* * * * * On the hill slope Polaris busied himself making a camp for his huskies, for, said he, "There would be a rare uproar, without end, did I take them in there where the gray brood of my Pallas are." He stamped a circle in the snow, and made a fire of hymanan wood from Minos's store of firewood. He found Minos's sledge and set it against the cliff, with wooden blocks for braces. He rolled a big log into place in front of it, screwed a number of rings which he carried for the purpose into its side, and tethered the huskies, where they might not come at the stores on the other sledge. Some loose robes cast into the hollow behind the log sufficed, and the tired brutes crawled onto them thankfully and curled up for a well-earned rest. So tired were they that they bolted without fighting for the food he threw to them--and it is a tired husky, indeed, that will not try to rob his neighbors of his rations. Presently the step of the son of the snows sounded in the passage to the cave room. The Princess Memene sprang up and faced him. One searching look she gave him, poignant with inquiry. With hands extended as though to ward back a danger, she stepped in front of Minos's couch. "Ah, well I know thee!" she exclaimed. "Thou are that stranger from the North come again to Sardanes. Thou wert his enemy. Thou wouldst not harm him now? Thou canst not have the heart! See, he hath suffered much and lieth low--" "Nay, nay, save thy fears, lady," Polaris answered in the ancient tongue. "Polaris fighteth not with sick men, and would be friend to Minos and to thee. From many a hundred leagues to the north hath he come hither to save whom he might from the doom which this man's knowledge told would fall on thy land." He pointed to Zenas Wright. "My mind recalleth thee not, lady," he continued. "Of what house art thou, and how named?" "Memene, daughter of the Lord Karnaon, am I," replied the girl proudly; and still more proudly, "I am the bride of Minos, King of Sardanes." "And, lady, art thou and the king the last to live in all the valley?" asked the son of the snows eagerly. "I can see sign of none others." "We be the only Sardanians who have not passed the Gateway," the girl replied, "save Kalin the priest, alone, who fared north with thee and the Rose maid." "Then art thou indeed the last," Polaris said, "for Kalin died out yonder in the snows, and these hands did bury him. "Now, lady, take the rest thine eyes do tell me thou needest so much. All shall be well with thee, and thy husband lieth safe in the care of a skilled man. An thou gainsayest me not, I will feed thy gray beasts yonder, and clear thy doors of the carcass of the snow-wanderer there. When thou are refreshed again, we fain would hear from thee how it went with you, how Sardanes fell, and how it is that we found thee so."