dogs in the darkness of the storm, and twice Billy found the burned
ends of matches, where he had stopped to look at his compass. He was
striking a course almost due west. At the farther edge of the swamp
the trail struck a lake, and straight across this Deane had led his
team. The worst of the storm was over now. The wind was slowly
shifting to the south and east, and the fine, steely snow had given
place to a thicker and softer downfall. Billy shuddered as he thought
of what this lake must have been a few hours before, when Isobel and
Deane had crossed it in the thick blackness of the blizzard that had
swept it like a hurricane.

It was half a mile across the lake, and here, fifty yards from shore,
the trail was completely covered. Billy lost no time by endeavoring to
find signs of it in the open, but struck directly for the opposite
timber field and swung along in the shelter of the scrub forest. He
picked up the trail easily. Half an hour later he stopped. Spruce and
balsam grew thick about him, shutting out what was left of the wind.
Here Scottie Deane had stopped to build a fire. Close to the charred
embers was a mass of balsam boughs on which Isobel had rested. Scottie
had made a pot of boiling tea and had afterward thrown the grounds on
the snow. The warm bodies of the dogs had made smooth, round pits in
the snow, and Billy figured that the fugitives had rested for a couple
of hours. They had traveled eight miles through the blizzard without a
fire, and his heart was filled with a sickening pain as he thought of
Isobel Deane and the suffering he had brought to her. For a few
moments there swept over him a revulsion for that thing which he stood
for-- the Law. More than once in his experience he had thought that
its punishment had been greater than the crime. Isobel had suffered,
and was suffering, far more than if Deane had been captured a year
before and hanged. And Deane himself had paid a penalty greater than