il we'd fed when he came to our door hungry. I killed
him. And they've hunted me ever since. They'll put a rope round my
neck, an' choke me to death if they catch me--because I came in time to
save her! That's law!

"But they won't find me. I've been up here a year now, and in the
spring I'm going down there--where you come from--back to the Girl and
the Kid. The policemen won't be looking for me then. An' we're going to
some other part of the world, an' live happy. She's waitin' for me, she
an' the kid, an' they know I'm coming in the spring. Yessir, I killed a
man. An' they want to kill me for it. That's the law--Canadian law--the
law that wants an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, an' where
there ain't no extenuatin' circumstance. They call it murder. But it
wasn't--was it?"

He waited for an answer. The mouse seemed going farther and farther
away from him. He leaned more heavily on the table.

"It wasn't--was it?" he persisted.

His arms reached out; his head dropped forward, and the little mouse
scurried to the floor. But Falkner did not know that it had gone.

"I killed him, an' I guess I'd do it again," he said, and his words
were only a whisper. "An' to-night they're prayin' for me down
there--she 'n the kid--an' he's sayin', 'Pa-pa--Pa-pa'; an' they sent
you up--to keep me comp'ny--"

His head dropped wearily upon his arms. The red stove crackled, and
turned slowly black. In the cabin it grew darker, except where the dim
light burned on the table. Outside the storm wailed and screeched down
across the Barren. And after a time the mouse came back. It looked at
Jim Falkner. It came nearer, until it touched the unconscious man's
sleeve. More daringly it ran over his arm. It smelled of his fingers.

Then the mouse returned to the corner of the table, and began eating
the food that Falkner had placed there for it.

The wick of the lamp had burned low when Falkner raised his head. The
stove was black and cold. Outside, the storm still raged, and it was
the shivering shriek of it over the cabin that Falkner first heard. He
felt terribly dizzy, and there was a sharp, knife-like pain just back
of his eyes. By the gray light that came through the one window he knew
that what was left of Arctic day had come. He rose to his feet, and
staggered about like a drunken man as he rebuilt the fire, and he tried
to laugh as the truth dawned upon him that he had been sick, and that
he had rested for hours with his he