He shouted out a song back in the timber as he cut an armful of dry birch, and he returned to Jean and the girl laughing, the wood piled to his chin and the axe under his arm.

Neither showed that they had heard him.

The meal was eaten in a chilly silence that filled him with deepest foreboding.

Josephine seemed at ease.

She talked with him when he spoke to her, but there seemed now to be a mysterious restraint in every word that she uttered.
She excused herself before Jean and he were through, and went to her tent.