t nurse the anguish driving her.

"You'll come right along and eat, Nancy?"

The girl almost jumped at the gentle tones of the man's voice, and
glanced round at Bull Sternford in an agony of sudden terror.

"I--I--" she stammered. Then composure returned to her. "If you wish
it," she said submissively. "But I don't need food."

Bull regarded the averted face for moments. Sympathy and love were in
his clear gazing eyes. He understood something of the thing she was
enduring, and the tone of his voice had been a real expression of his
feelings. This girl, with the courage of twenty men, with her radiant
beauty, and in her pitiful, heartbroken condition, was far more precious
to him than any victory he had set himself to achieve. He knew that the
world held nothing half so precious.

He came a step nearer.

"I wonder if you'll listen to me, Nancy," he said, with a hesitation and
doubt utterly foreign, to him. "You know, for all that's happened, for
all we're mixed up against each other in this war, I'm the same man you
found me on the _Myra_ and in Quebec. I--"

"Don't."

The girl flung out her hands in a piteous appeal. And Bull recognised
the hysteria lying behind the movement.

"I know," she cried. "Oh, I know. But--don't you understand? You must
know what I am. It's my doing that Laval has gone to his death. I'm
responsible, just as surely as if I'd fired the gun that robbed him of
his life. Oh, why, why didn't I refuse the work? Why did they send me?
And those dogs. Those poor helpless dogs. They, too. I must have been
mad--mad. How can you come near me? How can you stand there summoning
me to eat food--with you? It's useless. It's--I who sent that man to his
death--I who--"

"Why, I thought it was Gouter."

Bull's manner had suddenly changed. The danger signal in the girl's eyes
had determined him. So he smiled, and there was laughter in his
challenge.

"Say," he went on rapidly, "if you told that to Gouter he'd be crazy
mad. He's the boss running shot on Labrador, and if you claimed
responsibility for the killing of Laval you'd be dead up against it with
him." He shook his head. "No, he's sort of grieved he didn't drop him
plumb on the instant as it is. It won't do you talking that way with him
around."

He watched for the effect of his words and realised a slight relaxing of
the strained look in the hazel eyes. Forthwith he plunged into the thing
he contemplated.

"I'm going to make a big talk wit