d his head with satisfaction, and
tucked the letter away.

"Seguis," said the girl, when he prepared to go, "what is your
motive in doing this? You haven't answered my question."

"My motive and my desire in this matter," he replied feelingly,
"is to secure your own happiness; nothing else." With that, he
turned away, and coasted swiftly down the hill to the edge of the
forest whence he had come.

"My own happiness!" repeated the girl to herself, as she saw him
disappear. "How strange a thing for him to say! And, yet, if only
Donald is alive and safe I shall be happy--in knowing that he can
still think of me."

Five minutes later, a wind-driven snow-storm that had threatened
all the morning broke with terrible fury, and, scarcely able to
stand against the blast, she made her way down to the deserted
cabin, just as the returning factor appeared at the edge of the
woods.

CHAPTER XXII

SECRETED EVIDENCE

It was an hour before sunset, but so uniform had been the darkness
all day that neither Donald nor his two companions realized that
night was close upon them. Hour after hour they had struggled onward
through the blinding, bewildering storm, shelterless and without
food, straining forward to the only place where these things might
be obtained--Sturgeon Lake. Now, when the blanketing night was
almost fallen, they sighted the charred ruins that had once been
the warehouse of the free-traders, with a sigh of relief. A shout
from one of Donald's companions brought the five men who had been
left out of their tents. A shriveled female form joined them, and
with a clutch at his heart the prisoner recognized old Maria.

Fortune, whose plaything he had been all this day, was indeed kind
to him at last, he thought. He remembered certain trite observations
concerning opportunity knocking at a man's door, and the obvious
duty of a man to seize such opportunity, and bend it to his own
use. If this were opportunity, he said to himself, he would make
the most of it.

During that all-day struggle with the storm, Donald McTavish had
come into his own again. The passive acceptance of fate that had
buoyed him even to the shadow of the gallows, had gone from him
now. He was all energy and aggressiveness. He resolved to bring
matters to a head within the next few days, or know the reason why.
What motive had moved Charley Seguis to send him to Sturgeon Lake,
he did not know, nor did he care. He only remembered that he was