an effort.

"You mean?" she said at length.

"Harry Wyllard."

Agatha made no answer, and Sally changed the subject, "Well," she said,
"after all, I want you to be friends with me."

"I think you can count on that," said Agatha with a smile, and in
another minute or two she rose to rejoin Mrs. Hastings.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE LANDING.

The ice among the inlets on the American side of the North Pacific
broke up unusually early when spring came round again, and several
weeks before Wyllard had expected it the _Selache_ floated clear. Her
crew had suffered little during the bitter winter, for Dampier had kept
them busy splicing gear and patching sails, and they had fitted her
with a new mainmast hewn out of a small cedar. None of them had been
trained as carpenters, but men who keep the sea for months in small
vessels are necessarily handy at repairs, and they had all used axe and
saw to some purpose in their time. In any case, Wyllard was satisfied
when they thrashed the _Selache_ out of the inlet under whole mainsail
in a fresh breeze, and when evening came he sat smoking near the wheel
in a contemplative mood as the climbing forests and snow-clad heights
dropped back astern.

He wondered what his friends were doing upon the prairie, and whether
Agatha had married Gregory yet. It seemed to him that this was, at
least, possible, for she was one to keep a promise, and it was
difficult to believe that Gregory would fail to press his claim. His
face grew grim as he thought of it, though this was a thing he had done
more or less constantly during the winter. He fancied that he might
have ousted Gregory if he had remained at the Range, for Agatha had,
perhaps unconsciously, shown him that she was, at least, not quite
indifferent to him, but that would have been to involve her in a breach
of faith which she would probably have always looked back on with
regret, and in any case he could not have stayed. He knew he would
never forget her, but it was, he admitted, not impossible that she
might forget him. He also realised, though this was not by comparison
a matter of great consequence, that the Range was scarcely likely to
prosper under Gregory's management, but that could not be helped, and
after all he owed Gregory something. It never occurred to him that he
was doing an extravagant thing in setting out upon the search he had
undertaken. He only felt that the obligation was laid upon him, and,
being what