soul of honor. By
some queer chance she had lit on the very lines that he had learned
from the old school reader and recited before an audience the last day
prior to vacation.

He woke from his reveries to discover that she was giving him
Tennyson, that fragment from "Guinevere" when Arthur tells her of the
dream her guilt has tarnished. And as she spoke there stirred in him
the long-forgotten aspirations of his youth.

"... for indeed I knew
Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought and amiable words
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man."

His eyes were no longer impassive. There was in them, for the moment
at least, a hunted, haggard look. He saw himself as he was, in a blaze
of light that burned down to his very soul.

And he saw her too transformed--not a half-breed, the fair prey of any
man's passion, but a clean, proud, high-spirited white girl who lived
in the spirit as well as the flesh.

"You're tired. Better lie down and sleep," he told her, very gently.

Jessie looked at him, and she knew she was safe. She might sleep
without fear. This man would not harm her any more than Beresford
or Morse would have done. Some chemical change had occurred in his
thoughts that protected her. She did not know what it was, but her
paean of prayer went up to heaven in a little rush of thanksgiving.

She did not voice her gratitude to him. But the look she gave him was
more expressive than words.

Out of the storm a voice raucous and profane came to them faintly.

"Ah, crapaud Wulf, pren' garde. Yeu-oh! (To the right!) Git down to
it, Fox. Sacre demon! Cha! Cha! (To the left!)"

Then the crack of a whip and a volley of oaths.

The two in the cabin looked at each other. One was white to the lips.
The other smiled grimly. It was the gambler that spoke their common
thought.

"Bully West, by all that's holy!"

CHAPTER XXIV

WEST MAKES A DECISION

Came to those in the cabin a string of oaths, the crack of a whip
lashing out savagely, and the yelps of dogs from a crouching, cowering
team.

Whaley slipped a revolver from his belt to the right-hand pocket of
his fur coat.

The door burst open. A man stood on the threshold, a huge figure
crusted with snow, beard and eyebrows ice-matted. He looked like the
storm king who had ridden the gale out of