urred in places, for they were
three years old, but the woman read them with eyes wide and wondering,
and with heart-beats pounding, for it seemed that dead lips spoke to
her. Ten minutes later she was standing at Guth's door, and when he
let her in she behaved like one demented. She had the letters hidden
in her bosom, and she would not let him see them, but she managed to
make known the meaning of her coming.

"You know him," she cried, hysterically. "You made him rich. You've
lived alongside of him. Tell me then, has he--has he--changed? These
letters are old. Does he still care, or--does he hate me, as he
should?"

Guth smiled; he took her shaking hands in his, his voice was gentle.
"No, no! He doesn't hate you. He has never mentioned your name to me,
or to any one else, so far as I know, but his money hasn't satisfied
him. He is sad, and he wants you. That is what took him to the States,
I'm sure."

Lois sank into a chair, her face was white, her twisting fingers
strained at each other. "I can't understand. I can't make head or tail
of it," she moaned. "It seems that I wronged him, but see what ruin he
has made for me! Why? Why--?"

"Who can understand the 'why' of anything?" inquired the little
Hebrew. "I've heard him curse the perversity of little things, and
rave at what he called the 'malice of the north wind.' I didn't dare
to ask him what he meant, but I knew he was thinking of the evil which
had come between you two. Who was to blame, or what separated you, he
never told me. Well, his bad luck has changed, and yours, too; and I'm
happy. Now then, the wireless. You can talk to him. Let us go."

An hour later a crackling message was hurled into the empty Christmas
sky, a message that pulsed through the voids, was relayed over ice and
brine and drifted forests to a lonely, brooding man three thousand
miles away.

The answer came rushing back:

"Thank God! Am starting north tomorrow. Love and a million kisses.
Wait for me."

Folsom came. Neither ice nor snow, neither winter seas nor trackless
wastes, could daunt him, for youth was in his heart and fire ran
through his veins. North and west he came by a rimy little steamer, as
fast as coal could drive her, then overland more than fifteen hundred
miles. His record stands unbroken, and in villages from Katmai to the
Kuskokwim the Indians tell of the tall white man with the team of
fifteen huskies who raced through as if a demon were at his heels; how
he