and spume. The waves ranged high above her
taffrail, curling horribly, but one did not want to look at them. The
one man on deck had a line about him, and he looked ahead, watching the
vessel screwing round with hove-up bows as she climbed the seas. If he'd
let her fall off or claw up, the next wave would have made an end of
her. He was knee-deep half the time in icy brine, and his hands had
split and opened with the frost, but the sweat dripped from him as he
clung to the jarring wheel. The helmsmen had another trouble which
preyed on them. They were thinking of the three men they had left
behind.

"Well," he added, "we ran out of the gale, and I had bitter words to
face when we reached Vancouver. As one result of the trouble I walked
out of the city with four or five dollars in my pocket--though there was
a share due to me. Then in an open car I rode up into the ranges to mend
railroad bridges in the frost and snow. It was not the kind of
home-coming one would care to look forward to."

"Ah!" Agatha cried with a shudder, "it must have been horribly dreary."

The man met her eyes. "Yes," he said, "you--know. You came here from far
away, I think a little weary, too, and something failed you. Then you
felt yourself adrift. There were--it seemed--only strangers around you,
but you were wrong in one respect; you were by no means a stranger to
me."

He had been leaning against a birch trunk, but now he moved a little
nearer, and stood gravely looking down on her.

"You have sent Gregory away?" he questioned.

"Yes," answered Agatha, and, startled, as she was, it did not occur to
her that the mere admission was misleading.

Wyllard stretched out his hands. "Then won't you come to me?"

The blood swept into the girl's face. For the moment she forgot Gregory,
and was conscious only of an unreasoning impulse which prompted her to
take the hands held out to her. She rose and faced Wyllard with burning
cheeks.

"You know nothing of me," she said. "Can you think that I would let you
take me out of charity?"

"Again you're wrong--on both points. As I once told you, I have sat for
hours beside the fire beneath the pines or among the boulders with your
picture for company. When I was worn out and despondent you encouraged
me. You have been with me high up in the snow on the ranges, and through
leagues of shadowy bush. That is not all. There were times when, as we
drove the branch line up the gorge beneath the big divide,