Isobel | Page 4

wished that he had
brought along one of his tired dogs to keep him company.
He was accustomed to loneliness; he had laughed in the face of things
that had driven other men mad. But to-night there seemed to be
something about him that he had never known before, something that
wormed its way deep down into his soul and made his pulse beat faster.
He thought of Pelliter on his fever bed, of Scottie Deane, and then of
himself. After all, was there much to choose between the three of them?
A picture rose slowly before him in the bush-fire, and in that picture he
saw Scottie, the man-hunted man, fighting a great fight to keep himself
from being hung by the neck until he was dead; and then he saw
Pelliter, dying of the sickness which comes of loneliness, and beyond
those two, like a pale cameo appearing for a moment out of gloom, he
saw the picture of a face. It was a girl's face, and it was gone in an
instant. He had hoped against hope that she would write to him again.
But she had failed him.
He rose to his feet with a little laugh, partly of joy and partly of pain, as
he thought of the true heart that was waiting for Pelliter. He tied on his

snow-shoes and struck out over the Barren. He moved swiftly, looking
sharply ahead of him. The night grew brighter, the stars more brilliant.
The zipp, zipp, zipp of the tails of his snow-shoes was the only sound
he heard except the first faint, hissing monotone of the aurora in the
northern skies, which came to him like the shivering run of steel sledge
runners on hard snow.
In place of sound the night about him began to fill with ghostly life. His
shadow beckoned and grimaced ahead of him, and the stunted bush
seemed to move. His eyes were alert and questing. Within himself he
reasoned that he would see nothing, and yet some unusual instinct
moved him to caution. At regular intervals he stopped to listen and to
sniff the air for an odor of smoke. More and more he became like a
beast of prey. He left the last bush behind him. Ahead of him the starlit
space was now unbroken by a single shadow. Weird whispers came
with a low wind that was gathering in the north.
Suddenly MacVeigh stopped and swung his rifle into the crook of his
arm. Something that was not the wind had come up out of the night. He
lifted his fur cap from his ears and listened. He heard it again, faintly,
the frosty singing of sledge runners. The sledge was approaching from
the open Barren, and he cleared for action. He took off his heavy fur
mittens and snapped them to his belt, replaced them with his light
service gloves, and examined his revolver to see that the cylinder was
not frozen. Then he stood silent and waited.
II
BILLY MEETS THE WOMAN
Out of the gloom a sledge approached slowly. It took form at last in a
dim shadow, and MacVeigh saw that it would pass very near to him.
He made out, one after another, a human figure, three dogs, and the
toboggan. There was something appalling in the quiet of this specter of
life looming up out of the night. He could no longer hear the sledge,
though it was within fifty paces of him. The figure in advance walked
slowly and with bowed head, and the dogs and the sledge followed in a
ghostly line. Human leader and animals were oblivious to MacVeigh,
silent and staring in the white night. They were opposite him before he
moved.
Then he strode out quickly, with a loud holloa. At the sound of his
voice there followed a low cry, the dogs stopped in their traces, and the

figure ran back to the sledge. MacVeigh drew his revolver. Half a
dozen long strides and he had reached the sledge. From the opposite
side a white face stared at him, and with one hand resting on the
heavily laden sledge, and his revolver at level with his waist,
MacVeigh stared back in speechless astonishment.
For the great, dark, frightened eyes that looked across at him, and the
white, staring face he recognized as the eyes and the face of a woman.
For a moment he was unable to move or speak, and the woman raised
her hands and pushed back her fur hood so that he saw her hair
shimmering in the starlight. She was a white woman. Suddenly he saw
something in her face that struck him with a chill, and he looked down
at the thing under his hand. It was a long, rough box. He