Lieutenant wavered.

"I can't do that. I promised."

"He told that lie to my girl. He gave her to that hound," said the
trader, but Burrell shoved him through the door.

"No! I can't do that." And then to the wounded man he said, "I'll get a
doctor, but God have mercy on your soul." He could not trust himself to
talk further with this creature, nor be near him any longer, for though
he had a slight knowledge of surgery, he would sooner have touched a
loathsome serpent than the flesh of this monstrous man.

He pushed Gale ahead of him, and the old man went like a driven beast,
for his violence had wasted itself, and he was like a person under the
spell of a strong drug. At the doctor's door Burrell stopped.

"I never thought to ask you," he said, wearily; "but you must be hurt?
He must have wounded you?"

"I reckon he did--I don't know." Then the man's listless voice throbbed
out achingly, as he cried in despair: "She believed him, boy! She
believed his lies! That's what hurts." Something like a sob caught in
his throat, and he staggered away under the weight of his great
bereavement.

CHAPTER XVII

THE LOVE OF POLEON DORET

To the girl crouching at the stern of Runnion's boat it seemed as if
this day and night would never end. It seemed as if the procession of
natural events must have ceased, that there was no longer any time, for
she had been suffering steadily for hours and hours without end, and
began to wonder dreamily whether she had not skipped a day in her
reckoning between the time when she first heard of the strike on her
claim and this present moment. It occurred to her that she was a rich
girl now in her own right, and she smiled her crooked smile, as she
reflected that the thing she had longed for without hope of attainment
had come with confusing swiftness, and had left her unhappier than
ever....

Would the day never come? She pulled the rugs up closer about her as
the morning chill made her shiver. She found herself keeping mechanical
count with the sound of the sweeps--they must be making good speed, she
thought, and the camp must be miles behind now. Had it been earlier in
the season, when the river ran full of drift, they never could have
gone thus in the dark, but the water was low and the chances of
collision so remote as to render blind travel safe. Even yet she could
not distinguish her oarsman, except as a black bulk, for it had been a
lowering night and the approaching dawn