with grey eyes and
a sweet body that was like a song, a girl who had awakened the old,
dormant good in him and then had driven him so deep into the black
chasm that no light entered where he was.

CHAPTER XIX

THE LONG TRAIL

Each day that passed set its seal deeper into the heart and soul of
David Drennen. His eyes grew harder, his mouth sterner. There came
into his face the lines of his relentless hatred. Sinister and morose
and implacable, biding his time and nursing his purpose, he grew to be
more than ever before the lone wolf. His lips which had long ago
forgotten how to smile were constantly set in an ugly snarl. His
purpose possessed him so completely that it had grown into an
obsession. It became little less than maniacal.

He seemed a man whose emotions were gone, swallowed up in a cool
determination. There came no flush to his face, no quickened beating
of his heart when the trail seemed hot before him, no evidence of
disappointment when again and again he learned that he had followed a
false scent and that he was no nearer his prey than he had been at the
beginning. He was still unhurrying as when he had ridden out of
MacLeod's Settlement. He would find what he sought to-day or ten years
from to-day. His vengeance would lose nothing through delay. On the
other hand, it would fall the heavier. Of late he had become endowed
with an infinite patience.

The last thought in his brain at night was the first thought when he
woke. It was unchanging day after day, week after week, month after
month. If he must wait even longer it would remain unaltered year
after year.

His eyes had grown to be keener than knives, restless, watchful, bright
with suspicion. Nowhere throughout the breadth of the land did he have
a friend. What he felt for others was paid back to him in his own
currency: distrust, dislike, silence.

But, through whatever far distances he went, he was generally known by
repute and inspired interest. Men stood aloof but they watched him and
spoke of him among themselves. No longer did they call him No-luck
Drennen. He came to be known as Lucky Drennen. Word had gone about
that it was indeed true that he had rediscovered the old, lost Golden
Girl and that he had made a fortune from its sale to the Northwestern
people. The mine was operating already; experts said that it was
greater than the Duchess which electrified the mining world in 1897
when Copworth and Kennely br