he nodded, sulkily. "No. He didn't do it."

Joy lilted in her voice. "So you've brought me here to tell me. Oh, I am
glad, my friend, that you were so good. And it is like you to do it. You
have always been the good friend to me."

The Scotchman smiled, a little wistfully. "You take a mean advantage
of a man. You nurse him when he is ill--and are kind to him when he
is well--and try to love him, though he is twice your age and more.
Then, when his enemy is in his power, he finds he can't strike him down
without striking you too. Take your young man, Sheba O'Neill, and marry
him, and for God's sake, get him out of Alaska before I come to grips
with him again. I'm not a patient man, and he's tried me sair. They say
I'm a good hater, and I always thought it true. But what's the use of
hating a man when your soft arms are round him for an armor?"

The fine eyes of the girl were wells of warm light. Her gladness was
not for herself and her lover only, but for the friend that had been so
nearly lost and was now found. He believed he had done it for her, but
Sheba was sure his reasons lay deeper. He was too much of a man to hide
evidence and let his rival be falsely accused of murder. It was not in
him to do a cheap thing like that. When it came to the pinch, he was too
decent to stab in the back. But she was willing to take him on his own
ground.

"I'll always be thanking you for your goodness to me," she told him
simply.

He brushed that aside at once. "There's one thing more, lass. I'll
likely not be seeing you again alone, so I'll say it now. Don't waste
any tears on Colby Macdonald. Don't fancy any story-book foolishness
about spoiling his life. That may be true of halfling boys, maybe, but
a man goes his ain gait even when he gets a bit facer."

"Yes," she agreed. And in a flash she saw what would happen, that in the
reaction from his depression he would turn to Genevieve Mallory and
marry her.

"You're too young for me, anyhow,--too soft and innocent. Once you told
me that you couldn't keep step with me. It's true. You can't. It was a
daft dream."

He took a deep breath, seemed to shake himself out of it, and smiled
cheerfully upon her.

"We'll put our treasure-trove on the sled and go back to your friends,"
he continued briskly. "To-morrow I'll send men up to scour the hills for
Northrup's body."

Sheba drew the canvas back over the face of the dead man. As she
followed Macdonald back to the trail, tears