with snow and starlight was not dark, but shadowy and ghostlike, making the interval between two days a long-protracted dusk beneath which it was possible to see for miles. Far away in the forest a timber-wolf howled dismally; the huskies in the river-bed, seated on their haunches, lifted up their heads and echoed his complaint. Then all was still again, nothing was audible except the occasional low booming of the ice, when a crack rent its path across the surface and far below the river shook its gyves, as though clapping its hands in expectation of the freedom of the spring to come.

Against the window the silhouette of Spurling loomed[41] up, with the drifting dimness of the starlight for background, and the square of surrounding darkness for a frame of sombre plush; he seemed a man-portrait whom some painter had condemned forever to motionlessness and silence with the magic of his brush, and had nailed on a stretcher, and had hung up for ornament.

[41]

At last he turned his head and stared into the blackness of the room, searching with his eyes for Granger. "So the deed which you feared to do, I have done," he said. "And here we sit together again, now that three years have passed; I, the man whom you hoped to murder and the man who has committed your crime; you, the man who stole from me, fired on me, missed aim, and ran away, and yet who at this present time are my judge. It is very strange! One would have supposed that with the breadth of a continent between us, you in Keewatin, I in Yukon, we need never have met. There is a meaning in this happening; God intends that you should help me to escape."

 

CHAPTER IV

[42] 

[42]

SPURLING'S TALE

Granger from his place beside the red-hot stove said nothing, but bowed his head. Spurling saw his action through the darkness and took courage.

"There is not much to tell," he said. "After you left us, my luck seemed to vanish. My great bonanza pinched out, as Mordaunt's had done. I spent the spring and summer in washing out the gold from my winter's dump, and in sinking shafts to locate another streak which I might follow in the winter to come. I found none, but at first I did not lose confidence. I had plenty of capital and could well afford to spend some of it in exploration. I 

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