ned me. I'm going
through with the job I've been hired to do, just as you would stick it
out in my place. I don't think I'm in much danger. Men in general are
law-abiding. They growl, but they don't go as far as murder."

Peter gave him up. After all, the chances were that Gordon was right.
Alaska was not a lawless country. And it might be that the best way to
escape peril was to walk through it with a grin as if it did not exist.

The next issue of the Kusiak "Sun" contained a bitter editorial attack
upon Elliot. The occasion for it was a press dispatch from Washington to
the effect that the pressure of public opinion had become so strong that
Winton, Commissioner of the General Land Office, might be forced to
resign his place. This was a blow to the coal claimants, and the "Sun"
charged in vitriolic language that the reports of Elliot were to blame.
He was, the newspaper claimed, an enemy to all those who had come to
Alaska to earn an honest living there. Under indictment for attempted
murder and for highway robbery, this man was not satisfied with having
tried to kill from ambush the best friend Alaska had ever known. In
every report that he sent to Washington he was dealing underhanded blows
at the prosperity of Alaska. He was a snake in the grass, and as such
every decent man ought to hold him in scorn.

Elliot read this just as he was leaving for the Willow Creek Camp.
He thrust the paper impatiently into his coat pocket and swung to the
saddle. Why did they persecute him? He had told nothing but the truth,
nothing not required of him by the simplest, elemental honesty. Yet he
was treated as an outcast and a criminal. The injustice of it was
beginning to rankle.

He was temperamentally an optimist, but depression rode with him to the
gold camp and did not lift from his spirits till he started back next
day for Kusiak. The news had been flashed by wire all over the United
States that he was a crook. His friends and relatives could give no
adequate answer to the fact that an indictment hung over his head.
In Alaska he was already convicted by public opinion. Even the Pagets
were lined up as to their interests with Macdonald. Sheba liked him and
believed in him. Her loyal heart acquitted him of all blame. But it was
to the wooing of his enemy that she had listened rather than to his.
The big Scotchman had run against a barrier, but his rival expected
him to trample it down. He would wear away the scruples of Sheba