ing. Ten years of seeking after human prey had
given to him many of the characteristics of a fox. For six of those ten
years he had represented law north of fifty-three. Now he had come to
the end of his last hunt, close up to the Arctic Circle. For one
hundred and eighty-seven days he had been following a man. The hunt had
begun in midsummer, and it was now midwinter. Billy Loring, who was
wanted for murder, had been a hard man to find. But he was caught at
last, and Brokaw was keenly exultant. It was his greatest achievement.
It would mean a great deal for him down at headquarters.

In the rough and dimly lighted cabin his man sat opposite him, on a
bench, his manacled hands crossed over his knees. He was a younger man
than Brokaw--thirty, or a little better. His hair was long, reddish,
and untrimmed. A stubble of reddish beard covered his face. His eyes,
too, were blue--of the deep, honest blue that one remembers, and most
frequently trusts. He did not look like a criminal. There was something
almost boyish in his face, a little hollowed by long privation. He was
the sort of man that other men liked. Even Brokaw, who had a heart like
flint in the face of crime, had melted a little.

"Ugh!" he shivered. "Listen to that beastly wind! It means three days
of storm." Outside a gale was blowing straight down from the Arctic.
They could hear the steady moaning of it in the spruce tops over the
cabin, and now and then there came one of those raging blasts that
filled the night with strange shrieking sounds. Volleys of fine, hard
snow beat against the one window with a rattle like shot. In the cabin
it was comfortable. It was Billy's cabin. He had built it deep in a
swamp, where there were lynx and fisher cat to trap, and where he had
thought that no one could find him. The sheet-iron stove was glowing
hot. An oil lamp hung from the ceiling. Billy was sitting so that the
glow of this fell in his face. It scintillated on the rings of steel
about his wrists. Brokaw was a cautious man, as well as a clever one,
and he took no chances.

"I like storms--when you're inside, an' close to a stove," replied
Billy. "Makes me feel sort of--safe." He smiled a little grimly. Even
at that it was not an unpleasant smile.

Brokaw's snow-reddened eyes gazed at the other.

"There's something in that," he said. "This storm will give you at
least three days more of life."

"Won't you drop that?" asked the prisoner, turning his face a little