“For us!” cried Roy, with a break in his voice.  “Do you think I sacrificed my honor, betrayed my friends, killed my last hope, ostracized myself, for ‘us’?  This is the last time I’ll trouble you.  Perhaps the last time I’ll see you.  No matter what else you’ve done, however, you’ve taught me a lesson, and I thank you for it.  I have found myself at last.  I’m not an Eskimo any longer--I’m a man!”

“You’ve always been that,” she said.  “I don’t understand as much about this affair as I want to, and it seems to me that no one will explain it.  I’m very stupid, I guess; but won’t you come back to-morrow and tell it to me?”

“No,” he said, roughly.  “You’re not of my people.  McNamara and his are no friends of mine, and I’m no friend of theirs.”  He was half down the steps before she said, softly: 

“Good-night, and God bless you—­friend.”

She returned to the Judge, who was in a pitiable state, and for a long time she labored to soothe him as though he were a child.  She undertook to question him about the things which lay uppermost in her mind and which this night had half revealed, but he became fretful and irritated at the mention of mines and mining.  She sat beside his bed till he dozed off, puzzling to discover what lay behind the hints she had heard, till her brain and body matched in absolute weariness.  The reflex of the day’s excitement sapped her strength till she could barely creep to her own couch, where she rolled and sighed—­too tired to sleep at once.  She awoke finally, with one last nervous flicker, before complete oblivion took her.  A sentence was on her mind—­it almost seemed as though she had spoken it aloud: 

“The handsomest woman in the North...but Glenister ran away.”

CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH THE TRUTH BEGINS TO BARE ITSELF

It was nearly noon of the next day when Helen awoke to find that McNamara had ridden in from the Creek and stopped for breakfast with the Judge.  He had asked for her, but on hearing the tale of the night’s adventure would not allow her to be disturbed.  Later, he and the Judge had gone away together.

Although her judgment approved the step she had contemplated the night before, still the girl now felt a strange reluctance to meet McNamara.  It is true that she knew no ill of him, except that implied in the accusations of certain embittered men; and she was aware that every strong and aggressive character makes enemies in direct proportionate the qualities which lend him greatness.  Nevertheless, she was aware of an inner conflict that she had not foreseen.  This man who so confidently believed that she would marry him did not dominate her consciousness.