im. Also Shan Tung. He felt within himself
the sensation of one who was traveling on very thin ice, yet he could
not tell just where or why it was thin.

"Just a fool hunch," he assured himself.

"Why the deuce should I let a confounded Chinaman and a pretty girl get
on my nerves at this stage of the game? If it wasn't for McDowell--"

And there he stopped. He had fought too long at the raw edge of things
to allow himself to be persuaded by delusions, and he confessed that it
was John Keith who was holding him, that in some inexplicable way John
Keith, though officially dead and buried, was mixed up in a mysterious
affair in which Miriam Kirkstone and Shan Tung were the moving factors.
And inasmuch as he was now Derwent Conniston and no longer John Keith,
he took the logical point of arguing that the affair was none of his
business, and that he could go on to the mountains if he pleased. Only
in that direction could he see ice of a sane and perfect thickness, to
carry out the metaphor in his head. He could report indifferently to
McDowell, forget Miss Kirkstone, and disappear from the menace of Shan
Tung's eyes. John Keith, he repeated, would be officially dead, and
being dead, the law would have no further interest in him.

He prodded himself on with this thought as he fumbled his way through
darkness down into town. Miriam Kirkstone in her golden way was
alluring; the mystery that shadowed the big house on the hill was
fascinating to his hunting instincts; he had the desire, growing fast,
to come at grips with Shan Tung. But he had not foreseen these things,
and neither had Conniston foreseen them. They had planned only for the
salvation of John Keith's precious neck, and tonight he had almost
forgotten the existence of that unpleasant reality, the hangman. Truth
settled upon him with depressing effect, and an infinite loneliness
turned his mind again to the mountains of his dreams.

The town was empty of life. Lights glowed here and there through the
mist; now and then a door opened; down near the river a dog howled
forlornly. Everything was shut against him. There were no longer homes
where he might call and be greeted with a cheery "Good evening, Keith.
Glad to see you. Come in out of the wet." He could not even go to
Duggan, his old river friend. He realized now that his old friends were
the very ones he must avoid most carefully to escape self-betrayal.
Friendship no longer existed for him; the town was a des