m through Frank Rainer 's.

The latter met the movement with a responsive pressure. "Oh, I _am_:
awfully, awfully. And then my uncle has such an eye on me!"

"But if your uncle has such an eye on you, what does he say to your
swallowing knives out here in this Siberian wild?"

Rainer raised his fur collar with a careless gesture. "It's not that
that does it--the cold's good for me."

"And it's not the dinners and dances? What is it, then?" Faxon
good-humouredly insisted; to which his companion answered with a laugh:
"Well, my uncle says it's being bored; and I rather think he's right!"

His laugh ended in a spasm of coughing and a struggle for breath that
made Faxon, still holding his arm, guide him hastily into the shelter of
the fireless waitingroom.

Young Rainer had dropped down on the bench against the wall and pulled
off one of his fur gloves to grope for a handkerchief. He tossed
aside his cap and drew the handkerchief across his forehead, which was
intensely white, and beaded with moisture, though his face retained
a healthy glow. But Faxon's gaze remained fastened to the hand he had
uncovered: it was so long, so colourless, so wasted, so much older than
the brow he passed it over.

"It's queer--a healthy face but dying hands," the secretary mused: he
somehow wished young Rainer had kept on his glove.

The whistle of the express drew the young men to their feet, and the
next moment two heavily-furred gentlemen had descended to the platform
and were breasting the rigour of the night. Frank Rainer introduced them
as Mr. Grisben and Mr. Balch, and Faxon, while their luggage was
being lifted into the second sleigh, discerned them, by the roving
lantern-gleam, to be an elderly greyheaded pair, of the average
prosperous business cut.

They saluted their host's nephew with friendly familiarity, and Mr.
Grisben, who seemed the spokesman of the two, ended his greeting with a
genial--"and many many more of them, dear boy!" which suggested to Faxon
that their arrival coincided with an anniversary. But he could not press
the enquiry, for the seat allotted him was at the coachman's side, while
Frank Rainer joined his uncle's guests inside the sleigh.

A swift flight (behind such horses as one could be sure of John
Lavington's having) brought them to tall gateposts, an illuminated
lodge, and an avenue on which the snow had been levelled to the
smoothness of marble. At the end of the avenue the long house loomed up,