Still later he heated the muzzle of his revolver in the flame of the
seal-oil.

"It will hurt, old chap--putting this scar over your eye. But it's got
to be done. I say, won't it be a ripping joke on McDowell?" Softly he
repeated it, smiling into Keith's eyes. "A ripping joke--on McDowell!"



III

Dawn--the dusk of another night--and Keith raised his haggard face from
Conniston's bedside with a woman's sob on his lips. The Englishman had
died as he knew that he would die, game to the last threadbare breath
that came out of his body. For with this last breath he whispered the
words which he had repeated a dozen times before, "Remember, old chap,
you win or lose the moment McDowell first sets his eyes on you!" And
then, with a strange kind of sob in his chest, he was gone, and Keith's
eyes were blinded by the miracle of a hot flood of tears, and there
rose in him a mighty pride in the name of Derwent Conniston.

It was his name now. John Keith was dead. It was Derwent Conniston who
was living. And as he looked down into the cold, still face of the
heroic Englishman, the thing did not seem so strange to him after all.
It would not be difficult to bear Conniston's name; the difficulty
would be in living up to the Conniston code.

That night the rumble of the ice fields was clearer because there was
no wind to deaden their tumult. The sky was cloudless, and the stars
were like glaring, yellow eyes peering through holes in a vast,