his touch was velvety in its hint, and he went with
the guiding hand away from the curtained window, smiling in a
companionable way. Jan's teeth gleamed back. The Englishman chuckled.
Then Jan's hands changed. They flew to the thick reddening throat of
the man from civilization, and without a sound the two sank together
upon the snow. It was many minutes before Jan rose to his feet. The
next day Williams set out for Fort Churchill with word for the
Company's home office that the Englishman had died in the "Beeg Snow,"
which was true.

The end was not far away now. Jan was expecting it day by day, hour by
hour. But it came in a way that he did not expect. A month had gone,
and Cummins had not come up from among the Crees. At times there was a
strange light in the woman's eyes as she questioned the men at the
post. Then, one day, the factor's son told Jan that she wanted to see
him in the little cabin at the other end of the clearing.

A shiver went through him as he came to the door. It was more than a
spirit of unrest in Jan to-day, more than suspicion, more than his old
dread of that final moment of the tragedy he was playing, which would
condemn him to everlasting perdition in the woman's eyes. It was pain,
poignant, terrible--something which he could not name, something upon
which he could place his hand, and yet which filled him with a desire
to throw himself upon his face in the snow and sob out his grief as he
had seen the little children do. It was not dread, but the torment of
reality, that gripped him now, and when he faced the woman he knew why.
There had come a terrible change, but a quiet change, in Cummins' wife.
The luster had gone from her eyes. There was a dead whiteness in her
face that went to the roots of her shimmering hair, and as she spoke to
Jan she clutched one hand upon her bosom, which rose and fell as Jan
had seen the breast of a mother lynx rise and fall in the last torture
of its death.

"Jan," she panted, "Jan--you have lied to me!"

Jan's head dropped. The worn caribou skin of his coat crumpled upon his
breast. His heart died. And yet he found voice, soft, low, simple.

"Yes, me lie!"

"You--you lied to me!"

"Yes--me--lie--"

His head dropped lower. He heard the sobbing breath of the woman, and
gently his arm crooked itself, and his fingers rose slowly, very
slowly, toward the hilt of his hunting knife.

"Yes--Mees Cummins--me lie--"

There came a sudden swift, sobbing moveme