ess, a living voice and yet strange with the chill of
death. "In those ten minutes he told me--that! If you fail--"

It was her throat that held him, fascinated him. White, slim,
beautiful--her heart seemed pulsing there. And he could see that heart
choke back the words she was about to speak.

"If I fail--" he repeated the words slowly after her, watching that
white, beating throat.

"There is only the one thing left for me to do. You--you--understand?"

"Yes, I understand. Therefore I shall not fail."

He backed away from her toward the door, and still he could not take
his eyes from the white throat with its beating heart. "I shall not
fail," he repeated. "And when the telephone rings, you will be here--to
answer?"

"Yes, here," she replied huskily.

He went out. Under his feet the gravelly path ran through a flood of
moonlight. Over him the sky was agleam with stars. It was a white
night, one of those wonderful gold-white nights in the land of the
Saskatchewan. Under that sky the world was alive. The little city lay
in a golden glimmer of lights. Out of it rose a murmur, a rippling
stream of sound, the voice of its life, softened by the little valley
between. Into it Keith descended. He passed men and women, laughing,
talking, gay. He heard music. The main street was a moving throng. On a
corner the Salvation Army, a young woman, a young man, a crippled boy,
two young girls, and an old man, were singing "Nearer, My God, to
Thee." Opposite the Board of Trade building on the edge of the river a
street medicine-fakir had drawn a crowd to his wagon. To the beat of
the Salvation Army's tambourine rose the thrum of a made-up negro's
banjo.

Through these things Keith passed, his eyes open, his ears listening,
but he passed swiftly. What he saw and what he heard pressed upon him
with the chilling thrill of that last swan-song, the swan-song of Ecla,
of Kobat, of Ty, who had heard their doom chanted from the
mountain-tops. It was the city rising up about his cars in rejoicing
and triumph. And it put in his heart a cold, impassive anger. He sensed
an impending doom, and yet he was not afraid. He was no longer chained
by dreams, no more restrained by self. Before his eyes, beating,
beating, beating, he saw that tremulous heart in Miriam Kirkstone's
soft, white throat.

He came to Shan Tung's. Beyond the softly curtained windows it was a
yellow glare of light. He entered and met the flow of life, the murmur
of voic