Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/150

136 chance of success came a more dogged determination to drive themselves to their task. If they rowed through icy surf to rocky shores and, half soaked, tramped hours on end in their useless search, they did it with even greater cheerfulness the harder and more vain their work grew.

By common consent Margaret and Latham had ceased to discuss chances; yet to her each glance from him now inquired: "Have you given him up?" Each tone of his voice, no matter what the words were, said to her: "You know no one'll ever find him. I've won you now; you have to give up."

And in her tones, though her words did not relate to the matter at all, she said: "Not yet. Not yet. Not yet."

Yet as her soul said that she trembled. It was not because she had given up Eric—she knew now that she never could do that; but it was because she knew that by the terms of her pledge to Price he soon might claim her and she could not deny his right.

The evidence which they had found at Mason Land, which told them Eric had