It was a new cabin, just erected, and smoke drifted faintly from its
chimney. Bill rapped on the door.

"Come along in," some one answered gruffly. Bill removed his snowshoes,
and the door opened before his hand.

He did not have to glance twice at the bearded face to know in whose
presence he stood. His inner senses told him all too plainly. Changed
as he was, there was no chance in heaven or earth for a mistake. This
was Harold Lounsbury, the same man who had passed his camp years before,
the same lost lover that Virginia had come to find.

Even now, Bill thought, it was not too late to withdraw. He could
pretend that he had came to quarrel in regard to his trapping rights.
After one glance he knew that, from the standard of good sense, there
was a full reason for withdrawal. In the years he might even reconcile
his own conscience to the act. Harold leaned forward, but he didn't get
up to meet him.

Bill scarcely noticed the man's furtive preparations for self-defense.
His rifle lay across his knees, and ostensibly he was in the act of
cleaning it, but in reality he was holding it ready for Bill's first
offensive move. He had known of Bill of old; in the circle in which he
moved--lost utterly to the sight of the men of Bradleyburg--there
were stories in plenty about this stalwart woodsman. For days--ever
since he had come here with his Indians and laid down his trap
line--he had dreaded just such a visit. The real reason for Bill's
coming did not even occur to him.

Bill saw that the man was frightened. His lips were loose, his eyes
nervous and bright, his hands did not hold quite steady. But all these
observations were at once obliterated and forgotten in the face of a
greater, more profound discovery. In one scrutinizing glance the truth
swept him like a flood. Here was one that the wilderness had crushed in
its brutal grasp. As far as Bill's standards were concerned, it had
broken and destroyed him.

This did not mean that his health was wasted. His body was strong and
trim: except for a suspicious network of red lines in his cheeks and a
yellow tinge to the whites of his eyes, he would have seemed in superb
physical condition. The evidence lay rather in the expression of his
face, and most of all in the surroundings in which he lived.

He had been, to some extent at least, a man of refinement and culture
when he had passed through Bill's camp so long ago. He had been
clean-shaven except