Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/78

76 frozen snow along the trail filled up the infinite desolate silence. Tempest felt tired to his very soul; lifeless, devitalized, with his whole world lying flat before him. There was no one in all the earth who could look into his eyes and give him the sympathy of understanding. No one to whom he could tell what it meant to him to see the man he still loved degrading the law in the name of the law. He stood alone in this infinitely lonely life of his. Alone with his six-fold weekly reports; with the breeds who complained when their pigs were strayed; with the white men who complained when their yards were strayed into. He stood alone all the days of his life, with the regular patrols, the settlement of little sordid matters, the suggestion of law and order which he carried on his own body where he went. For him there was no wife to make the whole world suddenly bright with her presence; no rosy little son in the cot to which a man tip-toes on unshod feet; no home-light other than Poley's lamp to call to him.

These are some of the prices which men pay for the furtherment of Empire, and until this hour Tempest had been proud that he was paying them. Now he trod on with depression bowing his shoulders, for this contemplated sin of Dick's seemed to foul the whole work and shame it.

Then he looked up idly, and far down the streak of trail he saw her running—running straight into his sight and his life and his heart, unhesitating, unknowing. She ran with the long easy Indian lope, and she was white as the winter ermine and nearly as lithe in her long fur coat and her round fur cap with the ear-pieces.

A young moose slung beside her with long fiddle-head and loose lips up, sniffing the taint of man. She came like the strange wild breath that blows in the forest, God only knew why and where and how, and within a man's length of Tempest the moose propped stiffly, making little complaining cries like a child. The girl flung an arm over the rough crest, and the two looked at Tempest with the wide wild soft eyes of the forest-born. The girl was tall and straight. Black hair crisped in curls round the olive oval face where Tempest did not notice the