Sewell was nettled. There was, though it was seldom apparent, vanity in him, as both Hetty and Grace had guessed. Her blame he could have borne, but there was a sting in her smile. That she should think him a visionary schemer led away by his imagination, and without the faculty of execution, hurt him.

"The blaze would have leapt the snowy barriers," he said. "In fact, that was all arranged. Then it would have flashed from range to range across to the Yukon. One tolerably big bonfire has been waiting some time ready for lighting. I had only to send the message. I think you know why I didn't."

Grace saw his eyes, and understood the look in them. It was suggestive of passionate admiration. She also knew that a word would dispel it, perhaps forever, but she was lost in the game now, and what the man might think of her afterwards did not matter.

"Then there is a road out—beside the one you made to the settlement? It must be to Westerhouse?" she said.

"Yes," answered Sewell simply. "I have been there."

Grace had just five minutes left, and a task before her which, under ordinary circumstances, she could scarcely have expected to accomplish; but she had to deal with a man who was, after all, of her own caste, a man with a deep vein of vanity in him, who was also in love with her. The latter fact had been apparent for some little while, and she let him see now that she recognized it, while during the next few minutes she used every attribute with which Nature had endowed her, as well as art of a very delicate description. In fact, Grace had never until then exactly realized her own capabilities.

Neither Sewell nor she could afterwards remember all that she said, and in fact she said very little, though that little was suggestive; there was no great need for a girl with her patrician beauty to waste words unduly when she had her eyes. In any case, Sewell was as wax beneath her hands, and when she had finished with him she knew that the mountain barrier between the Green River country and Westerhouse was not impassable, and how the one gorge ran that traversed it. If Sewell fancied she appreciated the passion which had led him to do so much for her, that was his affair. There was, however, a curious glow in his eyes when he rose as the major came in.

XXXI
BROKEN IDOLS

Coulthurst sat with a big hand clenched on the table and a grim look in his face when Sewell left him, nor did he turn his head until Grace, who came softly out of the inner room, sat down close by him.