St. Jean Bateese, Nahnya, and Ralph sat by the fire. The flames threw strong, changeable lights up into the three unlike faces; the first ashy brown, the second ruddy brown, and the third ruddy white. The fire held each pair of eyes steadily; it was too disconcerting to look at each other. Nahnya, in the middle, sat on her heels, with her head a little lowered, and her hands clasped loosely in her lap. Ralph was reminded with a little pain at his heart of a picture of Mary Magdalen that he had seen. Throughout the telling of her long story she scarcely ever changed her position.

There was a long silence before anybody spoke. When it became oppressive, St. Jean started to tell the story of the making of the world, but Nahnya silenced him.

"St. Jean," she said, "I have been thinking much what to do. Now I know. Often the doctor was angry against me because I did not tell him all about us. Now I will tell him. I think he is a good man. I think he is not so greedy for gold as other white men. I think when I tell him all he will go away and forget what he has seen."

It sounded like a death warrant to Ralph. "Nahnya——!" he began.

"Wait till I have told you," she said.

She was silent for a space, looking down at her hands, and searching it would seem for the right words to begin. She told her story in a low-pitched, toneless voice that, concealing all, suggested all. When in certain parts of the story her voice threatened to shake, she paused until she could control it. Nahnya had no fine English phrases; therein lay the power of her tale; its bare crudeness went deeper than pathos.

"When I was a little girl," she began, "I go to the mission school at Caribou Lake. The nuns' school. I am there four winters. They teach me to speak English and French; to read and write and number; to sew and cook and keep house like white people. I am the smartest girl in the school, they say. I like to learn in books; the other children hate books. When visitors come the nuns send me to say my lessons in the parlour. I not like the other girls. They stupid and foolish, I think. They not like me either. I different from them.

"At Caribou Lake are plenty white people. I like them. I like how white people live with nice things and nice ways. I like to sit in a chair to my meals, and have a white cloth on the table, and china dishes. All the time I think of the white people and their own country outside. I am crazy to go there and see all that is to be seen.

"There was a boy at that school two years more older than me. He is half-white like me. He does not like books, but I look at him and I know he feels the same like me inside. I would like to be friends with him. But the nuns do not let the boys and the girls speak together. But I look at him and he look at me, and at night when all are asleep I go out of the dormitory as soft as a lynx and he is wait for me in the vegetable garden. We talk together. He is like my brother. He tell me he is going to run away from that school and go outside. I feel bad. I want to go, too.

"When I come back in the house, a nun wake up and catch me. They make awful trouble. They say I bad girl. They lock me up and give me only bread and water. I am mad because they call me bad and look sour at me. Because I think before that they did love me. I know I am not bad, but I will not say anything. They say I am hardened. I am not hard; I am soft. All the time when I am alone I cry. But I will not let them see me cry.

"Long time I am locked up. It is near spring when I am let out. The boy is gone from the school. I am changed. I hate that school now. I want to run away. I act very good now, so I get a chance to run away. The nuns say I am reformed, and they smile again. They not know what is inside me. By and by they begin to let me go out by myself; because I am one of the biggest girls they send me to the store for tea and sugar.

"There is a white man in the French outfit store and he is kind to me. He give me things for myself out of the store, and I think he is a good man. I tell him I want to go outside so bad, and he say he will take me when he goes in the summer. I am so glad I near crazy. I not think any bad, because he is an old man with gray hair, and he say he will take me to see his daughters that he got outside. Me, I am not yet sixteen years old.

"So when the ice go out of the lake and they say the first York boat will leave Grier's Point soon as it is light next morning, he tell me, and in the night I get out of my bed. There is a nun sleeping beside the door, but I crawl under all the beds like a weasel, and I get out. All the way I run to Grier's Point. It is five miles. Soon it is day, and they push off the boat. I am so excite', I am weh-ti-go, crazy. But I am still.

"Soon I find I make a mistake. That white man is no good. He begin to act bad to me, and I am scare. There are many people going on the York boat, and with so many I am safe. I stay close by the English schoolmaster's wife, and mind her baby, and he cannot get me. He is mad. We are on the York boat five days. When we get to the Landing, when he is drinking in the hotel, I run away and hide in the woods.

"I walk to Prince George by myself. It is a hundred miles, they say. I beg a little food from the stopping-houses. I sleep in the deep woods, because I am afraid of men. When I come to the town I am wood with all I see. So much noise and moving; so many people I don't know what to do. I feel bad because there is not any place for me. And all the men look at me the same as that old white man on the York boat. Always I am hiding from them. I think there is something the matter with me. Maybe I am bad like the nuns say, and I not know it.

"I walk and walk in the streets. I am much hungry. By and by I get a job in a laundry. There are other red girls working there, and I think I am safe. They will tell me what to do. But they act bad to me because the boss talk and laugh to me, and only curse them. The boss is like the other men, and soon I have to go without my pay.

"I get another job soon because I am strong. I get many jobs. I cannot count them. Always some white man he will not let me be, and I have to go. It is near three years that I am working in Prince George. There is no use telling it, because it is always the same. By and by I am really hard inside like the nuns say. I do not care any more. I say to myself what is the use of a life like this. It makes a girl no friends. I am only a hunted beast. And I say I will not run any more, but take what comes. It cannot be worse. But always I have to run when the time comes. It is something inside me that makes me run.

"At last there was a man who was worse than any of the others. He followed me from place to place, and spoke bad against me, so that always I lost my job. He thought if he could starve me out I would go to him. I would sooner have jumped in the river. By and by I couldn't get any jobs in Prince George, and I go away.

"I am much sick of white men and white man's country. I think there is a curse on me that turns them into devils when they look at me. Often I see they do not act so bad to their own women as to me. So I think I go back to my mot'er's people. Maybe there is a place for me there. Maybe I am most red myself.

"So I make a long, long journey. I come to my mot'er's people at last. It is not good. There is nobody glad to see me. They are poor and sick and bad. They not like me because I am scold them because they are so dirty and lazy and foolish. They live beside a company post on the big river. When I was a little girl it was far off, and we never see a white man but the trader, bu............