ourney to civilization will be easy."

He spoke lightly, but there was a grave look on his face, and as she
watched him following the snow-shoe tracks to the edge of the ice-bound
lake, Helen Yardely knew that he was much disturbed by the mysterious
visit of the unknown man.

CHAPTER XIV

MYSTERIOUS VISITORS

It was snowing again, driving across the lake in the hard wind and
drifting in a wonderful wreath about the cabin. To go out of doors
would have been the uttermost folly, and Stane busied himself in the
fashioning of snow-shoes which now would be necessary before they could
venture far afield. The girl was engaged in preparing a meal, and the
cabin had an air of domesticity that would probably have utterly misled
any stranger who had chanced to look in. Stane, as he worked, was very
conscious of the girl's presence, and conscious also that from time to
time his companion glanced at him, whilst he bent over the tamarack
frames, weaving in and out the webbing of caribou raw-hide. Those
glances made his heart leap, though he strove hard to appear
unconscious of them. He knew that in her, as in him, the weeks of
intimate companionship so dramatically begun had borne its inevitable
fruit. The promise she had forced from him but a few days ago came to
his mind as he stooped lower over the half-finished snow-shoe. Would he
ever be able to redeem it? Would he ever be able to tell her what was
in his heart, what indeed had been there since the moment of their
first meeting at Fort Malsun?

Between him and the desire of his heart rose those bitter years in
prison. Until the stain upon his name was removed and the judgment of
the court expurged, he felt he could not tell her what he wished, what
indeed he was sure she would not be averse to hearing. Of Helen herself
he had no doubt. She already had declared her faith in his innocence,
and the generosity of her nature in all its depth and breadth had been
revealed to him. To her, the years of his prison life were as though
they had never been, or at the most were an injustice which he had
suffered, and his name in her eyes had suffered no soiling. That if he
spoke she would respond, finely, generously, with all the fulness of
her splendid womanhood, he had no doubt. And yet, he told himself, he
must never speak until he could do so without blame; for whilst to her
the past was nothing, the people among whom she ordinarily moved would
remember, and if she united h