e you can prepare for the journey?" he asked.

"You mean--"

"That we must start tonight or in the morning. I think we shall go
through the cottonwoods over the old trail to Nome. Unless Rossland
lied, Graham is somewhere out there on the Tanana trail."

Her hand pressed his arm. "We are going--_back?_ Is that it, Alan?"

"Yes, to Seattle. It is the one thing to do. You are not afraid?"

"With you there--no."

"And you will return with me--when it is over?"

He was looking steadily ahead over the tundra. But he felt her cheek
touch his shoulder, lightly as a feather.

"Yes, I will come back with you."

"And you will be ready?"

"I am ready now."

The sun-fire of the plains danced in his eyes; a cob-web of golden mist
rising out of the earth, beckoning wraiths and undulating visions--the
breath of life, of warmth, of growing things--all between him and the
hidden cottonwoods; a joyous sea into which he wanted to plunge without
another minute of waiting, as he felt the gentle touch of her cheek
against his shoulder, and the weight of her hand on his arm. That she
had come to him utterly was in the low surrender of her voice. She had
ceased to fight--she had given to him the precious right to fight
for her.

It was this sense of her need and of her glorious faith in him, and of
the obligation pressing with it that drove slowly back into him the
grimmer realities of the day. Its horror surged upon him again, and the
significance of what Rossland had said seemed fresher, clearer, even
more terrible now that he was gone. Unconsciously the old lines of
hatred crept into his face again as he looked steadily in the direction
which the other man had taken, and he wondered how much of that same
horror--of the unbelievable menace stealing upon her--Rossland had
divulged to the girl who stood so quietly now at his side. Had he done
right to let him go? Should he not have killed him, as he would have
exterminated a serpent? For Rossland had exulted; he was of Graham's
flesh and desires, a part of his foul soul, a defiler of womanhood and
the one who had bargained to make possible the opportunity for an
indescribable crime. It was not too late. He could still overtake him,
out there in the hollows of the tundra--

The pressure on his arm tightened. He looked down. Mary Standish had
seen what was in his face, and there was something in her calmness that
brought him to himself. He knew, in that moment, that Rossland had