t ahead of him. Fifty yards! It was not much, and
shortening swiftly.

Once more the Willow's lips moved. After all, it is the mother soul
that gives us faith to meet eternity--and it was to the spirit of her
mother that the Willow called in the hour of death. With the call on
her lips she plunged into the abyss, her wind-whipped hair clinging to
her in a glistening shroud.

CHAPTER 22

A moment later the factor from Lac Bain stood at the edge of the chasm.
His voice had called out in a hoarse bellow--a wild cry of disbelief
and horror that had formed the Willow's name as she disappeared. He
looked down, clutching his huge red hands and staring in ghastly
suspense at the boiling water and black rocks far below. There was
nothing there now--no sign of her, no last flash of her pale face and
streaming hair in the white foam. And she had done THAT--to save
herself from him!

The soul of the man-beast turned sick within him, so sick that he
staggered back, his vision blinded and his legs tottering under him. He
had killed Pierrot, and it had been a triumph. All his life he had
played the part of the brute with a stoicism and cruelty that had known
no shock--nothing like this that overwhelmed him now, numbing him to
the marrow of his bones until he stood like one paralyzed. He did not
see Baree. He did not hear the dog's whining cries at the edge of the
chasm. For a few moments the world turned black for him. And then,
dragging himself out of his stupor, he ran frantically along the edge
of the gorge, looking down wherever his eyes could see the water,
striving for a glimpse of her. At last it grew too deep. There was no
hope. She was gone--and she had faced that to escape him!

He mumbled that fact over and over again, stupidly, thickly, as though
his brain could grasp nothing beyond it. She was dead. And Pierrot was
dead. And he, in a few minutes, had accomplished it all.

He turned back toward the cabin--not by the trail over which he had
pursued Nepeese, but straight through the thick bush. Great flakes of
snow had begun to fall. He looked at the sky, where banks of dark
clouds were rolling up from the south and east. The sun disappeared.
Soon there would be a storm--a heavy snowstorm. The big flakes falling
on his naked hands and face set his mind to work. It was lucky for him,
this storm. It would cover everything--the fresh trails, even the grave
he would dig for Pierrot.

It does not take such a man as t