be alone,
Heaven knows, I chose well. You're not burdened with too much society
in Keewatin--that isn't the complaint which is most often heard."

Outside the night had long since settled down--a night which with snow
and starlight was not dark, but shadowy and ghostlike, making the
interval between two days a long-protracted dusk beneath which it was
possible to see for miles. Far away in the forest a timber-wolf howled
dismally; the huskies in the river-bed, seated on their haunches,
lifted up their heads and echoed his complaint. Then all was still
again, nothing was audible except the occasional low booming of the
ice, when a crack rent its path across the surface and far below the
river shook its gyves, as though clapping its hands in expectation of
the freedom of the spring to come.

Against the window the silhouette of Spurling loomed up, with the
drifting dimness of the starlight for background, and the square of
surrounding darkness for a frame of sombre plush; he seemed a
man-portrait whom some painter had condemned forever to motionlessness
and silence with the magic of his brush, and had nailed on a
stretcher, and had hung up for ornament.

At last he turned his head and stared into the blackness of the room,
searching with his eyes for Granger. "So the deed which you feared to
do, I have done," he said. "And here we sit together again, now that
three years have passed; I, the man whom you hoped to murder and the
man who has committed your crime; you, the man who stole from me,
fired on me, missed aim, and ran away, and yet who at this present
time are my judge. It is very strange! One would have supposed that
with the breadth of a continent between us, you in Keewatin, I in
Yukon, we need never have met. There is a meaning in this happening;
God intends that you should help me to escape."

CHAPTER IV

SPURLING'S TALE

Granger from his place beside the red-hot stove said nothing, but
bowed his head. Spurling saw his action through the darkness and took
courage.

"There is not much to tell," he said. "After you left us, my luck
seemed to vanish. My great bonanza pinched out, as Mordaunt's had
done. I spent the spring and summer in washing out the gold from my
winter's dump, and in sinking shafts to locate another streak which I
might follow in the winter to come. I found none, but at first I did
not lose confidence. I had plenty of capital and could well afford to
spend some of it in explora