and she looked up at him, it was
as if he beheld the pallid beauty of one of the white tundra flowers.

"And the man who committed that crime--was John Graham," she said, in
the strangely passionless voice of one who knew what his answer
would be.

"Yes, John Graham. He was there, representing big interests in the
States. The foreman had objected to what happened; many of the men had
protested; a few of them, who knew my father, had thrown up their work
rather than be partners to that crime. But Graham had the legal power;
they say he laughed as if he thought it a great joke that a cabin and a
grave should be considered obstacles in his way. And he laughed when my
father and I went to see him; yes, _laughed_, in that noiseless, oily,
inside way of his, as you might think of a snake laughing.

"We found him among the men. My God, you don't know how I hated
him!--Big, loose, powerful, dangling the watch-fob that hung over his
vest, and looking at my father in that way as he told him what a fool
he was to think a worthless grave should interfere with his work. I
wanted to kill him, but my father put a hand on my shoulder, a quiet,
steady hand, and said: 'It is my duty, Alan. _My duty_.'

"And then--it happened. My father was older, much older than Graham, but
God put such strength in him that day as I had never seen before, and
with his naked hands he would have killed the brute if I had not
unlocked them with my own. Before all his men Graham became a mass of
helpless pulp, and from the ground, with the last of the breath that was
in him, he cursed my father, and he cursed me. He said that all the days
of his life he would follow us, until we paid a thousand times for what
we had done. And then my father dragged him as he would have dragged a
rat to the edge of a piece of bush, and there he tore his clothes from
him until the brute was naked; and in that nakedness he scourged him
with whips until his arms were weak, and John Graham was unconscious and
like a great hulk of raw beef. When it was over, we went into the
mountains."

During the terrible recital Mary Standish had not looked away from him,
and now her hands were clenched like his own, and her eyes and face were
aflame, as if she wanted to leap up and strike at something unseen
between them.

"And after that, Alan; after that--"

She did not know that she had spoken his name, and he, hearing it,
scarcely understood.

"John Graham kept his promise," he