ss you make it
possible for me to see and talk with Meleese I will kill you. Your life
hangs on my success; with my failure your death is as certain as the
coming of night. I am going to put a bullet through you at the slightest
suspicion of treachery. Under the circumstances what do you propose
to do?"

"I am glad that you changed your mind, M'seur, and I will not tempt you
again. I will do the best that I can," said Jean. Through a narrow break
in the tops of the banskian pines a few feathery flakes of snow were
falling, and Jean lifted his eyes to the slit of gray sky above them.
"Within an hour it will be snowing heavily," he affirmed. "If they do
not run across our trail by that time, M'seur, we shall be safe."

He led the way through the forest again, more slowly and with greater
caution than before, and whenever he looked over his shoulder he caught
the dull gleam of Howland's revolver as it pointed at the hollow of
his back.

"The devil, but you make me uncomfortable," he protested. "The hammer is
up, too, M'seur!"

"Yes, it is up," said Howland grimly. "And it never leaves your back,
Croisset. If the gun should go off accidentally it would bore a hole
clean through you."

Half an hour later the Frenchman halted where the banskians climbed the
side of a sloping ridge.

"If you could trust me I would ask to go on ahead," whispered Jean.
"This ridge shuts in the plain, M'seur, and just over the top of it is
an old cabin which has been abandoned for many years. There is not one
chance in a thousand of there being any one there, though it is a good
fox ridge at this season. From it you may see the light in Meleese's
window at night."

He did not stop to watch the effect of his last words, but began picking
his way up the ridge with the dogs tugging at his heels. At the top he
swung sharply between two huge masses of snow-covered rock, and in the
lee of the largest of these, almost entirely sheltered from the drifts
piled up by easterly winds, they came suddenly on a small log hut. About
it there were no signs of life. With unusual eagerness Jean scanned the
surface of the snow, and when he saw that there was trail of neither man
nor beast in the unbroken crust a look of relief came into his face.

"_Mon Dieu_, so far I have saved my hide," he grinned. "Now, M'seur,
look for yourself and see if Jean Croisset has not kept his word!"

A dozen steps had taken him through a screen of shrub to the opposite
slo