ly!"

The man fumbled in an inner pocket and produced a folded paper. He
opened it, and gazed at it silently. Then he passed it to the wife,
whose hands were held out and trembling.

"I've had this. It came in by runner. The poor wretch was badly
frost-bitten. It's surely a cruel country."

But Ailsa Mowbray was not heeding him. Nor was Jessie. Both women
were examining the paper, and its contents. The mother read it aloud.

"DEAR FATHER JOSE:

"We'll make the Fort to-morrow night if the weather holds. Can you
send out dogs and a sled? Have things ready for us.

"MURRAY."

During the reading the priest helped himself to another liberal pinch
of snuff. Then he produced a great colored handkerchief, and trumpeted
violently into it. But he was watching the women closely out of the
corners of his hawk-like eyes.

Ailsa read the brief note a second time, but to herself. Then, with
hands which had become curiously steady, she refolded it, retaining it
in her possession with a strangely detached air. It was almost as if
she had forgotten it, and that her thoughts had flown in a direction
which had nothing to do with the letter, or the Padre, or----

But Jessie came at the man in a tone sharpened by the intensity of her
feelings.

"Say, Father, there's no more than that note? The runner? Did he tell
you--anything? You--you questioned him?"

"Yes."

Suddenly the mother took a step forward. One of her hands closed upon
the old priest's arm with a grip that made him wince.

"The truth, Father," she demanded, in a tone that would not be denied.
Her eyes were wide and full of a desperate conviction. "Quick, the
truth! What was there that Murray didn't write in that note? Allan?
What of Allan? Did he reach him? Is--is he dead? Why did he want
that sled? Tell me. Tell it all, quick!"

She was breathing hard. Her desperate fear was heart-breaking. Jessie
remained silent, but her eyes were lit by a sudden terror no less than
her mother's.

Suddenly the priest faced the stove again. He gazed down at it for a
fraction of time. Then he turned to the woman he had known in her
girlhood, and his eyes were lit with infinite kindness, infinite grief
and sympathy.

"Yes," he said in a low voice. "There was a verbal message for my ears
alone. Murray feared for you. The shock. So he told me. Allan----"

"Is dead!" Ailsa Mowbray whispered the words, as one who knows but
cannot believe.