Polaris smiled down at her. "Remember the showers of ashes, Rose Emer; and that I told you that we were to learn some great new thing if we won safe to shore," he said. "Now are we at its gates. Stay--something glimmers yonder in the trail!" He strode away, and returned shortly, bearing something that he had plucked from the snow. "Bore any man in your company aught like this?" he asked, and held out to her a long, slender-bladed knife. Wider grew the eyes of the girl in wonder as she took the weapon from him and looked at it. It was of one piece, both blade and shaft, nicely balanced and exquisitely wrought; but it was of no metal which the girl had ever seen. Only in the finest of iridescent glass had she ever seen the bewildering play of colors that was reflected from its bright blade when the sunlight fell on it. It was nearly a foot long, needle-pointed and razor-keen. From the glittering dagger to the man's face the girl looked slowly. "There is no metal known in the world to-day like that from which this knife is made," said she. "Who and what are they who dropped it here? And here, there are letters on the blade. They look like Greek." She pointed to a beautifully clear inscription running down the blade. It read as follows: ΟΧΑΛΚΕΥΣΚΑΡΔΕΠΟΙΗΜΕ Polaris took the knife quickly and read where the girl pointed. "A strange thing in a strange land," he said. "The words _are_ Greek. They read: '_Ho chalkeus Kard epoié me_'--'Kard the Smith made me.'" In the midst of her amazement at their discovery the girl marveled again at the living wonder who stood before them--a man who had survived in this awful wilderness, and who had there acquired through the patience of his father an education superior to her own, with all her advantages. For Polaris spoke and read Greek and something of Latin, besides being conversant with several of the languages of the modern world. "Now we must make choice," he said. "Shall we cross this path and go on, seeking a pass in the mountains? Shall we follow it back whither it came from, or shall we follow on whither it leads, and asked of them who made it if there be a way to the north that we may take?" "Polaris," she answered, and the heart of the man thrilled to the answer, for it was the first time he had heard his name on her lips, "it must be as you think best. In these places I am helpless, and you are the master. We will do whatever you think for the best." "No, lady; in no way am I the master," he replied quickly. "I do but wish to serve you. Perhaps it were better to go on alone. And then, perhaps again, it were much time and wandering saved to find these folk and ask them of the ways. It may be that they, too, have a ship and are on the trail of the great pole, although something seems to tell me that such is not so." "You mean that you think they _live here_?" asked the girl.