she came out with childish frankness and said that it was terribly
embarrassing to have one's friends know that one was engaged to a
consumptive.

Philip laughed as he thought of that. The laugh came so suddenly and so
explosively that Bram could have heard it a hundred yards away, even
with the wind blowing as it was. A consumptive! Philip doubled up his
arm until the hard muscles in it snapped. He drew in a deep lungful of
air, and forced it out again with a sound like steam escaping from a
valve. The NORTH had done that for him; the north with its wonderful
forests, its vast skies, its rivers, and its lakes, and its deep
snows--the north that makes a man out of the husk of a man if given
half a chance. He loved it. And because he loved it, and the adventure
of it, he had joined the Police two years ago. Some day he would go
back, just for the fun of it; meet his old friends in his old clubs,
and shock baby-eyed Mignon to death with his good health.

He dropped these meditations as he thought of the mysterious man he was
following. During the course of his two years in the Service he had
picked up a great many odds and ends in the history of Bram's life, and
in the lives of the Johnsons who had preceded him. He had never told
any one how deeply interested he was. He had, at times, made efforts to
discuss the quality of Bram's intelligence, but always he had failed to
make others see and understand his point of view. By the Indians and
half-breeds of the country in which he had lived, Bram was regarded as
a monster of the first order possessed of the conjuring powers of the
devil himself. By the police he was earnestly desired as the most
dangerous murderer at large in all the north, and the lucky man who
captured him, dead or alive, was sure of a sergeantcy. Ambition and
hope had run high in many valiant hearts until it was generally
conceded that Bram was dead.

Philip was not thinking of the sergeantcy as he kept steadily along the
edge of the Barren. His service would shortly be up, and he had other
plans for the future. From the moment his fingers had touched the
golden strand of hair he had been filled with a new and curious
emotion. It possessed him even more strongly to-day than it had last
night. He had not given voice to that emotion, or to the thoughts it
had roused, even to Pierre. Perhaps he was ridiculous. But he possessed
imagination, and along with that a great deal of sympathy for
animals--and some