was a thousand or more miles away.
At this moment she was somewhere in the North Atlantic, if their ship
had left Halifax. She had never been in the north. More than that, he
knew that Gregson had never seen Miss Brokaw, and had heard of her only
through himself and the society columns of the newspapers. How could he
explain his possession of the sketch?

He drew a step or two nearer to the open door, and stopped again. If he
returned to question Gregson it would draw him perilously near to
explanations which he did not care to make, to the one secret which he
wished to guard from his friend's knowledge. After all, the picture was
only a resemblance. It could be nothing but a resemblance, even though
it was so striking and unusual that it had thrown him off his guard at
first. When he returned later and looked at it again he would no doubt
be able to see his error.

He walked on through the spruce shadows and up a narrow trail that led
to the bald knob of the ridge, feeling his way with his right hand
before him when the denseness of the forest shut out the light of the
stars and the moon, until at last he stood out strong and clear under
the glow of the skies, with the world sweeping out in black and gray
mystery around him. To the north was the Bay, reaching away like a vast
black plain. Half a mile distant two or three lights were burning over
Fort Churchill, red eyes peering up out of the deep pool of darkness;
to the south and west there swept the gray, starlit distances which lay
between him and civilization.

He leaned against a great rock, resting his elbows in a carpet of moss,
and his eyes turned into the mystery of those distances. The sea of
spruce-tops that rose out of the ragged valley at his feet whispered
softly in the night wind; from out of their depths trembled the low
hoot of an owl; over the vaster desolation beyond hovered a weird and
unbroken silence. More than once the spirit of this world had come to
him in the night and had roused him from his slumber to sit alone out
under the stars, imagining all that it might tell him if he could read
the voice of it in the whispering of the trees, if he could but
understand it as he longed to understand it, and could find in it the
peace which he knew that it all but held for him. The spirit of it had
never been nearer to him than to-night. He felt it close to him, so
near that it seemed like the warm, vibrant touch of a presence at his
side, something w