o a decision. Then, jumping up, he slapped his
thigh, and cried aloud:

"By George! I'll do it. Charley Seguis can wait. I'll back Jean's
common sense and intuition against the blue laws of the whole
Hudson Bay Company."

Presently, he began to dream over the last part of the almost
impersonal letter, reading into it his own fond interpretations,
and holding imaginary interviews with this girl, who looked like
a saint in a stained-glass window, because of the glorious aureole
of her red-bronze hair.

What a woman she was! What a woman! Innocent, clean-minded, vigorous,
virile with that feminine aristocracy of perfect pureness! Ah, she
was no wife for your dance-haunting young millionaire. The man
who won her must fight for her, fight like a tiger for its young,
fight even the girl herself, because in her unstirred nature was
all the virginal resistance to surrender that belongs to a wild
creature of the dim trails.

So, Donald dreamed on, while the traveling wolf-packs howled in
the distance, the trees split with the report of ordnance, and the
fire burned low.

CHAPTER IV

INTO THE DANGER ZONE

From Voudrin's tumble-down shanty Sturgeon Lake was nearly a hundred
miles southwest. Given rivers and lakes to traverse, McTavish
could almost do the distance in a day, for Mistisi, his leader dog,
was an animal of tremendous strength and remarkable intelligence.
But in this wilderness of rock-strewn barrens and thick forest it
would take at least two.

Leaving notice of his having occupied the cabin by marking a clean
board with a charred ember, McTavish set forth again, and by the
hardest kind of work covered fifty miles the first day. The second
morning, finding caribou tracks, he delayed his departure until he
had killed a fat cow, for his supplies were running low.

His way now led up one of the tiny tributaries of the Sachigo. At
a point directly east of a little river that emptied into the
southern end of Sturgeon Lake', he struck across country again
until he reached this stream. From there his work was simpler, and
the dogs, again on a river-bed, made fast time.

Having once determined to give up his chase of Charley Seguis
temporarily, McTavish put the matter out of his mind, and bent all
his energies to the work at hand. Late on the afternoon of the
second day, he knew he was approaching the lake, and proceeded
cautiously, hugging the banks with their dark background of forests.
At length, the s