turning toward him quickly.

"A little," he said, smiling at her. "Will you help me to sit up,
Marie?"

He saw ahead of him another and more thrilling game than the man-hunt
now. And Marie, unsuspicious, put her arms about the shoulders of the
Pharisee and helped him to rise. They ate their supper with a narrow
table between them. If there had been a doubt in Blake's mind before
that, the half hour in which she sat facing him dispelled it utterly.
At first the amazing beauty of Thoreau's wife had impinged itself upon
his senses with something of a shock. But he was cool now. He was again
master of his old cunning. Pitilessly and without conscience, he was
marshaling the crafty forces of his brute nature for this new and more
thrilling fight--the fight for a woman.

That in representing the Law he was pledged to virtue as well as order
had never entered into his code of life. To him the Law was
force--power. It had exalted him. It had forged an iron mask over the
face of his savagery. And it was the savage that was dominant in him
now. He saw in Marie's dark eyes a great love--love for a murderer.

It was not his thought that he might alienate that. For that look,
turned upon himself, he would have sacrificed his whole world as it had
previously existed. He was scheming beyond that impossibility,
measuring her even as he called himself Duval, counting--not his
chances of success, but the length of time it would take him to succeed.

He had never failed. A man had never beaten him. A woman had never
tricked him. And he granted no possibility of failure now. But--HOW?
That was the question that writhed and twisted itself in his brain even
as he smiled at her over the table and told her of the black days of
Jan's sickness up on the edge of the Barren.

And then it came to him--all at once. Marie did not see. She did not
FEEL. She had no suspicion of this loyal friend of her husband's.

Blake's heart pounded triumphant. He hobbled back to the cot, leaning
on Marie slim shoulder; and as he hobbled he told her how he had helped
Jan into his cabin in just this same way, and how at the end Jan had
collapsed--just as he collapsed when he came to the cot. He pulled
Marie down with him--accidentally. His lips touched her head. He
laughed.

For a few moments he was like a drunken man in his new joy. Willingly
he would have gambled his life on his chance of winning. But confidence
displaced none of his cunning. He rubbed hi