ear on your word of honor to let me know the moment
Shan Tung returns?"

"I will let you know."

Their hands clasped. Looking into her eyes, Keith saw what told him his
was not the greatest cross to bear. Miriam Kirkstone also was fighting
for her life, and as he turned to leave her, he said:

"While there is life there is hope. In settling my score with Shan Tung
I believe that I shall also settle yours. It is a strong hunch, Miss
Kirkstone, and it's holding me tight. Ten days, Shan Tung, and then--"

He left her, smiling. Miriam Kirkstone watched him go, her slim hands
clutched at her breast, her eyes aglow with a new thought, a new hope;
and as he heard the gate slam behind him, a sobbing cry rose in her
throat, and she reached out her hands as if to call him back, for
something was telling her that through this man lay the way to her
salvation.

And her lips were moaning softly, "Ten days--ten days--and then--what?"

XIX

In those ten days all the wonders of June came up out of the south.
Life pulsed with a new and vibrant force. The crimson fire-flowers,
first of wild blooms to come after snow and frost, splashed the green
spaces with red. The forests took on new colors, the blue of the sky
grew nearer, and in men's veins the blood ran with new vigor and
anticipations. To Keith they were all this and more. Four years along
the rim of the Arctic had made it possible for him to drink to the full
the glory of early summer along the Saskatchewan. And to Mary Josephine
it was all new. Never had she seen a summer like this that was dawning,
that most wonderful of all the summers in the world, which comes in
June along the southern edge of the Northland.

Keith had played his promised part. It was not difficult for him to
wipe away the worst of McDowell's suspicions regarding Miss Kirkstone,
for McDowell was eager to believe. When Keith told him that Miriam was
on the verge of a nervous breakdown simply because of certain trouble
into which Shan Tung had inveigled her brother, and that everything
would be straightened out the moment Shan Tung returned from Winnipeg,
the iron man seized his hands in a sudden burst of relief and gratitude.

"But why didn't she confide in me, Conniston?" he complained. "Why
didn't she confide in me?" The anxiety in his voice, its note of
disappointment, were almost boyish.

Keith was prepared. "Because--"

He hesitated, as if projecting the thing in his mind. "McDowell,