There was no nervous waiting at the appointed meeting place,--a spring a half-mile from Bill's cabin. Harold Lounsbury was already there. The look on his face confirmed Joe's predictions very nicely. There would, it seemed, be big doings, and very soon. A stranger to this land might have thought that Harold was drunk. Unfamiliar little fires glittered and glowed in his eyes, his features were drawn, his word of greeting was heavy and strained. His hands, however, were quite steady as he rolled his cigarette. For all that the North had failed to teach him so many of its lessons Harold knew how to deal with Indians. It was never wise to appear too eager; and he had learned that a certain nonchalance, an indifference, gave prestige to his schemes. The truth was, however, that Harold was seared by inner and raging fires. He had just spent the most black and bitter night of his life. The hatred that had been smoldering a long time in his breast had at last burst into a searing flame. There was one quality, at least, that he shared with the breeds; hatred was an old lesson soon learned and never forgotten. He had hated Bill from the first moment, not only for what he was and what he stood for--so opposite to Harold in everything--but also for that first mortifying meeting in his own cabin. He felt no gratitude to him for rescuing him from his degenerate life. The fact that Bill's agency, and Bill's alone, had brought Virginia to his arms was no softening factor in his malice. Every day since, it seemed to him, he had further cause for hatred, till now it stung and burned him like strong drink, like live hot steam in his brain. In his inner soul he knew that Bill had endured tests in which he had failed, and he hated him the worse for it. He had sensed Bill's contempt for him, and the absolute fairness with which the woodsman had always treated him brought no remorse. Bill had found the mine for which he sought, to which, by the degenerate code by which he lived, he felt he had an ancestral right. Ever since he had gone down into that darkened treasure house he had known in his own soul, late or soon, his future course. The gold alone was worth the crime he planned. And as a crowning touch came the events of the day and night just passed. He had had no desire for Bill to return to the cabin alive. It would have been a simple way out of his difficulties for the woodsman to fall and die in the snow wastes of Clearwater. For him to lie so still and impotent in the drifts would compensate for many things, and in such a case he would never have opportunity to record the finding of his mine. The only imperfection, in this event, was that it deprived Harold of his personal vengeance, and magnanimously he was willing to forgo that. It wouldn't be his pleasure to see the final agony, the last shudder of the frame,--but yet at least he might see much remnants as would be left when the snow had melted in spring.