is brain worked upon
but one idea--one determination. If it was Jeanne who came in this way,
he would kill Thorpe. If it was another woman, he would give Thorpe
that night to get out of the country. He waited. He heard the
gang-man's voice frequently, once in a loud, half-mocking laugh. Twice
he heard a lower voice--a woman's. For an hour he watched. He walked
back and forth in the gloom of the spruce, and waited another hour.
Then the light went out, and he slipped back to the corner of the cabin.

After a moment the door opened, and a hooded figure came out, and
walked rapidly toward the trail that buried itself amid the spruce.
Philip ran around the cabin and followed. There was a little open
beyond the first fringe of spruce, and in this he ran up silently from
behind and overtook the one he was pursuing. As his hand fell upon her
arm the woman turned upon him with a frightened cry. Philip's hand
dropped. He took a step back.

"My God! Jeanne--it is you!"

His voice was husky, like a choking man's. For an instant Jeanne's
white, terrified face met his own. And then, without a word to him, she
fled swiftly down the trail.

Philip made no effort to follow. For two or three minutes he stood like
a man turned suddenly into hewn rock, staring with unseeing eyes into
the gloom where Jeanne had disappeared. Then he walked back to the edge
of the spruce. There he drew his revolver, and cocked it. The starlight
revealed a madness in his face as he approached Thorpe's cabin. He was
smiling, but it was such a smile as presages death; a smile as
implacable as fate itself.

XXI

As Philip approached the cabin he saw a figure stealing away through
the gloom. His first thought was that he had returned a minute too late
to wreak his vengeance upon the gang-foreman in his own home, and he
quickened his steps in pursuit. The man ahead of him was cutting direct
for the camp supply-house, which was the nightly rendezvous of those
who wished to play cards or exchange camp gossip. The supply-house,
aglow with light, was not more than two hundred yards from Thorpe's,
and Philip saw that if he dealt out the justice he contemplated he had
not a moment to lose. He began to run, so quickly that he approached
within a dozen paces of the man he was pursuing without being heard. It
was not until then that he made a discovery which stopped him. The man
ahead was not Thorpe. Suddenly, looking beyond him, he saw a second
figure pass