After one scornful glance which swept over and ignored Morse, the girl
looked angrily at the man barring her way. Slowly the blood burned
into her cheeks. For there was that in the trader's smoldering eyes
that would have insulted any modest maiden.

"You Jessie McRae?" he demanded, struck of a sudden with an idea.

"Yes."

"You smashed my whiskey-barrels?"

"My father has told you. If he says so, isn't that enough?"

He slapped an immense hand on his thigh, hugely diverted. "You damn
li'l' high-steppin' filly! Why? What in hell 'd I ever do to you?"

Angus McRae strode forward, eyes blazing. He had married a Cree woman,
had paid for her to her father seven ponies, a yard of tobacco, and a
bottle of whiskey. His own two-fisted sons were métis. The Indian in
them showed more plainly than the Celt. Their father accepted the fact
without resentment. But there was in his heart a queer feeling about
the little lass he had adopted. Her light, springing step, the lift of
the throat and the fearlessness of the eye, the instinct in her for
cleanliness of mind and body, carried him back forty years to the land
of heather, to a memory of the laird's daughter whom he had worshiped
with the hopeless adoration of a red-headed gillie. It had been the
one romance of his life, and somehow it had reincarnated itself in
his love for the half-breed girl. To him it seemed a contradiction of
nature that Jessie should be related to the flat-footed squaws who