rtney's men had carried me when I was
knocked out! It was no comfort to me that it was to the very place where
I had meant to jail Macartney and hide Paulette, where Charliet and I
were to have stood off Macartney's men.

"Thompson's stope," I gasped. "It's there Macartney's put me!" I
crawled, sick and dizzy, to what ought to have been the tunnel and the
tunnel entrance, opening on the storm out of doors. The tunnel was
there, all right. But as I fumbled to what ought to have been the open
entrance, stillness met me, instead of a rush of wind; piled rock met my
groping hands, instead of piled snow. I was in Thompson's abandoned
stope all right,--only Macartney had sealed up the only way I could ever
get out! I shoved, and dug, and battered, as uselessly as a rat in a
trap, and suddenly knew that was just what I was! Macartney had not even
taken the trouble to kill me,--not to avoid visible murder at this stage
of the game, when only the enemy was left, if you did not count a duped
woman and a captured one; but for the sheer pleasure of realizing the
long, slow death that must get me in the end.

"Die here--I've got to die here," I heard my own voice in my ears.
"While----My God, Paulette! Macartney's got Paulette!"

And in the darkness behind me somebody slipped on a stone.

I had not thought I could ever feel light and fierce again. I was both,
as I swung round.

CHAPTER XV

THE PLACE OF DEPARTED SPIRITS

Every man carries his skull under his face, but
God alone knows the marks on it.

_Indian Proverb._

For a man moved, silent and furtive, in the tunnel between me and the
stope!

At the knowledge something flared up in me that had been pretty well
burnt out: and that was Hope. That any one was in the place showed
Macartney had either put a guard on me--which meant Thompson's abandoned
stope was not sealed so mighty securely as I thought--or else it was he
himself facing me in the dark, and I might get even with him yet. I let
out a string of curses at him on the chance. There was not one single
thing he had done--to me, Paulette, or any one else--that I did not put
a name to. And I trusted Macartney, or any man he had left in the
ink-dark stope, would be fool enough to jump at me for what I said.

But no one jumped. And out of the graveyard blackness in front of me
came a muffled chuckle!

It rooted me stone still, and I dare swear it would have you. For the
chuckle was Dunn's: Dun