y set it down.

"I cannot bear that he should lie in that dampness," Granger broke
out; "I remember when we were in London, how he used to hate the wet.
Coldness he could put up with or the hottest sunshine, but he could
not endure the damp. He said it made him feel as though the world was
crying, like a dreary woman because her youngest child was dead. We
can't drop him into that puddle and leave him there."

He commenced to strip off his clothes, and to fold them along the
floor of the grave. When he had apparently made all ready, he stooped
down again and smoothed out a ruck, lest its discomfort should irk the
dead.

"Now," he said, "let me see his face for the last time, for he was my
friend."

Le Pere bent down, and drew the coverings back to the waist, while
Granger leant over him in his eagerness. The body, having lain upon
the ice, had been well preserved, no feature had been disturbed; but
it was not the body of a man who was newly dead, nor was it the face
of Spurling. So absorbed had Granger been by thoughts of the comrade
whom he had treated harshly, and by the mysterious meaning of the
writing which he had seen upon the ice, that the likelier solution of
the problem of this man's identity had not entered into his head, that
the body might be that of Strangeways, thrown up by the back-rush of
the current around the bend.

"Strangeways," he muttered, "it is Strangeways." And with those words
his charity towards Spurling began to ebb.

Pere Antoine, when he heard it, realising that these were the remains
of an officer of justice, for whom, when he did not return, search
would be made, and not of an escaped murderer with a price upon his
head, at news of whose death Authority would be glad, went down on his
hands and knees and began to examine the clothing of the dead for
proofs of his identity, which could be sent in to headquarters for the
establishing of his death. He foresaw that there was need for care;
when the matter came to be investigated, it would be discovered that
Granger had been Spurling's partner in the Klondike; questions would
certainly be asked of Robert Pilgrim, as Hudson Bay factor and head
man of the district, concerning Granger's conduct in Keewatin, and no
good word could be looked for from that quarter. That which would tell
most heavily against him would be this fact, that two men, separated
by a few hours, were known to have passed God's Voice en route for the
independent store