f that his and his friend's enemies were not
ahead of him, he had called a halt. The snow had been scraped away, the
little fire built, the ground strewn with boughs. So far the indications
were plain and to be read at a glance. But upright in the snow were two
snow-shoes, and tumbled on the ground was bedding.

Instantly the two men leaped forward. May-may-gwan, her face stolid and
expressionless, but her eyes glowing, stood straight and motionless by
the dogs. Together they laid hold of the smoothly spread top blanket
and swept it aside. Beneath was a jumble of warmer bedding. In it, his
fists clenched, his eyes half open in the horrific surprise of a sudden
calling, lay the Chippewa stabbed to the heart.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The silence of the grave lay over the white world. Deep in the forest a
tree detonated with the frost. There by the cold last night's camp the
four human figures posed, motionless as a wind that has died. Only the
dogs, lolling, stretching, sending the warm steam of their breathing
into the dead air, seemed to stand for the world of life, and the world
of sentient creatures. And yet their very presence, unobtrusive in the
forest shadows, by contrast thrust farther these others into the land of
phantoms and of ghosts.

Then quietly, as with one consent, the three living ones turned away.
The older woodsman stepped into the trail, leading the way for the dogs;
the younger woodsman swung in behind at the gee-pole; the girl followed.
Once more; slowly, as though reluctant, the forest trees resumed their
silent progress past those three toiling in the treadmill of the days.
The camp dropped back; it confused itself in the frost mists; it was
gone, gone into the mystery and the vastness of the North, gone with its
tragedy and its symbol of the greatness of human passion, gone with its
one silent watcher staring at the sky, awaiting the coming of day. The
frost had mercifully closed again about its revelation. No human eye
would ever read that page again.

Each of the three seemed wrapped in the splendid isolation of his own
dream. They strode on sightless, like somnambulists. Only mechanically
they kept the trail, and why they did so they could not have told. No
coherent thoughts passed through their brains. But always the trees,
frost-rimed, drifted past like phantoms; always the occult influences of
the North loomed large on their horizon like mirages, dwindled in the
actuality, but th