r had
anything in life worth while . . . but George's love. And I threw that
away."

"When a man has loved once he loves always," Sothern told her quietly.
"And a thing like that you can't throw away."

Presently, from deep thoughtfulness, she said hesitantly:

"I want to talk to Mr. Drennen. There is something I must say to him."

"Let it wait a day or so," Sothern answered. "He is not himself right
now. And George might misunderstand."

CHAPTER XXI

CHANCE HEARD IN THE NIGHT

Before sunrise the five beings whose lives were so intimately
intertwined and yet who were held by constraint one from the other,
took up the trail. There was but one way to go and this fact alone
held them together; they must keep close to the lake shore for upon the
right the mountains swept upward in a series of cliffs and into a
frowning barrier. Marshall Sothern and Ernestine, walking together in
the rear, spoke little as the day wore on. Max, Drennen and Kootanie
George, ahead, spoke not at all. In silence, never the elbow of one
touching the coat of another, the three men felt and manifested the
jealous rivalry which all day fought to place each one ahead of the
others. George, fleeced as Drennen had been and at a time when the
Canadian's soul had listened avidly to the voice of his wrath,
embittered as Drennen was by the act of a woman, was scarcely less
eager to be first than Drennen himself. And Max, reading the signs,
grew watchful as his own eagerness mounted.

Before night they found the trail which Drennen knew that, soon or
late, he would come upon. Here, perhaps a week ago, certainly not more
than ten days ago, two or three men and one woman had passed. They had
had with them two or three pack animals and the trail, coming in
abruptly from a canon at the westward, was plain.

At nightfall they were at the foot of the sixth of the nine lakes, the
broad trail running on straight along its marge. The fathomless,
bluish water, looking in the dusk a mere rudely circular mirror which
was in truth a liquid cone whose tip was hidden deep in the bowels of
earth, lay in still serenity before them. On all sides the cliffs,
sheer falls half a thousand, sometimes quite a thousand feet high,
seemed actually to stoop their august, beetling brows forward that they
might frown down upon their own unbroken reflections. There would be a
pass through the mountains at the northern end of the lake, a deeply
cleft gorge,