strength she would be unfit for the last burst of speed at
the end.

She did not follow the track the four men had left. She knew these
woods too well to lose a precious yard now. Where they had turned here
and there to avoid thick clumps of firs the girl, looking far ahead,
economised strength and shortened distances.

"I _must_ get there first," she cried over and over again. "If these
men will do the sort of thing Wayne says that they have done, if they
will stop at nothing to gain their ends, what hope has he if they
arrest him and charge him with Arthur's murder? There will be
evidence, they will make evidence, and he will be in jail where he can
not help himself."

Once she heard a faint cracking sound under her feet and her heart
stopped. If a ski had broken now-- But it was only a dead brush, snow
covered, and one of the lifeless twigs had snapped. She became more
careful of the way, wary of being tricked by the blinding snow that
appeared level when there were mounds and hollows that might have
broken a ski had she been careless and unlucky. The sudden hideous
fancy leaped out upon her that the breaking of a ski now might mean the
death of a man, the only man in the world for her.

At last, from the crest of the highest ridge, the one from which each
year she took her favourite ride down to the river, she caught sight of
the little party that menaced Wayne Shandon's liberty. The men had
been making better time than she had let herself believe they would;
evidently MacKelvey wanted to get the thing over with, to get back to
the Echo Creek that night. Beyond them, straight ahead, was the bridge.

"I can't do it! I can't do it!" she cried aloud, her voice broken with
hopelessness.

Even as she hesitated, poising upon the top of the rise, one of the men
far ahead turned and saw her. It was Sledge Hume. She saw his quick
gesture; she almost fancied that she could hear his laugh. He would
know why she followed them. He would be mocking her. Oh, how she
hated the man then!

"They will leave one of the deputies at the bridge," she thought in
despair. "He won't let me across. Oh, God, if there were only another
crossing!"

_There was another crossing; a snowshoe rabbit had shown it to her_.
He had sought to leap it just to save the little flame of life in the
tiny furred breast. He had gone to his death valiantly, but he had
shown her the place, the short cut, the way that was full of menace