skey to his
people."

At first these replies exasperated the girl beyond measure. She set
them down as stereotyped answers in which they had been carefully
coached. But as time went on and the women, whose word she had come to
hold in regard, remained unshaken in their statements, an uncomfortable
doubt assailed her--a doubt that, despite herself, she fostered. A
doubt that caused her to ponder long of nights as she lay in her little
room listening to the droning voices of LeFroy and Big Lena as they
talked by the stove in the kitchen.

Strange fancies and pictures the girl built up as she lay, half waking,
half dreaming between her blankets. Pictures in which MacNair,
misjudged, hated, fighting against fearful odds, came clean through the
ruck and muck with which his enemies had endeavoured to smother him,
and proved himself the man he might have been; fancies and pictures
that dulled into a pain that was very like a heartache, as the vivid
picture--the real picture--which she herself had seen with her own eyes
that night on Snare Lake, arose always to her mind.

The tang of the northern air bit into the girl's blood. She spent much
time in the open and became proficient and tireless in the use of
snowshoes and skis. Daily her excursions into the surrounding timber
grew longer, and she was never so happy as when swinging with strong,
wide strides on her fat thong-strung rackets, or sliding with the speed
of the wind down some steep slope of the river-bank, on her smoothly
polished skis.

It was upon one of these solitary excursions, when her steps had
carried her many miles along the winding course of a small tributary of
the Yellow Knife, that the girl became so fascinated in her exploration
she failed utterly to note the passage of time until a sharp bend of
the little river brought her face to face with the low-hung winter sun,
which was just on the point of disappearing behind the shrub pines of a
long, low ridge.

With a start she brought up short and glanced fearfully about her.
Darkness was very near, and she had travelled straight into the
wilderness almost since early dawn. Without a moment's delay she
turned and retraced her steps. But even as her hurrying feet carried
her over the back-trail she realized that night would overtake her
before she could hope to reach the larger river.

The thought of a night spent alone in the timber at first terrified
her. She sought to increase her pace, but