know nor care. He could not see her
face, but he touched it; it, too, was cold.

He felt a pang of agony. When both expected to die he had neither fear
nor sorrow; now she was about to die alone and leave him!

"Sylvia! Sylvia!" he cried. "It is not death! You cannot go!"

He rubbed her hands violently, and even her cheeks. He called to her
over and over again, and she awoke from her numbing torpor.

"It was beginning to be like an easy sleep," she said.

"That is what we must fight," said Harley.

He brushed up all the leaves at the mouth of the hollow as a sort of
barrier, and he believed that it gave help. Then he sat down on a small
ledge of stone and leaned against the wall.

"Sylvia," he said, "I want you to live, and you cannot live if this cold
creeps into your body again. Sit here."

She hesitated, and in the darkness he did not see her blush.

"Why should you not? It may be our last day."

He drew her down upon his knees, then closer to him, and put his arms
around her. Presently he could feel her face against his, and it was
cold no longer. Neither spoke nor moved, but Harley could feel that she
was warm, and he could hear her soft, regular breathing. After a while
he stirred a little, and he found that she was asleep. Her hands and
face were still warm. He did not move again. She spoke once in her
sleep, and all that she said was his name.

Outside the plain was a vast sheet of snow, over which the cold wind
moaned, and out of the east the night was coming.

XXII

THE "KING'S" AWAKENING

When "King" Plummet left Harley and Sylvia on the plain, he strode
blindly forward, his heart filled with rage, grief, and self-accusation.
He said aloud: "William Plummer, you are fifty years old, and you have
made of yourself the damnedest fool in the whole Northwest!"

Hitherto he had always held the belief that if Harley were away she
would soon forget him and would be happy as his wife. Now he knew that
this could never come to pass, and the truth filled him with dismay.

He had ridden across country with no knowledge of Mr. Grayson's presence
in Grafton until he was very near the place; then, when he heard of it,
he was overwhelmed with a great desire to see these people and bid them
defiance. He was a man who fought his enemies, and he would show them
what he could do. So he rode into Grafton, and slipped quietly into a
saloon to get a tonic. He was a border man bred in border ways, and
usua