Wonderingly the girl followed with her eyes and the direction of his pointing finger. She comprehended. "I--I believe you have told me the truth," she faltered. "They _had_ quarreled. But--but--you said they were the first men you had ever seen. How--what--" Polaris crossed the intervening slope and stood at her side. "That is a long tale, lady," he said simply. "You are in distress. I would help you. Let us go to your camp. Come." The girl raised her eyes to his, and they gazed long at one another. Polaris saw a slender figure of nearly his own height. She was clad in heavy woolen garments. A hooded cap framed the long oval of her face. The eyes that looked into his were steady and gray. Long eyes they were, delicately turned at the corners. Her nose was straight and high, its end tilted ever so slightly. Full, crimson lips and a firm little chin peeped over the collar of her jacket. A wisp of chestnut hair swept her high brow and added its tale to a face that would have been accounted beautiful in any land. In the eyes of Polaris she was divinity. The girl saw a young giant in the flower of his manhood. Clad in splendid white furs of fox and bear, with a necklace of teeth of the polar bear for adornment, he resembled those magnificent barbarians of the Northland's ancient sagas. His yellow hair had grown long, and fell about his shoulders under his fox-skin cap. The clean-cut lines of his face scarce were shaded by its growth of red-gold beard and mustache. Except for the guns at his belt, he might have been a young chief of vikings. His countenance was at once eager, thoughtful, and determined. Barbaric and strange as he seemed, the girl found in his face that which she might trust. She removed a mitten and extended a small, white hand to him. Falling on one knee in the snow, Polaris kissed it, with the grace of a knight of old doing homage to his lady fair. The girl flashed him another wondering glance from her long, gray eyes that set all his senses tingling. Side by side they passed over the ridge. Disaster had overtaken the camp which lay on the other side. Camp it was by courtesy only--a miserable shelter of blankets and robes, propped with pieces of broken sledge, a few utensils, the partially devoured carcass of a small seal, and a tiny fire, kindled from fragments of the sledge. In the snow some distance from the fire lay the stiffened bodies of several sledge dogs, sinister evidence of the hopelessness of the campers' position. Polaris turned questioningly to the girl. "We were lost in the storm," she said. "We left the ship, meaning to be gone only a few hours, and then were lost in the blinding snow. That was three days ago. How many miles we wandered I do not know. The dogs became crazed and turned upon us. The men shot them. Oh, there seems so little hope in this terrible land!" She shuddered. "But you--where did you come from?"