He had no faith in this man's professed reform, no abiding confidence in his word of honor; and it seemed to him then that the entire future of the young woman's life rested upon his deliverance of her from the toils of the gambler.

He alone, among those who might be considered as her true friends, knew the secret of her infatuation, and upon him alone, therefore, rested the burden of her release.

It was his heart that drove him into such a decision, although he conceived it then to be the reasoning of the brain.
And so she was Naida Gillis, poor old Gillis's little girl! He stopped suddenly in the road, striving to realize the thought.

He had never once dreamed of such a consummation, and it staggered him.

His thought drifted back to that pale-faced, red-haired, poorly dressed slip of a girl whom he had occasionally viewed with disapproval about the post-trader's store at Bethune, and it seemed simply an impossibility.
He recalled the unconscious, dust-covered, nameless waif he had once held on his lap beside the Bear Water.