On this day, the forenoon of the sixth since the agent had departed into
the north, the end of the tense period of waiting was expected. Porcupine
City had almost ceased to carry on the daily monotony of business. A
score were lounging about the recorder's office. Women looked forth at
frequent intervals through the open doors of the "city's" cabins, or
gathered in two and threes to discuss this biggest sporting event ever
known in the history of the town. Not a minute but scores of anxious eyes
were turned searchingly up the river, down which the returning agent's
canoe would first appear. With the dawn of this day O'Grady had refused
to drink. He was stripped to the waist. His laugh was louder. Hatred as
well as triumph glittered in his eyes, for to-day Jan Larose looked him
coolly and squarely in the face, and nodded whenever he passed. It was
almost noon when Jan spoke a few low words to his watchful Indian and
walked to the top of the cedar-capped ridge that sheltered Porcupine City
from the north winds.
From this ridge he could look straight into the north--the north where he
was born. Only the Cree knew that for five nights he had slept, or sat
awake, on the top of this ridge, with his face turned toward the polar
star, and his heart breaking with loneliness and grief. Up there, far
beyond where the green-topped forests and the sky seemed to meet, he
could see a little cabin nestling under the stars--and Marie.
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