obbing break of another voice, and stepping out into the
moonlight he stood face to face with Pierre Couchee.

It was Pierre who spoke first.

"I am sorry, M'sieur," he whispered, hoarsely. "I know that it has
broken your heart. And mine, too, is crushed."

Something in the half-breed's face, in the choking utterance of his
voice, struck Philip as new and strange. He had seen the eyes of dying
animals filled with the wild pain that glowed in Pierre's, and suddenly
he reached out and gripped the other's hand, and they stood staring
into each other's face. In that look, the cold grip of their hands, the
strife in their eyes, the bare truth revealed itself.

"And you, too--you love her, Pierre," said Philip.

"Yes, I love her, M'sieur," replied Pierre, softly. "I love her, not as
a brother, but as a man whose heart is broken."

"Now--I understand," said Philip.

He dropped Pierre's hand, and his voice was cold and lifeless.

"I received a note--from her, asking me to leave Fort o' God in the
morning," he went on, looking from Pierre out beyond the rock into the
white barren. "I will go to-night."

"It is best," said Pierre.

"I have left nothing in Fort o' God, so there is no need of even
returning to my room," continued Philip. "Jeanne will understand, but
you must tell her father that a messenger came suddenly from Blind
Indian Lake, and that I thought it best to leave without awakening him.
Will you guide me for a part of the distance, Pierre?"

"I will go with you the whole way, M'sieur. It is only twenty miles,
ten by canoe, ten by land."

They said no more, but both went to the canoe, and were quickly lost in
the gloom into which the other canoe had disappeared a few minutes
ahead of them. They saw nothing of this canoe, and when they came to
the Churchill Pierre headed the birch-bark down-stream. For two hours
not a word passed between them. At the end of that time the half-breed
turned in to shore.

"We take the trail here, M'sieur," he explained.

He went on ahead, walking swiftly, and now and then when Philip caught
a glimpse of his face he saw in it a despair as great as his own. The
trail led along the backbone of a huge ridge, and then twisted down
into a broad plain; and across this they traveled, one after the other,
two moving, silent shadows in a desolation that seemed without end.
Beyond the plain there rose another ridge, and half an hour after they
had struck the top of it Pierre halted