l tore at his heart, the image of his life stretched lonely and drear
before him, yet he could not turn aside.

"I didn't come to see you about trapping. I came--about Virginia
Tremont."

His eyes were on Harold's face, and he saw the man start. He had not
forgotten the name. Just for an instant his face was stark pale and
devoid of expression. "Virginia!" he cried. "My God, what do you know
about her?"

But he didn't wait the answer. All at once he looked, with an annoyance
and anxiety that at first Bill could not understand, toward the door of
the cabin. The door knob slightly turned.

Bill wheeled, with a sense of vast and impending drama. Harold swore, a
single brutal oath, then laughed nervously. An Indian squaw--for all
her filth an untidiness a fair representative of her breed--pushed
through the door and came stolidly inside. She walked to the back of
the cabin and began upon some household task.

Bill's face was stern as the gray cliffs of the Selkirks when he turned
again to Harold. "Is that your woman?" he asked simply.

Harold did not reply. He had not wished this man, emissary from his old
acquaintances of his native city, to know about Sindy. He retained that
much pride, at least. But the answer to Bill's question was too
self-evident for him to attempt denial. He nodded, shrugging his
shoulders.

Bill waited an instant; and his voice when he spoke again was singularly
low and flat. "Did you marry her?"

Harold shrugged again. "One doesn't marry squaws," he replied.

Once more the silence was poignant in the wretched cabin. "I came to
find Harold Lounsbury, a gentleman," Bill went on in the same strange,
flat voice, "and I find--a squaw man."

* * * * *

Bill realized at once that this new development did not in the least
affect his own duty. His job had been to find Harold and return him to
Virginia's arms. It was not for him to settle the girl's destiny. For
all he had spent his days in the great solitudes of nature he knew
enough of life to know that women do not give their love to angels.
Rather they love their men as much for their weaknesses as for their
virtues. This smirch in Harold's life was a question for the two of
them to settle between them.

It did, however, complicate the work of regeneration. Bill had known
squaw men before, and few of them had ever regenerated. Usually they
were men that could not stand the test of existence by their own toil:
eithe