o die.
Conniston would never know how near the final breakdown his brain had
been in that hour when he made him a prisoner. And Keith had not told
him. The man-hunter had saved him from going mad. But Keith had kept
that secret to himself.

Even now he shrank down as a blast of wind shot out of the chaos above
and smote the cabin with a shriek that had in it a peculiarly
penetrating note. And then he squared his shoulders and laughed, and
the yapping of the foxes no longer filled him with a shuddering
torment. Beyond them he was seeing home. God's country! Green forests
and waters spattered with golden sun--things he had almost forgotten;
once more the faces of women who were white. And with those faces he
heard the voice of his people and the song of birds and felt under his
feet the velvety touch of earth that was bathed in the aroma of
flowers. Yes, he had almost forgotten those things. Yesterday they had
been with him only as moldering skeletons--phantasmal
dream-things--because he was going mad, but now they were real, they
were just off there to the south, and he was going to them. He
stretched up his arms, and a cry rose out of his throat. It was of
triumph, of final exaltation. Three years of THAT--and he had lived
through it! Three years of dodging from burrow to burrow, just as
Conniston had said, like a hunted fox; three years of starvation, of
freezing, of loneliness so great that his soul had broken--and now he
was going home!

He turned again to the cabin, and when he entered the pale face of the
dying Englishman greeted him from the dim glow of the yellow light at
the table. And Conniston was smiling in a quizzical, distressed sort of
way, with a hand at his chest. His open watch on the table pointed to
the hour of midnight when the lesson went on.

Still later he heated the muzzle of his revolver in the flame of the
seal-oil.

"It will hurt, old chap--putting this scar over your eye. But it's got
to be done. I say, won't it be a ripping joke on McDowell?" Softly he
repeated it, smiling into Keith's eyes. "A ripping joke--on McDowell!"

III

Dawn--the dusk of another night--and Keith raised his haggard face from
Conniston's bedside with a woman's sob on his lips. The Englishman had
died as he knew that he would die, game to the last threadbare breath
that came out of his body. For with this last breath he whispered the
words which he had repeated a dozen times before, "Remember, old chap,