ke strong drink, like
live hot steam in his brain. In his inner soul he knew that Bill had
endured tests in which he had failed, and he hated him the worse for it.
He had sensed Bill's contempt for him, and the absolute fairness with
which the woodsman had always treated him brought no remorse. Bill had
found the mine for which he sought, to which, by the degenerate code by
which he lived, he felt he had an ancestral right.

Ever since he had gone down into that darkened treasure house he had
known in his own soul, late or soon, his future course. The gold alone
was worth the crime he planned. And as a crowning touch came the events
of the day and night just passed.

He had had no desire for Bill to return to the cabin alive. It would
have been a simple way out of his difficulties for the woodsman to fall
and die in the snow wastes of Clearwater. For him to lie so still and
impotent in the drifts would compensate for many things, and in such a
case he would never have opportunity to record the finding of his mine.
The only imperfection, in this event, was that it deprived Harold of his
personal vengeance, and magnanimously he was willing to forgo that. It
wouldn't be his pleasure to see the final agony, the last shudder of the
frame,--but yet at least he might see much remnants as would be left
when the snow had melted in spring.

Every event of the day had pointed to a successful trip, from Harold's
point of view. He had known that Bill couldn't make it through to his
Twenty-three Mile cabin after the Chinook wind had softened the snow.
The bitter night that followed would have likely claimed quickly any one
that tried to sleep, without blankets, unsheltered in the snow fields.
And when Virginia had gone out to save him and had brought back the
blind and reeling man, his first impulse had been to leap upon him, in
his helplessness, and drive his hunting knife through his heart!

It wouldn't, however, had been a wise course to pursue. He didn't want
to lose Virginia. He flattered himself that he had been cunning and
self-mastered. He had watched Virginia's tender services to the
woodsman, and once he had seen a luster in her eyes that had seemed to
shatter his reason. And he knew that the time had come to strike.

He felt no remorse. The North had stripped him of all the masks with
which civilization had disguised him, and he was simply his father's
son.

This was a land of savage and primitive passio