e rose from his chair. "By ginger, El!" he exclaimed. "What
have you done to your hair? Looks as if you had cut a chunk out of
it!" There was concern in his face as he picked up a handful and
pointed out the severed portion to his sister-in-law.

Ellen's blood seemed to turn to water. Her heart fluttered in her
throat. What explanation could she give this chivalrous, hot-heated
Irishman who loved her, and who, she knew from past experience, would
shoot a man for less than the Chief had done? She valued above all
things the trust and loving companionship that had blessed her married
life. She hesitated, desperately seeking some plausible explanation
that would approach the truth. . . . Shane, she imagined, was looking
at her keenly now and there was a curious light in Jean's frank eyes.

"I--I--cut it, dear," she stammered, hiding her face under the veil of
her hair. "I--I cut it to send to mother in the next mail."

The instant the lie was out she would have given a year of her life to
recall it. She realized, too late, that it but opened the way for
other lies. It placed her in the position of one obliged to carry
indefinitely an unexploded bomb, which the least jar might set off
causing--who could tell what destruction.

The next day she had insisted with more than her usual vigor on
returning to the schooner. Shane had consented reluctantly, but he
would not for the present accede to her wish to leave Katleean. He was
stubborn in his determination to learn all that was to be known about
the Island of Kon Klayu.

Ellen recalled the events of the week. Her husband's enthusiastic
reports of the Island gold. His talks with the carefully non-committal
trader and the thin-nosed, shifty-eye Silvertip; and finally his
decision to spend the winter on the Island in search of the precious
metal. Shane was sitting now at the table pouring some shining dust
into a saucer and studying the "colors" as they fell.

"The lure of raw gold, Ellen!" he mused looking up at her with glowing
dark eyes. "There's no greater magnet for a man in the world, little
fellow--except the love of a woman," he added softly with the smile
that had won his wife's heart ten years ago and made her happy in
sharing his shifting fortunes.

"But if I make a go of it this trip, Ellen, I give you my word that
I'll go back to the States and settle down somewhere,--any place you
wish. Look at it--just look at it, El!" He held the saucer