which quickly became lugubrious and
ceased.

"I'm wishin' there was a priest," he said wistfully; then added swiftly,
"But Michael Dennin's too old a campaigner to miss the luxuries when he
hits the trail."

He was so very weak and unused to walking that when the door opened and
he passed outside, the wind nearly carried him off his feet. Edith and
Hans walked on either side of him and supported him, the while he cracked
jokes and tried to keep them cheerful, breaking off, once, long enough to
arrange the forwarding of his share of the gold to his mother in Ireland.

They climbed a slight hill and came out into an open space among the
trees. Here, circled solemnly about a barrel that stood on end in the
snow, were Negook and Hadikwan, and all the Siwashes down to the babies
and the dogs, come to see the way of the white man's law. Near by was an
open grave which Hans had burned into the frozen earth.

Dennin cast a practical eye over the preparations, noting the grave, the
barrel, the thickness of the rope, and the diameter of the limb over
which the rope was passed.

"Sure, an' I couldn't iv done better meself, Hans, if it'd been for you."

He laughed loudly at his own sally, but Hans's face was frozen into a
sullen ghastliness that nothing less than the trump of doom could have
broken. Also, Hans was feeling very sick. He had not realized the
enormousness of the task of putting a fellow-man out of the world. Edith,
on the other hand, had realized; but the realization did not make the
task any easier. She was filled with doubt as to whether she could hold
herself together long enough to finish it. She felt incessant impulses
to scream, to shriek, to collapse into the snow, to put her hands over
her eyes and turn and run blindly away, into the forest, anywhere, away.
It was only by a supreme effort of soul that she was able to keep upright
and go on and do what she had to do. And in the midst of it all she was
grateful to Dennin for the way he helped her.

"Lind me a hand," he said to Hans, with whose assistance he managed to
mount the barrel.

He bent over so that Edith could adjust the rope about his neck. Then he
stood upright while Hans drew the rope taut across the overhead branch.

"Michael Dennin, have you anything to say?" Edith asked in a clear voice
that shook in spite of her.

Dennin shuffled his feet on the barrel, looked down bashfully like a man
making his maiden speech, and cleared hi