In Keith’s face were written deeply the lines of suffering and of tragedy.  Yesterday they had compared ages.

He was thirty-eight, only a little younger than the man who had run him down and who in the hour of his achievement was dying.  They had not put the fact plainly before.  It had been a matter of some little embarrassment for Keith, who at another time had found it easier to kill a man than to tell this man that he was going to die.  Now that Conniston had measured his own span definitely and with most amazing coolness, a load was lifted from Keith’s shoulders.  Over the table they looked into each other’s eyes, and this time it was Keith’s fingers that tightened about Conniston’s.  They looked like brothers in the sickly glow of the seal-oil lamp.

“What are you going to do?” repeated Conniston.

Keith’s face aged even as the dying Englishman stared at him.  “I suppose—­I’ll go back,” he said heavily.

“You mean to Coronation Gulf?  You’ll return to that stinking mess of Eskimo igloos?  If you do, you’ll go mad!”

“I expect to,” said Keith.  “But it’s the only thing left.  You know that.  You of all men must know how they’ve hunted me.  If I went south—­”

It was Conniston’s turn to nod his head, slowly and thoughtfully.  “Yes, of course,” he agreed.  “They’re hunting you hard, and you’re giving ’em a bully chase.  But they’ll get you, even up there.  And I’m—­sorry.”

Their hands unclasped.  Conniston filled his pipe and lighted it.  Keith noticed that he held the lighted taper without a tremor.  The nerve of the man was magnificent.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.  “I—­like you.  Do you know, Keith, I wish we’d been born brothers and you hadn’t killed a man.  That night I slipped the ring-dogs on you I felt almost like a devil.  I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t for this bally lung.  But what’s the use of keeping it back now?  It doesn’t seem fair to keep a man up in that place for three years, running from hole to hole like a rat, and then take him down for a hanging.  I know it isn’t fair in your case.  I feel it.  I don’t mean to be inquisitive, old chap, but I’m not believing Departmental ‘facts’ any more.  I’d make a topping good wager you’re not the sort they make you out.  And so I’d like to know—­just why—­you killed Judge Kirkstone?”

Keith’s two fists knotted in the center of the table.  Conniston saw his blue eyes darken for an instant with a savage fire.  In that moment there came a strange silence over the cabin, and in that silence the incessant and maddening yapping of the little white foxes rose shrilly over the distant booming and rumbling of the ice.

II

“Why did I kill Judge Kirkstone?” Keith repeated the words slowly.

His clenched hands relaxed, but his eyes held the steady glow of fire.  “What do the Departmental ‘facts’ tell you, Conniston?”