planted a
kiss squarely upon the wide, flat mouth.

"Ah, Lena," she cried, happily, "you--you are a dear!" And the Swedish
woman, with unexpected gentleness, patted the girl's shoulder, and as she
passed out of the door smiled broadly.

For an hour Chloe paced up and down the little room. At first she could
scarcely bring herself to realize that the two men, MacNair and Lapierre,
had changed places. She remembered that in that very room she had more
than once pictured that very thing. As the conviction grew upon her, her
pulse quickened. Never before had she been so supremely--so wildly
happy. There was a strange barbaric singing in her heart, as for the
first time she saw MacNair--the real MacNair at his true worth. MacNair,
the big man, the really great man, strong and brave, alone in the North
fighting, night and day, against the snarling wolves of the world-waste.
Fighting for the good of his Indians and the right of things as they
should be.

Her mind dwelt upon the fine courage and the patience of him. She
recalled the hurt look in his eyes when she ordered his arrest. She
remembered his words to the officer--words of kindly apology for her own
blind folly. She penetrated the rough exterior, and read the real
gentleness of his soul. And then, with a shame and mortification that
almost overwhelmed her, she saw herself as she must appear to him. She
recollected how she had accused him, had sneered at him, had called him a
liar and a thief, a murderer, and worse.

Tears streamed unheeded from her eyes as she recalled the unconscious
pathos of his words as he stood beside his mother's grave. And the look
of reproach with which he sank, to the ground when Lapierre's bullet laid
him low. Her heart thrilled at the memory of the blazing wrath of him,
the cold gleam of his eyes, the wicked snap of his iron jaw, as he said,
"I have taken the man-trail!" She remembered the words he had once
spoken: "When you have learned the North, we shall be friends." She
wondered now if possibly this thing could ever be? Had she learned the
North? Could she ever atone in his eyes for her cocksureness, her blind
egotism?

Chloe quickened her pace, as if to walk away and leave these things
behind. How she hated herself! It seemed to her, in her shame and
mortification, that she could never look into this man's eyes again. Her
glance strayed to the portrait of Tiger Elliston that stared down at her
from its bullet-