putting a tension on
his firm young muscles. But go however he would, the white skater went
faster. After a time, as he glanced at the cold gleam of the north star,
he perceived that he was being led from his direct path. For a moment
he hesitated, wondering if he would not better keep to his road, but his
weird companion seemed to draw him on irresistibly, and finding it sweet
to follow, he followed.

Of course it came to him more than once in that strange pursuit, that
the white skater was no earthly guide. Up in those latitudes men see
curious things when the hoar frost is on the earth. Hagadorn's own
father--to hark no further than that for an instance!--who lived up
there with the Lake Superior Indians, and worked in the copper mines,
had welcomed a woman at his hut one bitter night, who was gone by
morning, leaving wolf tracks on the snow! Yes, it was so, and John
Fontanelle, the half-breed, could tell you about it any day--if he were
alive. (Alack, the snow where the wolf tracks were, is melted now!)

Well, Hagadorn followed the white skater all the night, and when the ice
flushed pink at dawn, and arrows of lovely light shot up into the cold
heavens, she was gone, and Hagadorn was at his destination. The sun
climbed arrogantly up to his place above all other things, and as
Hagadorn took off his skates and glanced carelessly lakeward, he beheld
a great wind-rift in the ice, and the waves showing blue and hungry
between white fields. Had he rushed along his intended path, watching
the stars to guide him, his glance turned upward, all his body at
magnificent momentum, he must certainly have gone into that cold grave.

How wonderful that it had been sweet to follow the white skater, and
that he followed!

His heart beat hard as he hurried to his friend's house. But he
encountered no wedding furore. His friend met him as men meet in houses
of mourning.

"Is this your wedding face?" cried Hagadorn. "Why, man, starved as I am,
I look more like a bridegroom than you!"

"There's no wedding to-day!"

"No wedding! Why, you're not--"

"Marie Beaujeu died last night--"

"Marie--"

"Died last night. She had been skating in the afternoon, and she came
home chilled and wandering in her mind, as if the frost had got in it
somehow. She grew worse and worse, and all the time she talked of you."

"Of me?"

"We wondered what it meant. No one knew you were lovers."

"I didn't know it myself; more's the pity. At least