ew over to the
fire and crouched down beside it, his back to the bed, impassive and
still. They brought him a bowl of broth and bread, which he drank slowly,
and placed the empty bowl between his knees. He sat there through the
night, though they tried to make him lie down.

As the light came in at the windows, Sewell touched him on the shoulder
and said, "He is sleeping now."

"I hear my brother breathe," answered Arrowhead. "He will live."

All night he had listened, and had heard Jim's breath as only a man who
has lived in waste places can hear. "He will live. What I take with one
hand I give with the other."

He had taken the life of the factor; he had given Jim his life. And when
he was tried three months later for murder, some one else said this for
him, and the hearts of all, judge and jury, were so moved they knew not
what to do.

But Arrowhead was never sentenced, for, at the end of the first day's
trial, he lay down to sleep and never waked again. He was found the next
morning still and cold, and there was clasped in his hands a little doll
which Nancy had given him on one of her many visits to the prison during
her father's long illness. They found a piece of paper in his belt with
these words in the Cree language: "With my hands on his heart at the post
I gave him the life that was in me, saving but a little until now.
Arrowhead, the chief, goes to find life again by the well at the root of
the tree. _How!_"

V

On the evening of the day that Arrowhead made his journey to "the well at
the root of the tree" a stranger knocked at the door of Captain
Templeton's cottage; then, without awaiting admittance, entered.

Jim was sitting with Nancy on his knee, her head against his shoulder,
Sally at his side, her face alight with some inner joy. Before the knock
came to the door Jim had just said, "Why do your eyes shine so, Sally?
What's in your mind?" She had been about to answer, to say to him what had
been swelling her heart with pride, though she had not meant to tell him
what he had forgotten--not till midnight. But the figure that entered the
room, a big man with deep-set eyes, a man of power who had carried
everything before him in the battle of life, answered for her.

"You have won the stake, Jim," he said, in a hoarse voice. "You and she
have won the stake, and I've brought it--brought it."

Before they could speak he placed in Sally's hands bonds for five million
dollars.

"Jim--Jim, my son!