unclasped. Conniston filled his pipe and lighted it. Keith
noticed that he held the lighted taper without a tremor. The nerve of
the man was magnificent.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I--like you. Do you know, Keith, I wish
we'd been born brothers and you hadn't killed a man. That night I
slipped the ring-dogs on you I felt almost like a devil. I wouldn't say
it if it wasn't for this bally lung. But what's the use of keeping it
back now? It doesn't seem fair to keep a man up in that place for three
years, running from hole to hole like a rat, and then take him down for
a hanging. I know it isn't fair in your case. I feel it. I don't mean
to be inquisitive, old chap, but I'm not believing Departmental 'facts'
any more. I'd make a topping good wager you're not the sort they make
you out. And so I'd like to know--just why--you killed Judge Kirkstone?"

Keith's two fists knotted in the center of the table. Conniston saw his
blue eyes darken for an instant with a savage fire. In that moment
there came a strange silence over the cabin, and in that silence the
incessant and maddening yapping of the little white foxes rose shrilly
over the distant booming and rumbling of the ice.

II

"Why did I kill Judge Kirkstone?" Keith repeated the words slowly.

His clenched hands relaxed, but his eyes held the steady glow of fire.
"What do the Departmental 'facts' tell you, Conniston?"

"That you murdered him in cold blood, and that the honor of the Service
is at stake until you are hung."

"There's a lot in the view-point, isn't there? What if I said I didn't
kill Judge Kirkstone?"

Conniston leaned forward a little too eagerly. The deadly paroxysm
shook his frame again, and when it was over his breath came pantingly,
as if hissing through a sieve. "My God, not Sunday--or Saturday," he
breathed. "Keith, it's coming TOMORROW!"

"No, no, not then," said Keith, choking back something that rose in his
throat. "You'd better lie down again."

Conniston gathered new strength. "And die like a rabbit? No, thank you,
old chap! I'm after facts, and you can't lie to a dying man. Did you
kill Judge Kirkstone?"

"I--don't--know," replied Keith slowly, looking steadily into the
other's eyes. "I think so, and yet I am not positive. I went to his
home that night with the determination to wring justice from him or
kill him. I wish you could look at it all with my eyes, Conniston. You
could if you had known my father. You see, my mot