He nodded agreement. "There's no use taking chances. I'm in no hurry. I wish there was some way of repaying you for your kindness. We were pretty nearly played out when we got here." "Oh, I'm quite selfish," she disclaimed. "If you endured a few months of this monotony, you'd understand." During the rest of that day Boyd was conscious several times of being regarded with scrutinizing eyes by Cherry. At dinner, and afterward in the living-room while Fraser talked, he surprised the same questioning look on her face. Again she played for him, but he refused to sing, maintaining an unbroken taciturnity. After they retired she sat long alone, her brows furrowed as if wrestling with some knotty problem. "I wonder if he would do it!" she said, at last. "I wonder if he _could_ do it!" She rose, and began to pace the floor; then added, as if in desperation: "Well, I must do _something_, for this can't last. Who knows--perhaps this is my chance; perhaps he has been sent." There are times when momentous decisions are influenced by the most trivial circumstances; times when affairs of the greatest importance are made or marred by the lift of an eyebrow or the tone of a voice; times when life-long associations are severed and new ties contracted purely upon intuition, and this woman felt instinctively that such an hour had now struck for her. It was late before she finally came to peace with the conflict in her mind and lay herself down to rest. On the following morning she told Constantine to hitch up her team and have it waiting when breakfast was finished. Then she turned to Emerson, who came into the room, and said, quietly: "I have something to show you if you will take a short ride with me." The young man, impressed by the gravity of her manner, readily consented. Half an hour later he wrapped her up in the sledge-robe and took station at the rear, whip in hand. Constantine freed the leader, and they went off at a mad run, whisking out from the buildings and swooping down the steep bank to the main-travelled trail. When they had gained the level and the dogs were straightened into their gait, they skimmed over the snow with the flight of a bird. "That's a wonderful team you have," Boyd observed, as he glanced over the double row of undulating gray backs and waving plume-like tails. "The best in the country," she smiled back at him. "They are good for a hundred miles a day." The young man gave himself up to the unique and rather delightful experience of being transported through an unknown country to an unknown destination by a charming girl of whom he also knew nothing. He watched her in silence; but when he forebore to question her, she turned, exposing a rounded, ravishing cheek, glowing against the white fur of her hood. "Have you no curiosity, sir?" "None! Nothing but satisfaction," he observed.