Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/470

468 he remembered that big Irishman who had died on the Moon-Dance. O'Hara had promised to come back to the man who spoke ill of Grange's Andree, and he was keeping his word.

Dick stood still, pressing his hands over his eyes. The part of his brain which was still clear understood that this fantasy was born of that nerve-connection and of the weakness of his body only. But he did not know how long he was going to believe that. In a sudden spasm of terror he dropped his hand to the revolver in his belt. But he did not pull it out. All his life he had denounced that way out of trouble as cowardice. He had betrayed and broken and destroyed enough. He would not let go that last hold on manhood while any power in him could help it.

But ever after that day he went on with O'Hara stalking him.

The mercilessness of this great Northland which he had served so long became a tangible thing to him now. He had been her lover through many golden moonlights and many sunny days, and at last she had turned on him, mocking his puny struggles, watching the desperate hope which struggled for breath, and quenching the sparks of his life, one by one. Scarp and bluff and rocky ridge took shapes that bowed and gibbered at him; wind whistled elfin cries through the dark. Solitude had never seemed so awful and so relentless until he heard one thin voice piping incoherencies into it and traced that voice back to his own lips. This shock brought him back for a moment to realisation that he was still walking, although it was many, many centuries since Andree died; many, many centuries since he had had anything to eat. He tried to recollect what had happened to the sled and the two remaining dogs, standing still to steady his reeling brain for the effort. And then O'Hara came near and he hurried on.

Never in all these centuries could he see O'Hara fully. Sometimes he would stop and turn sharply, but the man was always just beyond the edge of eyesight. And yet he never failed to drop in close behind as soon as Dick went on. He was the only thing real in this whirling world of shadows, and presently he ceased to be O'Hara. It was the hound of his self-will and his unbelief and his evil