his eyes and
he saw his assailant groveling in the snow. He rose to his feet, dazed
and staggering from the effect of the blow on his head and the murderous
grip at his throat. Half a pistol shot down the trail he saw
indistinctly the twisting of black objects in the snow, and as he stared
one of the objects came toward him.

"Do not fire, M'seur Howland," he heard a voice call. "It ees I--Jean
Croisset, a friend! Blessed Saints, that was--what you call heem?--close
heem?--close call?"

The half-breed's thin dark face came up smiling out of the white gloom.
For a moment Howland did not see him, scarcely heard his words. Wildly
he looked about him for the girl. She was gone.

"I happened here--just in time--with a club," continued Croisset. "Come,
we must go."

The smile had gone from his face and there was a commanding firmness in
the grip that fell on the young engineer's arm. Howland was conscious
that things were twisting about him and that there was a strange
weakness in his limbs. Dumbly he raised his hands to his head, which
hurt him until he felt as if he must cry out in his pain.

"The girl--" he gasped weakly.

Croisset's arm tightened about his waist.

"She ees gone!" Howland heard him say; and there was something in the
half-breed's low voice that caused him to turn unquestioningly and
stagger along beside him in the direction of Prince Albert.

And yet as he went, only half-conscious of what he was doing, and
leaning more and more heavily on his companion, he knew that it was more
than the girl's disappearance that he wanted to understand. For as the
blow had fallen on his head he was sure that he had heard a woman's
scream; and as he lay in the snow, dazed and choking, spending his last
effort in his struggle for life, there had come to him, as if from an
infinite distance, a woman's voice, and the words that it had uttered
pounded in his tortured brain now as his head dropped weakly against
Croisset's shoulder.

"_Mon Dieu_, you are killing him--killing him!"

He tried to repeat them aloud, but his voice sounded only in an
incoherent murmur. Where the forest came down to the edge of the river
the half-breed stopped.

"I must carry you, M'seur Howland," he said; and as he staggered out on
the ice with his inanimate burden, he spoke softly to himself, "The
saints preserve me, but what would the sweet Meleese say if she knew
that Jean Croisset had come so near to losing the life of this M'seur l