need be,
can stand between you and them. If you set out with Spurling, he will
kill you; and if you stay here, you will be arrested. But if you will
come with me into the forest, we can join some Indians of my mother's
tribe, and they will hide us where you never can be found."

Granger watched her while she was speaking, wondering whether he was
hearing the very truth this time. "And, if I do as you ask me, what
will happen to Spurling?" he said.

She drew him nearer to herself. "I hate that man," she whispered; "let
him die as he deserves."

"And why didn't you tell me everything at first?"

"Because you are not strong enough to make the journey yet; and I
wanted to keep you resting here, till you had no other choice of
saving yourself but by following me into the forest. While my father
was present, I did not dare to tell you--_for his soul is dead_."

Granger took his eyes from off her face; she tempted him--he had been
so long unused to kindness. He gazed out of the window, far away
across the frozen forest, and heard the dream of his boyhood calling
to him to seek the city out of sight. His choice lay between this
woman and El Dorado, in whose search he had wasted all his life. He
did not deceive himself, whatever he might say aloud; his hesitancy
did not arise out of unwillingness to desert Spurling, but from
unwillingness to abandon the quest while a fragment of hope remained.
With that stolen gold, if he could slip by the winter patrol and carry
it out to Winnipeg, he would be able to strike for the south and sail
up the Great Amana, past the rocks with the forgotten handwriting,
till he came to the lake of Parima, on whose shores the city is said
to stand.

She saw that his will was wavering and that his choice was going
against her. Seizing his hands in her own and pressing them to her
breast, "I am only a poor half-breed girl," she cried, "but I am soon
to be the mother of your child; and our child will be nearly all white
like yourself. You can't think what my life was before you came to me;
for, though my body is half Indian, my mind has become a white woman's
since I went to school in Winnipeg. I am so white that I would die for
you to-morrow, if I could give you life by doing that. I could not
tell you this before, while my father and brother were present;
somehow, with their silence they stifled my words, and made me silent.
But don't judge me by the past months, believe me now."

"Peggy," he s