d, when he had got his
breath. "We've been mournin' you for dead--for months."

"Drowned--not a bit of it," Virginia answered gayly. "And don't mourn
any more."

The trapper said he wouldn't and hastened off with his prisoner,
delighted indeed to be the first to pass the good word of their
deliverance through Bradleyburg. Bill was well known and liked through
all that portion of the North, and his supposed death had been a real
blow to the townspeople.

Bill felt wholly able to follow the broad snowshoe track the half-mile
farther into town. The footsteps of the men had grown faint and died
away,--and Virginia and he were left together on the hill.

They had nothing to say at first. They simply watched the slow
encroachment of the twilight. Lights sprang up one and one over the
town. Bill bent, and the girl raised her lips to his.

"We might as well go on," he said. "You're cold--and tired."

"Yes. I can't believe--I'm saying good-by to the spruce."

"And you're not, Virginia!" The man's voice was vibrant and joyful.
"We'll have to come back often, to oversee the running of the
mine--half of every year at least--and we can stay at the old cabin
just the same. The woods are beautiful in summer."

"They're beautiful now."

And they were. She told the truth. For all their savagery, their
fearful strength, their beauty could not be denied.

They saw the church spire, tall and ghostly in the twilight, and Bill's
strong arms pressed the girl close. She understood and smiled happily.
"Of course, Bill," she told him. "There is no need to wait. In a few
days I'll be strong enough to stand beside you--at the altar."

So it was decided. They would be married in the quaint, old town of
Bradleyburg, in the shadow of the spruce.

They would return, these two. The North had claimed them--but had not
mastered them--and they would come back to see again the caribou
feeding in the forest, the whirling snows, and the spruce trees lifting
their tall heads to the winter stars. They would know the old
exultation, the joy of conflict; but no blustering storm or wilderness
voice could appall them now. In the security and harbor of their love,
no wind was keen enough to chill them, no darkness appall their spirits.

The Northern Lights were beginning their mysterious display in the
twilight sky. Far away a coyote howled disconsolately,--a cry that
was the voice of the North itself. And the two kissed once mo