Scoland and the sailor pushed inland as nearly on a straight course from the harbor as the conformation of the ground over which they traveled would allow. The captain kept a keen eye on the peaks of the barrier range, comparing them often with the map of Polaris. When he came at length to the appearance of a trail extending to the south at a right angle to the path he followed, Scoland had the aid of the bright sun to determine that it was the Hunters' Road. With his glasses he could see dimly in the southern distance the shimmering heights of the hills that ringed Sardanes. Coming to the foothills, and finding in the snowdrifts the storehouse of the Sardanian hunters, where Minos and his men were accustomed to leave their sledges, Scoland and Parkerson knew that they had found the place they sought. "No fire. Not a sign of smoke or fire," said Scoland, surveying the towering rim of the mountain range above them. "I'm afraid our men found nothing living here, if they found their way here at all." "If they got here, where can they be?" Parkerson said. "There'd be nothing to keep them here this long, unless they met a mishap of some sort." "Well, we shall soon see," Scoland replied. "Here appears to be a cut through the hills." They guided the dogs up through the north pass. In another half an hour they stood in the notch, and had their first view of Sardanes--green Sardanes no longer, but aglitter down all its length with cold, cruel silver and glass. As he gazed down that long and silent vista, the heart of Scoland leaped furiously, and his brain was overwhelmed with a flood of thoughts that shook even his iron control. Polaris was gone! The outlander who had thwarted so the ambitions of the captain had perished! The son of the wilderness who had turned Scoland's mighty discovery into a second place achievement, who had won from him the one woman in the world, who had broken through his fine web of painstaking precaution, and had triumphed at every turn of the wheel, no longer stood in his path! Scoland's breast swelled. His eyes glittered. He, Captain James Scoland, should be the victor yet, in spite of all! He would go back to America and wrest from the heart of the girl the phantom that now was his only rival. With that thought came the quick resolve that, did the man of the snows still live, he must look to himself. Now Scoland knew the meaning of his uneasiness. Clearly into his mind trooped, naked and unashamed, the horde of black thoughts that for weeks had kept him company, but that had not dared to push themselves into the light of his brain where he might know them for what they were. He welcomed them now. This was why he had left the ship and come this journey through the snows. This was why he had brought one man only with him. All in an instant his mind was fixed, his course laid. That Polaris Janess had given him life, once, mattered not at all. * * * * *