that, if you don't accept this offer, your life isn't
worth--that!" With the word, Seguis snapped under his heel a
twig from the little fire. "Either you stay with us, and know
everything--or you go from us, to die with the secret!" The voice
was monotonous in its emotionless calm, but it was inexorable.

At the saying, a chill of fear fell on Donald, a fear formless at
the first; then, swiftly, taking malignant, fatal shape. Out of
memory leaped tales of terror, unbelieved, yet hideous. Now was
born a new credulity, begotten of dread. His face whitened a little,
and his eyes widened as he regarded the half-breed with growing
alarm. His voice quavered, despite his will, when he put the question
that was tormenting him:

"You don't mean that you'd send me on the--on the Death Trail?"
he cried, aghast. The enormity of the peril swept over him in a
flood, set him a-tremble. Though he questioned so wildly, he knew
the truth, and the awfulness of it put his manhood in revolt, made
him coward for the moment. The Death Trail! ... He had not been
prepared for that. To back against the wall, and fight to the end
like a trapped animal were one thing--a thing for which he had been
prepared... But, the Death Trail--!

Suddenly, with the incongruity that is frequent in a highly wrought
mind, his memory slipped back through the years to the time when
first he heard of this half-mythical thing, which was called the
Death Trail. He had run away from his nurse in Victoria Square, in
Montreal, and, after his recapture, the girl had threatened him
with the Death Trail as a punishment, should he ever repeat his
offense. That night, he had questioned his father, the commissioner
of the Company, as to this fearsome thing... And the commissioner
had merely laughed, unconcernedly.

"Oh, that, my boy!" he had exclaimed. "Why, that's an exploded
yarn. Some people say the Company sent free-traders to their deaths
that way. But who knows? Who can tell? I can't."

Then, the father had added some description as to the nature of
this rumored Death Trail: how a man with a knife, but no gun;
snowshoes, but no dogs; and not even a compass, was turned loose
in the forest with a few days' food on his back, and told to save
himself--how he wandered, starving and weakened day by day, until
the terrible cold snuffed out his life, or he was pulled down by
a roving wolf-pack.

And it was this fate that faced Donald now... The words of the
half-breed i