hoping,
and--fearing.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE MESSAGE

It was a woman of desperately fortified resolve who turned the handle of
the office door in response to Bull Sternford's peremptory summons. The
thought of the coming interview terrified Nancy, and her terror had
nothing whatever to do with the sending of her message.

Bull failed to look up from the mass of papers that littered his desk.
His sharp "Well," as Nancy approached him, was utterly impatient at the
interruption. And its effect was crushing upon the girl in her present
dispirited mood. She felt like headlong flight. She stood her ground,
however, and the sound of her little nervous clearing of the throat came
to the man at the table.

Bull looked up. In an instant his whole attitude underwent a complete
change. His eyes lit, and he sprang from his seat behind the desk. He
came towards the shrinking girl, eager and smiling with the welcome his
love inspired.

"Why, say, Nancy," he cried. "I just hadn't a notion it was you. I was
up to my neck in all this stuff," he said, indicating the litter on his
desk, "and I hadn't a thought but it was the darn Chink come to worry
with food." He laughed. "You certainly have handed me some scare since
you got a grip on our crazy household. I've got a nightmare all the time
I've got to eat. And the trouble is I'd hate to miss any of it. Will you
come right over to the window and sit? There's daylight enough still. We
don't need to use Skert's electric juice till we have to. I'm real glad
you came along."

The man's delight was transparent. Nancy remained unresponsive, however.
She was blind to everything but the thing she had come to do, and the
hopelessness that weighed so heavily upon her.

"I'm sorry," she said simply, accepting the chair he set for her. "I
didn't think you'd--you see, I waited till I guessed you'd be through.
But I won't keep you. It's just a small favour, that's all."

Bull observed her closely. She was so amazingly and completely charming.
She was no longer clad in the rough, warm garments of the trail. Even
the cotton overall she used in the work of the house had been removed.
Now a dainty frock, that had no relation to the rigours of Labrador,
displayed the delicate beauty of her figure, and perfectly harmonised
with the colouring of her wonderful hair. Somehow it seemed to the man
her beauty had intensified in its appeal since the day of her supreme
confidence in the cause for whi