tween
Alaska and Asia in the gateway of the Pole. We ran before it with a
strip of the boom-foresail on her and a jib that blew to ribands every
now and then. She was a little schooner of ninety tons or so, and for
most of a week she scudded with the grey seas tumbling after her,
white-topped, out of the snow and spume. They ranged high above her
taffrail curling horribly, but one did not want to look at them. The
one man on deck had a line about him, and he looked ahead, watching her
screwing round with hove-up bows as she climbed the seas. If he'd let
her fall off or claw up, the next one would have made an end of her.
He was knee deep half the time in icy brine, and his hands had split
and opened with the frost, but the sweat dripped from him as he clung
to the jarring wheel. One of those helmsmen--perhaps two--had another
trouble which preyed on them. They were thinking of the three men they
had left behind.

"Well," he added, "we ran out of the gale, and I had bitter words to
face when we reached Vancouver. As one result of it I walked out of
the city with four or five dollars in my pocket--though there was a
share due to me. Then I rode up into the ranges in an open car to mend
railroad bridges in the frost and snow. It was not the kind of
home-coming one would care to look forward to."

"Ah," said Agatha, "it must have been horribly dreary?"

The man met her eyes. "Yes," he said, "you--know. You came here from
far away, I think a little weary, too, and something failed you. Then
you felt yourself adrift. There were--it seemed--only strangers round
you, but you were wrong in one respect; you were by no means a stranger
to me."

He had been leaning against a birch trunk, but now he moved a little
nearer, and stood gravely looking down on her.

"You have sent Gregory away?" he said.

"Yes," said Agatha, and, startled as she was, it did not strike her
that the mere admission was misleading.

Wyllard stretched his hands out. "Then won't you come to me?"

The blood swept into the girl's face. For the moment she forgot
Gregory, and was only conscious of an unreasoning impulse which
prompted her to take the hands held out to her. Then she rose and
faced the man, with burning cheeks.

"You know nothing of me," she said. "Can you think that I would let
you take me--out of charity?"

"Again you're wrong--on both points. As I once told you, I have sat
for hours beside the fire beneath the pine