It was the eyes that drew and held Reivers’ attention to the face, rather than to the man’s terrible situation. James MacGregor, helpless beast of burden to his tormentors that he was, was not beaten. The same clean-cut nose, mouth and chin that Reivers remembered so well in the daughter were apparent in the father’s pain-marked face. The eyes gleamed defiance. And they were wide and grey, Reivers saw, the same as the eyes that haunted him in memory’s pictures of the girl who had not feared his glance. “Shanty Moir,” spoke MacGregor in a voice weak but firm, “when the devil made you he cursed his own work. He cursed you as a misbegotten thing not fit for hell. The gut-eating wolverine is a brave beast compared to you. Skunks would run from your company. You think you have done big work. You fool! You cannot rob me of what belongs to me and mine; you cannot kill me. As sure as there is a God in Heaven, He will let me or mine kill you with bare hands.” Moir and his man laughed in weary fashion, as if this speech were old to them, and Reivers was amazed at an impulse within him to throw himself at Shanty Moir’s throat. He joined foolishly in the laughter to hide his confusion. What had he to do with such impulses? What business had he having any feeling for the poor enslaved man before him? He had come to Moir’s camp for one purpose: to get the gold mined there, to get a new start in life. Was it possible that he was growing weak enough to experience the feeling of pity, the impulse to help the helpless? Nonsense! He laughed loudly. His plan was one in which silly impulses of this nature had no part, and he would go through with it to the end. “Well brayed, Scots jackass,” said the man at the thawing-pan casually. “Now pull tuh load over here. Giddap-pull!” MacGregor leaned weakly against the harness, but the sledge had lodged and his depleted strength was insufficient to budge it. “Oh ho! Getting lazy, eh?” came from the tunnel, and a thin-faced man came out, a short stick with a sharp brad in his hands. “Want help, eh? Well, here ’tis,” he chuckled, and drove the brad into MacGregor’s leg. Again the strange impulse to leap to the tortured man’s rescue, to kill his tormentor without reckoning the price or what might come after, stirred itself in Reivers’ breast, and again he joined in the laughter to pass it off. MacGregor started as the iron entered his flesh and the movement loosened the sledge. With weak, faltering steps he drew the load alongside the fire, where Tammy proceeded to transfer the frozen chunks of earth to the thawing-pan. “Eh, hah! New cattle?” said the man with the prod when he espied Reivers and Tillie. “Cow and bull.” “Cow—and an old ox, Joey,” laughed Moir. “Has even burnt his horns off with hooch, and wilt go well in the harness when he’s broke.” “’Tis time,” said Joey. “Tuh Scots jackass’ll soon drop in his tracks.”