er that they had come to the last
battle-field, that this journey which Jim now must take would decide
all, would give them perfect peace or lifelong pain. The shadow of
battle was over them, but he had no foreboding, no premonition; he had
never been so full of spirits and life.

To her adjuration Jim replied by burying his face in her golden hair,
and he whispered: "Say, I've done near four years, my girl. I think I'm
all right now--I think. This last six months, it's been easy--pretty
fairly easy."

"Four months more, only four months more--God be good to us!" she said
with a little gasp.

If he held out for four months more, the first great stage in their
life--journey would be passed, the stake won.

"I saw a woman get an awful fall once," Jim said suddenly. "Her bones
were broken in twelve places, and there wasn't a spot on her body
without injury. They set and fixed up every broken bone except one. It
was split down. They didn't dare perform the operation; she couldn't
stand it. There was a limit to pain, and she had reached the boundary.
Two years went by, and she got better every way, but inside her leg
those broken pieces of bone were rubbing against each other. She tried
to avoid the inevitable operation, but nature said, 'You must do it, or
die in the end.' She yielded. Then came the long preparations for the
operation. Her heart shrank, her mind got tortured. She'd suffered
too much. She pulled herself together, and said, 'I must conquer this
shrinking body of mine, by my will. How shall I do it?' Something within
her said, 'Think and do for others. Forget yourself.' And so, as they
got her ready for her torture, she visited hospitals, agonised cripple
as she was, and smiled and talked to the sick and broken, telling them
of her own miseries endured and dangers faced, of the boundary of human
suffering almost passed; and so she got her courage for her own trial.
And she came out all right in the end. Well, that's the way I've felt
sometimes. But I'm ready for my operation now whenever it comes, and
it's coming, I know. Let it come when it must." He smiled. There came
a knock at the door, and presently Sewell entered. "The Commissioner
wishes you to come over, sir," he said.

"I was just coming, Sewell. Is all ready for the start?"

"Everything's ready, sir, but there's to be a change of orders.
Something's happened--a bad job up in the Cree country, I think."

A few minutes later Jim was in the Comm