnolia-trees; and his voice had drowned all others. She was not blind to what he had become, but a deep belief possessed her that she,

of the new epoch. A few days more, and Jim came to her and said that she alone could save him; and she meant him to say it, had led him to the saying, for the same conviction was burned deep in her own soul. She knew the awful risk she was taking, t

s neither of them forgot in the years that the locust ate thereafter. And, standing at the altar, Jim's eyes were still wet, with new resolves in his heart and a being at his side meant for the best man in the world. As he knelt beside her, awaiting the benediction, a sudden sense of the enormity o

their journey to northern Canada, where Sally intended they should work out their problem and make their home, far and free from all old associations, a curious t

ve married the best man in the country. You could rule a kingdom; you have

on," she answ

ood there, fearless and challenging before hi

n he was a man," h

he woman you once l

turned his

have said to wha

. Her dagger had gone home, bu

question-she was a sai

naturally; he inherited his weakness. From your grandfather,

have you done it? What's between him and me can't be helped; we

. I see my way ahead. I will not desert him. No one cares what happens

ve almost nothing, and I will not change

ly Jim-

ogether at her side in the tenseness of her fee

th a bang. "It's a crime-oh, it's a crime, to risk your li

and power and ruling-you say what others have said to me. Which is the greater thing, to get what pleases one, or to work for something which is more to one than all else in the worl

he old man, slowly, cynical

d I will work for it to fulfil ourselves. For me-ah, if I can save him-and I mean to do so!-do you think that I would not then have my heaven on earth? You want money-money-money, power, and to rule; and

nt, too, in another way. If you keep Jim sober for four years from the day of your marriage, on the last day of that four years I'll put in your hands for you and him, or for your child-if you have one-five millions of dollars. I am a man

as a strange, soft light in

iss me?" she said, loo

up and kissed him on the cheek. "Good-bye," she s

touched the cheek she had kissed. Suddenly a change passed over his face. He dropped in a chair, and his fist s

ehind it except Jim's father. He had too much at stake not to have his telescope up