"
"Then you were not afraid that I--I might let them have you?"
"I have always been sure of what you would do since I opened that
second letter at Ellen McCormick's, Alan!"
He caught the flash of her eyes, the gladness in them, and she was gone
before he could find another word to say. Keok and Nawadlook were
approaching hesitatingly, but now they hurried to meet her, Keok still
grimly clutching the long knife; and beyond them, at the little window
under the roof, he saw the ghostly face of old Sokwenna, like a
death's-head on guard. His blood ran a little faster. The emptiness of
the tundras, the illimitable spaces without sign of human life, the vast
stage waiting for its impending drama, with its sunshine, its song of
birds, its whisper and breath of growing flowers, struck a new note in
him, and he looked again at the little window where Sokwenna sat like a
spirit from another world, warning him in his silent and lifeless stare
of something menacing and deadly creeping upon them out of that space
which seemed so free of all evil. He beckoned to him and then entered
his cabin, waiting while Sokwenna crawled down from his post and came
hobbling over the open, a crooked figure, bent like a baboon, witch-like
in his great age, yet with sunken eyes that gleamed like little points
of flame, and a quickness of movement that made Alan shiver as he
watched him through the window.
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