nd with every
muscle and feature alive with rage and fury, seemed about to transfix
the senseless body of the dead. Then a change came over him; he lowered
his arm, dropped the useless weapon, and burst into tears.

"Come, Regnie, you are worn out, and it is growing late; let us hasten
back to our new hut. To-morrow we can return and look after this poor
stranger."

"Stranger! He is no stranger to me. For two years I have sought him in
both hemispheres, urged on by the love of my only relative whom he
betrayed, and hatred of him which could end but with his life or mine.
My fondest hope was to find him, my dearest wish to lay him dead at my
feet; and thus we meet at last."

"This, then, is the man you have sought, and for this you have hidden
your true character from all men. Is this the gift by which you were to
gain, and I to lose?" said La Salle.

"Ask me no more to-night," said the boy, whose powers of self-control,
were only less marvellous than the innate force of his intense nature.
"We have none too much light for our homeward way, and to-morrow's sun
may help us to learn more of the cause of his death, and our own duty in
the premises. We will say nothing to our friends of this dreadful
matter, and at early dawn we will set off alone to return here;" and
taking the boat-hook and his weapons, Orloff set off with his usual firm
step and tireless energy.

It was nearly dusk when they reached the floe, and saw at some hundreds
of feet distant the moving lantern that told that Peter and Waring were
anxious about the safety of their friends. La Salle hardly dared trust
his voice, but Orloff uttered his well-known halloo; and of the four who
were gathered in that dwelling of ice, the most cheerful and kindly, was
he whose dead enemy lay gazing with stony eyeballs at the wintry skies,
amid a golgotha of animal butchery, with the dark impress of a
rifle-bullet in the centre of his forehead.

That night the cold north-wester died away, and a gentle breeze began to
blow from the south. The tired Indian and the delicately-nurtured
merchant's son slept side by side on their leaf-strewn floor, and even
La Salle, excited and surprised as he had been, at last fell into a
broken slumber. But when all were asleep, and no human eye could pry
into his secret sorrows, Regnar seated himself by the flaring lamp, and
drawing from his breast a locket, took from it a small folded paper, and
a closely-curled ringlet of yellow hair