The half-breed girl had already turned away when the man's eyes sought the eyes of his wife. She was regarding him with a strange, frightened stare. Her face had turned marble white at his words, and she gasped uncertainly for breath. Her pallor alarmed Bill, who stepped toward her with outstretched arms; but she shrank from his touch and her blue eyes fixed him with their cold, frightened stare. "Ethel!" he cried. "Darling--my wife! _I must go!_ It is _The Promise_!" Unconsciously he repeated the words of the old squaw. "Wa-ha-ta-na-ta, in the last extremity of her need, is calling--and I must go to her. "Oh, can't you see?" he cried suddenly, as the look of horror deepened upon the face of his wife. "Darling--only long enough to give her aid--then I will return! Surely, surely, dear, you trust me! You will believe in me--just this once! When I return to you I will explain all--I can't wait, now--good-by!" He turned to follow the Indian girl, but before he could take a step his wife's arms were about his neck and her words came in great choking sobs: "No! No! No! You are _mine_! You cannot go! You will not leave me at the altar! Oh, if you loved me--if you loved me, you could not go!" Bill's arms were about her, and the words rushed from his lips: "Love you! I love you more than life itself--I live for _you_! But I promised--my word has passed--_I must go!_ In a day--two days--a week--you shall know and understand." With a low, moaning cry Ethel tore herself from his embrace and reeled, fainting into the arms of the priest, while her husband, white lipped, followed swiftly after the Indian girl who had already gained the end of the aisle. But a few moments had elapsed since Jeanne Lacombie had burst into the room. Moments so tense--so laden with terrible portent--that, although every person in the room heard each spoken word, brains failed to grasp their significance; and Appleton, from his bench near the door, as he saw Bill Carmody turn from his fainting wife, for the first time doubted his sincerity. Men were on their feet now, gazing incredulously at the boss, who, looking neither to the left nor to the right, strode rapidly down the aisle. Scarcely knowing what he did, with the one thought uppermost in his mind, to stop the foreman and bring him to his senses, Appleton leaped the intervening benches and, slamming the heavy door, shot the stout bar. With a roar of anger Bill seized a heavy split log bench, sending a couple of lumber-jacks tumbling among the feet of their fellows, and whirling it high above his head, drove it crashing through the door. The bar snapped like a toothpick, the heavy panel split in half and dropped sidewise, and without a moment's hesitation Bill grasped the half-breed girl about the waist and swung her through the splintered aperture.