ht of fancy did she
disregard the task which must be performed to gain that wealth.

It meant traveling upward in the great snowbound reaches of Vermont
mountain-country and tracking down a murderer who had killed a
second time to gain his freedom and would stop at nothing again.

And yet--_five thousand dollars_!

How much will a person do, how far will a normal human being travel,
to earn five thousand dollars--if the need is sufficiently
provocative?

As Cora McBride sat there in the homely little farmhouse kitchen and
thought of the debts still existent, contracted to save the already
stricken lives of two little lads forgotten now by all but herself
and Duncan and God, of the chances of losing their home if Duncan
could work no more and pay up the balance of their mortgage, of the
days when Duncan must lie in the south bedroom alone and count the
figures on the wallpaper--as she sat there and contemplated these
things, into Cora McBride's heart crept determination.

At first it was only a faint challenge to her courage. As the
minutes passed, however, her imagination ran riot, with five
thousand dollars to help them in their predicament. The challenge
grew. Multitudes of women down all the years had attempted wilder
ventures for those who were dear to them. Legion in number had been
those who set their hands and hearts to greater tasks, made more
improbable sacrifices, taken greater chances. Multitudes of them, too,
had won--on little else than the courage of ignorance and the
strength of desperation.

She had no fear of the great outdoors, for she had lived close to
the mountains from childhood and much of her old physical resiliency
and youthful daredeviltry remained. And the need was terrible; no
one anywhere in the valley, not even her own people, knew how
terrible.

Cora McBride, alone by her table in the kitchen, that night made her
decision.

She took the kitchen lamp and went upstairs. Lifting the top of a
leather trunk, she found her husband's revolver. With it was a belt
and holster, the former filled with cartridges. In the storeroom
over the back kitchen she unhooked Duncan's mackinaw and found her
own toboggan-cap. From a corner behind some fishing-rods she
salvaged a pair of summer-dried snowshoes; they had facilitated many
a previous hike in the winter woods with her man of a thousand
adventures. She searched until she found the old army-haversack
Duncan used as a game-bag. Its shoulder-s