aulette nodded and stepped out after me once more. It was dead toil in
the soft snow, and it was slow; for Macartney or no Macartney, there was
no making time in the untrodden bush. I cut our way as short as I dared,
but do the best I could it was dark when we came to that forlorn, evil
hollow in the gap of desolate hills that Caraquet folk called Skunk's
Misery. That had its points though, considering we needed to reach
Macartney's old lean-to unseen, for the Skunk's Misery population was in
bed, and as I said before, they had no dogs to bark at us. In dead
silence, with Paulette holding to my coat and our snowshoes under our
arms, we went Indian file through the maze of winding tracks Skunk's
Misery used for roads, under rocks and around them; and on the
hard-trodden paths our feet left no trace. At least, I thought so: and
it was just where I slipped up! If I had looked behind me, when Paulette
would not let me carry her snowshoes, I would have seen the tails of
them dragging a telltale cut in the snow behind her, as they sagged from
her tired arm. But my eyes were straight before me, on the door of
Macartney's lean-to. It hung open, as it had always hung, but I only
glanced in to make sure it was empty. It was elsewhere I was going,
around the huge boulder that backed the place, and down a gully that
apparently brought up against blind rock--only I knew better. I found
the opening of the rocky passage I had wormed down once before with my
back scraping the living rock between me and the sky, and on my hands
and knees, with Paulette after me, I went down it again. It ended
without warning, just as I had known it would end, in an open cave. A
glow of fire was ahead of me; and, stooping over it--what I had never
imagined I should see with joy and gratitude--the boy I had left there,
toasting a raw rabbit on a stick. That was all I saw. And what possessed
me I don't know, but as I stood up I turned on Paulette with a sudden
wave of stale jealousy overwhelming me, and a question I had kept back
all the afternoon:

"Paulette, you're sure--_sure_--it's me, and not Dudley? That you didn't
love the poor chap best?"

Paulette scrambled to her feet beside me. "It's you," she said clearly.
"I told you Dudley never loved me, or I him. I'll mourn for him always,
for he met his death through me. But he never wanted to marry me, and if
he were alive, he'd be the first person to tell you so!"

There was a pause, definite, distinct