acNair returned his automatic to its holster and bethought
himself of Ripley, who was lying back by the stockade with his face
buried in the snow.

Swiftly he retraced his steps, and, kneeling beside the wounded man,
raised him from the snow. Blood oozed from the corners of the
officer's lips, and, mingling with the snow, formed a red slush which
clung to the boyish cheek. With his knife MacNair cut through the
clothing and disclosed an ugly hole below the right shoulder-blade. He
bound up the wound, plugging the hole with suet chewed from a lump
which he carried in his pocket. Leaving Ripley upon his face to
prevent strangulation from the blood in his throat, he hastened to the
camp on the shore of the lake, harnessed the dogs, and returned to the
prostrate man; it was the work of a few moments to bind him securely
upon the sled. Skilfully MacNair guided his dogs through the maze of
the black spruce swamp, and, throwing caution to the winds, crossed the
lake, struck into the timber, and headed straight for Chloe Elliston's
school.

In the living-room of the little cottage on the Yellow Knife, Harriet
Penny and Mary, the Louchoux girl, sat sewing, while Chloe Elliston,
with chair pulled close to the table, read by the light of an oil-lamp
from a year-old magazine. If the Louchoux girl failed to follow the
intricacies of the plot, an observer would scarcely have known it. Nor
would he have guessed that less than two short months before this girl
had been a skin-clad native of the North who had mushed for thirty days
unattended through the heart of the barren grounds. So marvellously
had the girl improved and so desirously had she applied her needle,
that save for the beaded moccasins upon her feet, her clothing differed
in no essential detail from that of Chloe Elliston or of Harriet Penny.

Chloe paused in her reading, and the three occupants of the little room
stared inquiringly into each other's faces as a rough-voiced "Whoa!"
sounded from beyond the door. A moment of silence followed the
command, and then came the sounds of a heavy footfall upon the veranda.
The Louchoux girl sprang to the door, and as she wrenched it open the
yellow lamplight threw into bold relief the huge figure of a man, who,
bearing a blanket-wrapped form in his arms, staggered into the room,
and, without a word deposited his burden upon the floor. The man
looked up, and Chloe Elliston started back with an exclamation of angry
ama