furtively about her, but did not reply. His lips drew straight, in a stern, uncompromising Line. "In case you hadn't noticed the uniform," he said, "I'm Corporal Dexter, R.C.M.P. If you tried to get away, it would be my business to bring you back again, even if it meant a journey of months and thousands of miles. Your hand's badly cut. Sit down while I dress it."

He released her, stepping back a pace, and she managed to keep her feet without his support. Swinging the beam of light towards her, he regarded her with swiftly appraising eyes. His previous impression of fresh and vivid youth was instantly corroborated. She could not have been twenty years old. Under happier circumstances, in any other place, he would have supposed her to be some boarding school Miss who had ventured out of doors for winter sports—tobogganing, perhaps.

Her costume carried out the fiction: fine, shapely boots of soft glove leather, with thick, ribbed arctic hose rolled half-way from the knee over the cuffs of laced Mackinaw breeches; gauntlet mittens of white, fluffy lamb's wool, and a heavy, white, snug-fitting sweater, "V"-cut at the neck, leaving her rounded throat bare to the weather. She seemed pathetically small and defenseless as she faced him alone in the midst of a great, savage wilderness; but as he recalled the recent encounter in the burning cabin, he smiled with inward cynicism. She had taught him that she was competent to take care of herself.

She stirred uneasily under his cool scrutiny, and finally with short, careful steps, she moved to a snow-covered boulder by the brookside and sat down. From the ground at her feet she picked up a white knitted cap and pulled it tightly over her unruly hair. She remained silent, watching Dexter from under lowered lashes.

With a packet of surgical tape in hand, he advanced and dropped on one knee beside her. Indifferently, she allowed him to examine her injured hand.

"What's your name?" he asked, his deft fingers busy with the dressings.

"Alison Rayne," she told him after a second's hesitation.

He touched her wounded palm, and the texture of the skin was smooth and soft. Whoever she might be, she certainly did not belong in this harsh country where life is supported by disfiguring toil. "Where are you from?" he inquired.

"From the south," she answered evasively.

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