ested.

His foot throbbed with dull persistence. He was conscious of being
tired, but he must not sleep this night. Rough work possibly, at any
rate, a man's work, awaited him there in the gloom of the silent
clearing.

Again his eye sought the whisky bottle and held. His fingers ceased to
toy with the flap, for in that moment the thought came to him that had
the bottle not been empty, had it been filled with liquor--strong
liquor--with the pain in his foot and the stiffness of his tired
muscles and the work ahead--well, he might--for the old desire was
strong upon him--he might take a drink.

"Not yet," he muttered, and returned the packet to his pocket unopened.
"I told her I would beat the game. I've bucked old John Barleycorn's
line and scored a touchdown; the hardest of the fighting is past, but
there is just a chance that I might miss goal."

Bill looked at his watch; it was eight o'clock. He stood up, wincing as
his injured foot touched the floor, and hobbled across the room where
he wrenched a rough, split shelf from the wall. This, together with
some sticks of firewood, he rolled in a blanket, placing it near the
stove. He added more wood until the bundle was about the size and shape
of a man, and covered it with his other two blankets. Filling the
broken stove with wood he blew out the lantern and limped silently out
into the night.

Two hours later Creed, bird's-eye spotter and bad man of the worn-out
little town of Hilarity, knocked the ashes from his pipe and held a
glowing brand to the dial of his watch.

"The greener should be asleep by now," he muttered, and, rolling his
blanket, kicked snow over the remnant of his camp-fire, picked up his
rifle, and ascended the steep side of a deep ravine lying some two
hundred yards to the westward of the clearing where Bill Carmody had
encamped for the night.

After leaving Moncrossen's office on the previous afternoon he had
traveled all night, and reached Melton's old No. 8 in the early
morning.

All day he had slept by the side of his fire in the bottom of the
ravine, and in the evening had lain in the cover of the scrub and
watched the greener stable the horses and limp to the deserted shack.

At heart Creed was a craven, a bullying swashbuckler, who bragged and
blustered among the rheumy-eyed down-and-outers who nightly
foregathered about Burrage's stove, but who was servile and cringing as
a starved puppy toward Moncrossen and Stromberg, who openly