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Newspaper Page Text
THESUPPLANTER By H. M. Egbert. Marie Renfrew had thought she was a boy until she was nine years old. Then she-learned the truth about her father's obsession. Ten years before Andrew Renfrew, tired of the struggle for life in the cities of eastern Canada, had taken his wife and household goods and moved to the north of Saskatchewan. There he had become a trapper. They lived entirely alone in the wilderness. Their little sod cabin held a good deal of happiness, none the less. Both were satisfied, the woman because she loved her husband; the man because some primitive strain in him came out and answered to the call of the far North. Besides, there was Marie, their only child. Then Maggie Renfrew closed her eyes forever upon the earthly scene, leaving the desolate man alone with the child. And because he had al ways longed for a son, he brought her up as a boy. Her only companions were the In dians who came, rarely enough, to the little place to offer furs, for An drew had started a small trading post, now that he was getting too weak to trap. Once in a great while, too, some officer of the police would off-saddle at the little cabin for a day or so and bring news of the outside world. "You ought to send that girl south to school," said Robert MacFarlane the second time he came in, looking at Marie, who, now sixteen, still dressed in boy's furs and "wore her short-cropped, flaxen hair about her ears. Old Andrew thumped his fist upon the table. "I've brought her up as a boy," he said. "She's been a son to me. That's enough. I'm not open to argument." MacFarlane thought it a shame. He began to pass that way more of ten. Each time it was clearer that Andrew could not live very long. He had meant to broach the subject again, but when he came for the fourth time, Marie now being nearly eighteen, to his surprise it was the old trapper who brought up the mat ter. "I haven't long to live, Robert," he said. "I've been thinking over what vou said to me, and I guess you're right, Bob. But she don't need no schooling. Books she's" had a-plenty. I guess she could hold her own with Fugitives Saw Him Five Miles Away any of them so far as schooling's con cerned. But what'll come to her af ter I'm gone?" "You ought to take her south," said MacFarlane. "She wouldn't want to go south," answered the old man. "It may be I made a mistake in bringing her up in the wilds. But it's become nature . now, and it's her life. Bob, I want to get her married to a good man. You're onlv forty Bob. You never married. What would you think of Marie for a. wife?" mfttrtir mAirfanin . acuo. ;. mAlkMtm