s it, coeval with its rocks and hills, ancient as the world, a symbol
of obscure passions and instincts and spiritual beauties old as the
human race.

Abruptly Dick spoke, his voice harsh.

"We die here, Little Sister. I do not regret. I have done the best in
me. It is well for me to die. But this is not your affair. It was not
for you to give your life. Had you not followed you would now be warm in
the wigwams of your people. This is heavy on my heart."

"Was it for this you came back to me?" she inquired.

Dick considered. "No," he replied.

"The south wind blows warm on me," she said, after a moment.

The man thought her mind wandered with the starvation, but this was not
the case. Her speech had made one of those strange lapses into rhetoric
so common to the savage peoples.

"Jibiwanisi," she went on solemnly, "to me now this is a land where the
trees are green and the waters flow and the sun shines and the fat deer
are in the grasses. My heart sings like the birds. What should I care
for dying? It is well to die when one is happy."

"Are you happy, May-may-gwan?" asked Dick.

For answer she raised her eyes to his. Freed of the distraction of
another purpose, clarified by the near approach of death, his spirit
looked, and for the first time understood.

"May-may-gwan, I did not know," said he, awed.

He meant that he had not before perceived her love for him. She thought
he had not before realised his love for her. Her own affection seemed to
her as self-evident as the fact that her eyes were black.

"Yes, yes," she hastened to comfort what she supposed must be his
distress, "I know. But you turned back."

She closed her eyes again and appeared to doze in a happy dream. The
North swooped above them like some greedy bird of prey.

Gradually in his isolation and stillness Dick began to feel this. It
grew on him little by little. Within a few hours, by grace of suffering
and of imminent death, he came into his woodsman's heritage of
imagination. Men like Sam Bolton gained it by patient service, by
living, by the slow accumulations of years, but in essence it remained
the same. Where before the young man had seen only the naked, material
facts, now he felt the spiritual presence, the calm, ruthless, just,
terrible Enemy, seeking no combat, avoiding none, conquering with a
lofty air of predestination, inevitable, mighty. His eyes were opened,
like the prophet's of old. The North hovered over him almost pa