chopping wood. He knew how to handle an axe. His strokes
fell sure and strong, with the full circling sweep of the expert.

The young tree crashed down and he began to lop off its branches.
Halfway up the trunk he stopped and raised his head to listen.

No sound had come to him. None came now. But dear as a bell he heard
the voice of Win Beresford calling.

"_Help! Help!_"

It was not a cry that had issued from his friend's throat. Tom knew
that. But it was real. It had sprung out of his dire need from the
heart, perhaps in the one instant of time left him, and it had leaped
silently across space straight to the heart of his friend.

Tom kicked into his snowshoes and began to run. He held the axe in his
hand, gripped near the haft. A couple of hundred yards, perhaps, lay
between him and camp, which was just over the brow of a small hill.
The bushes flew past as he swung to his stride. Never had he skimmed
the crust faster, but his feet seemed to be weighted with lead. Then,
as he topped the rise, he saw the disaster he had dreaded.

The constable was crumpling to the ground, his body slack and inert,
while the giant slashed at him with a dub of firewood he had snatched
from the ground. The upraised arm of the soldier broke the force of
the blow, but Morse guessed by the way the arm fell that the bone had
snapped.

At the sound of the scraping runners, West whirled. He lunged
savagely. Even as Tom ducked, a sharp pain shot through his leg from
the force of the glancing blow. The axe-head swung like a circle of
steel. It struck the convict's fur cap. The fellow went down like an
ox in a slaughter-house.

Tom took one look at him and ran to his friend. Beresford was a sorry
sight. He lay unconscious, head and face battered, the blood from his
wounds staining the snow.

The man-hunters had come into the wilderness prepared for emergencies.
Jessie McRae had prepared a small medicine case as a present for the
constable. Morse ran to the sled and found this. He unrolled bandages
and after he had washed the wounds bound them. As he was about to
examine the arm, he glanced up.

For a fraction of a second West's wolfish eyes glared at him before
they took on again the stare of blindness. The man had moved. He had
hitched himself several yards nearer a rifle which stood propped
against a balsam.

The revolver of the deputy constable came to light. "Stop right where
you're at. Don't take another step."

The convict