ent shivered.

"We'll go down," Lisle said quietly; "the brightness has gone. I've had a
great time here--something to think of as long as I live--but now it's
over."

"But you'll come back some day?" she suggested.

"I may; I can't tell," he answered. "I've schemes in view, to be worked
out in the North, that may make my return possible; but even then it
couldn't be quite the same. Things change; one mustn't expect too much."

His smile was a little forced; his mood was infectious, and an unusual
melancholy seized upon Millicent as they moved down-hill across the long,
sad-colored slopes of heather. Then they reached a bare wood where dead
leaves that rustled in the rising wind lay in drifts among the withered
fern and the slender birch trunks rose about them somberly. The light had
almost gone, the gathering gloom reacted upon both of them, and there was
in the girl's mind a sense of something left unsaid. Once or twice she
glanced at her companion; his face was graver than usual and he did not
look at her.

It was quite dark when they walked down the dale beneath the leafless
oaks, talking now with an effort about indifferent matters, until at last
Millicent stopped at the gate of the drive to her house.

"Will you come in?" she asked.

"No; Nasmyth's waiting. I'm glad you came with me, but I won't say
good-by. I'll look forward to the journey we're to make together through
British Columbia."

She held out her hand; in another moment he turned away, and she walked
on to the house with a strange sense of depression.

CHAPTER XXII

STARTLING NEWS

It was snowing in the northern wilderness and the bitter air was filled
with small, dry flakes, which whirled in filmy clouds athwart the red
glow of a fire. A clump of boulders stood outlined beside a frozen river,
and behind the boulders a growth of willows rose crusted with snow, while
beyond them, barely distinguishable, were the stunted shapes of a few
birches. So far the uncertain radiance reached when the fire leaped up,
but outside it all was shut in by a dense curtain of falling snow.

It had been dark for some time, and Lisle was getting anxious as he lay,
wrapped in a ragged skin coat, in a hollow beside a boulder. A straining
tent stood near the fire, but the big stone afforded better shelter, and
drawing hard upon his pipe, he listened eagerly. The effort to do so was
unpleasant as well as somewhat risky, for he had to turn back the old fur