d and smothered the last echo of the rifle report
and the grizzly's roar. There was no movement, seemingly no life,--only
the drifts and the winter forest and the futile sun, shining down
between the snow-laden trees.

Yet he knew vaguely what had occurred. The bullet had gone true. It
had pierced the animal's neck, breaking the vertebrae of the spinal
column, and life had gone out of him as a flame goes out in the wind.
But it had come too late to destroy the full force of the charge. Bill
had been struck with some portion of the bear's body as he fell and had
been hurled like a lifeless doll into the drifts. Virginia, too, had
received some echo of that shock, probably from Bill's body as he
shattered down. Now all three lay half-hidden in the snow. Which of
them lived and which were dead Harold dared not guess.

But he had no time to go forward and investigate before Bill had sprung
to his feet. He had received only a glancing blow; the drifts into
which he had fallen were soft as pillows. In reality he had never even
lost consciousness. Still subject to the one thought that guided and
shaped his actions throughout the adventure, he crawled over to
Virginia's side.

No living man had ever seen his face as white as it was now. His eyes
were wide with the image of horror; he didn't know what wounds the dying
bear might have inflicted on the girl. There was no rend in her white
flesh, however; and his eye kindled and his face blazed when he saw that
she yet lived.

He didn't waste even a small part of his energies by futile pleadings
for her to waken. He seized her shoulders and shook her gently.

Instantly her eyes opened. Her full consciousness returned to her with
a rush. She was not scratched, not even shocked by the fall, and she
reached up for Bill's hands. And instantly, with a laugh on her lips,
she sprang to her feet.

"You killed him?" she asked.

It was the first breath she had wasted, and no man might hold it against
her. She had only to look at the huge gray form in the drifts to know
her answer. Bill, because he was a woodsman first, last, and always,
slipped additional shells into Harold's rifle; then walked over to the
bear. He gazed down at its filming eyes.

"Bear's all dead," he answered cheerfully. And Virginia's heart raced
and thrilled, and a delicious exaltation swept through her, when she
glanced down at this woodsman's hands. Big and strong and brown, there
was not