rises and sharp turns, taxed their strength. The sun burned down upon
them. Its white glare hurt their eyes, the sweat oozed out from every
pore, and they panted for breath.

"Oh, Vance, do you know . . ."

"What?" He swept the perspiration from his forehead and flung it from
him with a quick flirt of the hand.

"I wish I had eaten more breakfast."

He grunted sympathetically. They had reached the midmost ridge and
could see the open river, and beyond, quite clearly, the man and his
signal of distress. Below, pastoral in its green quiet, lay Split-up
Island. They looked up to the broad bend of the Yukon, smiling lazily,
as though it were not capable at any moment of spewing forth a flood of
death. At their feet the ice sloped down into a miniature gorge,
across which the sun cast a broad shadow.

"Go on, Tommy," Frona bade. "We're half-way over, and there's water
down there."

"It's water ye'd be thinkin' on, is it?" he snarled, "and you a-leadin'
a buddie to his death!"

"I fear you have done some great sin, Tommy," she said, with a
reproving shake of the head, "or else you would not be so afraid of
death." She sighed and picked up her end of the canoe. "Well, I
suppose it is natural. You do not know how to die--"

"No more do I want to die," he broke in fiercely.

"But there come times for all men to die,--times when to die is the
only thing to do. Perhaps this is such a time."

Tommy slid carefully over a glistening ledge and dropped his height to
a broad foothold. "It's a' vera guid," he grinned up; "but dinna ye
think a've suffeecient discreemeenation to judge for mysel'? Why
should I no sing my ain sang?"

"Because you do not know how. The strong have ever pitched the key for
such as you. It is they that have taught your kind when and how to
die, and led you to die, and lashed you to die."

"Ye pit it fair," he rejoined. "And ye do it weel. It doesna behoove
me to complain, sic a michty fine job ye're makin' on it."

"You are doing well," Corliss chuckled, as Tommy dropped out of sight
and landed into the bed of the gorge. "The cantankerous brute! he'd
argue on the trail to Judgment."

"Where did you learn to paddle?" she asked.

"College--exercise," he answered, shortly. "But isn't that fine?
Look!"

The melting ice had formed a pool in the bottom of the gorge. Frona
stretched out full length, and dipped her hot mouth in its coolness.
And lying as she did, the soles of