It was this same quiet, this same unending mystery of voiceless desolation that had won him to the North.

Until to-night he had loved it.

But now there was something oppressive about it, something that made him strain his eyes to see beyond the rock and the fire, and set his ears in tense listening for sounds which did not exist.

He knew that in this hour he was longing for companionship--not that of Breed, nor of men with whom he hunted men, but of men and women whom he had once known and in whose lives he had played a part--ages ago, it seemed to him.

He knew, as he sat with clenched hands and staring eyes, that chiefly he was longing for a woman--a woman whose eyes and lips and sunny hair haunted him after months of forgetfulness, and whose face smiled at him luringly, now, from out the leaping flashes of fire--tempting him, calling him over a thousand miles of space.