hair, and seemed to enhance the beauty of her charmingly sun-browned
skin, that added so much to the whiteness of her even teeth, and to the
brilliancy of her soft brown eyes. In a dreamy way she was looking far
out through the window and away off toward the distant hills. She,
too, set me wondering; was she thinking of Son-in-law?

At that moment, however, the pig gave another impatient grunt which
startled Athabasca and caused her to look directly at me. I blushed
scarlet, then; so did she--but, of course, only out of sympathy.

"Yes, we'll send her to that finishing school in Toronto," her mother
mused, while Free Trader Spear scratched his head once more, and three
house flies lazily sat on the sugar bowl and hummed a vulgar tune.

After dinner Mr. Spear invited me into the trading room to see some of
the furs he had secured. Among them were four silver fox skins as well
as the black one he had bought from Oo-koo-hoo. They were indeed fine
skins.

It was now time for me to take my departure, so I returned to the
living room, but found no one there. Presently, however, Mrs. Spear
entered, and though she sat down opposite me, she never once looked my
way. She seemed agitated about something. Clasping her fingers
together, she twirled her thumbs about one another, then she twirled
them back the other way; later she took to tapping her moccasined toe
upon the bare floor, I wondered what was coming. I couldn't make it
out. For all the while she was looking at a certain crack in the
floor. Once more she renewed the twirling action of her thumbs, and
even increased the action of her toe upon the floor.