margin if he covered his sales. In any
case, he did as she bade him, and in another minute or two he handed
Edmonds an envelope.

The latter, who rose, took it from him quietly, for he was one who
could face defeat.

"Well," he said, with a gesture of resignation, "I'll send the thing
on. If Miss Creighton will excuse me, I'll tell your man to get out my
waggon."

Then he went out, and Sally turned to Hawtrey with the colour in her
cheeks and a flash in her eyes.

"It's Harry Wyllard's money," she said.

CHAPTER XXVII.

IN THE WILDERNESS.

A bitter wind was blowing when Wyllard stood outside the little tent
the morning after he had made a landing on the ice, watching the grey
daylight break amidst a haze of sliding snow. He was to leeward of the
straining canvas which partly sheltered him, but the raw cold struck
through him to the bone, and he was stiff and sore from his exertions
during the previous day. Most of his joints ached unpleasantly, and
his clothing had not quite dried upon him with the warmth of his body.
He was also conscious of a strong desire to crawl back into the tent
and go to sleep again, but that was one it would clearly not be wise to
indulge in, since they were, he fancied, still some distance off the
beach, and the ice might commence to break up at any moment. It
stretched away before him, seamed by fissures and serrated ridges here
and there, for a few hundred yards, and then was lost in the sliding
snow, and as he gazed at it all his physical nature shrank from the
prospect of the journey through the frozen desolation.

Then with a little shiver he crawled back into the tent where his two
companions were crouching beside the cooking lamp. The feeble light of
its sputtering blue flame touched their faces which were graver than
usual, but Charly turned and looked up as he came in.

"Wind's dropping," said Wyllard curtly. "We'll start as soon as you
have made breakfast. We must try to reach the beach to-night."

Charly made no answer, though the dusky-skinned Siwash grunted, and in
a few more minutes they silently commenced their meal. It was promptly
finished, and they struck the tent, and packed it with their sleeping
bags and provisions upon the sled, and then, taking up the traces, set
out across the ice. The light had grown a little clearer now, and the
snow was thinning, but it still whirled about them, and lay piled in
drawn-out wreaths to lee of every hummock