that things were twisting about him and that there was a strange
weakness in his limbs. Dumbly he raised his hands to his head, which
hurt him until he felt as if he must cry out in his pain.

"The girl--" he gasped weakly.

Croisset's arm tightened about his waist.

"She ees gone!" Howland heard him say; and there was something in the
half-breed's low voice that caused him to turn unquestioningly and
stagger along beside him in the direction of Prince Albert.

And yet as he went, only half-conscious of what he was doing, and
leaning more and more heavily on his companion, he knew that it was more
than the girl's disappearance that he wanted to understand. For as the
blow had fallen on his head he was sure that he had heard a woman's
scream; and as he lay in the snow, dazed and choking, spending his last
effort in his struggle for life, there had come to him, as if from an
infinite distance, a woman's voice, and the words that it had uttered
pounded in his tortured brain now as his head dropped weakly against
Croisset's shoulder.

"_Mon Dieu_, you are killing him--killing him!"

He tried to repeat them aloud, but his voice sounded only in an
incoherent murmur. Where the forest came down to the edge of the river
the half-breed stopped.

"I must carry you, M'seur Howland," he said; and as he staggered out on
the ice with his inanimate burden, he spoke softly to himself, "The