ve him. It would be easy to slip and fall, and she waited for
that fall. She waited with nerves straining and every faculty alert.

So absorbed was she that she had forgotten the horses, forgotten her
own position, everything, in the interest of the moment. Had it been
otherwise, she must have noticed that something had attracted the
drooping horses' attention. She must have observed the suddenly lifted
heads, and pricked ears. But these things passed her by, as did the
approach of a solitary figure bearing a burden of freshly taken fox
pelts, which quite enveloped its massive shoulders.

The man was approaching round a slight bend in the trail, and the
moment the waiting cart came into view, he stood, startled at the
apparition. Then he whistled softly, and glanced back over the road he
had come. He looked at a narrow point where the trail suddenly ended,
a sharp break where the cliff dropped away abruptly, and further
progress could only be made by an exhausting downward climb by a
skilled mountaineer.

Then he came slowly on, his gray eyes closely scrutinizing the figure
in the cart. In a moment he saw that it was a woman, and, by her
drooping pose, recognized that she was by no means young. His eyes
took on a curious expression--half doubt, half wonder, and his face
grew a shade paler under his tan. But the change only lasted a few
seconds. He quickly pulled himself together, and, shaking his white
head thoughtfully, continued his way toward the vehicle with the
noiseless gait which moccasins ever give to the wearer. He reached the
cart quite unobserved. The woman's whole attention was absorbed by the
climbing man, and the newcomer smiled curiously as he passed a
greeting.

"You've hit a wrong trail, haven't you?" he inquired.

The woman in the cart gave a frantic start, and clutched at the side
rail as though for support. Then her eyes came on a level with the
man's smiling face, and fear gave way to a sudden expression of
relentless hatred.

"You?" she cried, and her lean figure seemed to crouch as though about
to spring.

The man returned her stare without flinching. His eyes still wore
their curious smile.

"Yes," he said. "It is I."

The woman's lips moved. She swallowed as though her throat had
suddenly become parched.

"Moreton Bucklaw," she murmured. "And--and after all these years."

The man nodded. Then several moments passed without a word.

Finally it was the man who spoke. His manner was