t the "judge" to the log house the other night at Gratton's
bidding, Steve Jarrold. Through the trees, coming up now, were two more
of the ill-featured party, a swart, squat Italian, and just at his heels
a ragged scarecrow of a man named Brail. It was Brail who came close
enough to stoop over the fallen man.

"Dead, ain't he?" queried Benny, half-coughing over his words.

His fellows had drawn closer so that they stood in a ring about the
body. One man alone held apart. Gratton's eyes were wild, void of
purpose; the dead, chalky-white of his face turned a sickly greenish
tinge. After a little, while no one paid any attention to him, he began
a slow withdrawal, moving jerkily step by step, his dragging heels
making long furrows in the snow. Then King, too, began to draw back,
slipping quietly and swiftly through the screen of tree and bush,
stepping in the tracks he had made coming hither, praying suddenly for
further fast-falling snow to hide or obliterate the trail he had made.
And for the moment he was not thinking of the gold which they, too,
sought, and which he had meant to snatch away from under their noses. He
thought only of Gloria. If that crowd, in its present temper, found the
way to his camp--if, in one way or another, Gloria fell into their
hands--then could she thank God for a clean bullet and a swift end of
things.

_Chapter XXIV_

The mere fact of being absolutely alone from midday to dark would have
been for Gloria an experience at any time and in any environment. Of
her friends in the city there were many who had never in a lifetime
known what it was to spend half a dozen consecutive daytime, waking
hours in perfect solitude, catching not so much as a fleeting glimpse of
a servant, a policeman, a nurse, or a street-car conductor in the
echoing street. Solitude rendered rippleless by an absence of any
familiar sound; neither the whisk of a maid's broom, the clang of a
telephone bell, the buzz of motors, or the slamming of doors. At those
intervals when King thought of her, it was to realize that she might
quite naturally find discomfort in her bleak surroundings, being denied
coal-grate and upholstered chair; it did not suggest itself to him that
the chief discomfort would be a spirit-crushing, terrifying loneliness.

She told herself, when he had gone, that she was glad to be alone. Five
minutes later she began to stir restlessly; another five minutes and
already she was listening for his