noon
`` Take my coat for your head , Ma'amselle , '' when she rested among the thwarts , -- `` Let me , Ma'amselle , '' when she would do some little task . Thus they served her from the old desire that sight of her face had ever stirred in the breasts of men , she who had never played at the game of love , nor knew its simplest trick . Southward , presently , up the rivers hurrying to the great bay at the north , and at last out upon the broad waters of Winnipeg , and never for an hour had McElroy 's wandering soul come back to his suffering body . Day by day Maren tended him , feeding him as one feeds a helpless babe , shielding him from the sun by her own shadow when the branches gathered at morn withered ere noon , wetting the fair head with its waving sunburnt hair with water dipped from overside , and praying constantly for his life . As they neared the southern end , where Winnipeg narrows like the neck of a bottle , his tongue loosened from its silence and he began to babble and talk in broken sentences , and it was all about De Courtenay and a remorse that ate the troubled soul . `` I owe you apologies , M'sieu , -- 't is a sorry plight and I alone am to blame . And yet I have a score , -- gladly would I take my will of you for that one fault , -- another time , -- another place .