“There!” he sighed. “A good night’s work done, and a neat one. I could not have done it better twenty years ago. ‘Grow old along with me,’” he threw back his hair as if in defiance of raging torrents, “‘The best is yet to be. The last of life, for which the first was made—’”
Having delivered this bit of poetical oration to the tune of the booming rapids, he turned to pick his way back over the uncertain trail that led to his strange abode.
Eight hours after she had crept into the luxurious bed in the guest room of the strange lodge, Marian stirred, then half awake, felt the drowsy warmth of wolf-skin rugs. For a moment she lay there and inhaled the drug-like perfume of balsam and listened to the steady breathing of the Eskimo girl beside her. She was about to turn over for another sleep, when, from some cell of her brain where it had been stowed the night before, there came the urge that told her she must make haste.
“Haste! Haste! Haste!” came beating in upon her drowsy senses. It was as if her brain were a radio, and the message was coming from the air.
Suddenly she sat bolt upright. At the same instant she found herself wide awake, fully alert and conscious of the problems she must face that day—the passing of the rapids and covering a long span of that trail which still lay between them and their goal.
She did not waken Attatak. That might not be necessary for another hour. She sprang out upon the heavy bear skin rug, and there went through a set of wild, whirling gestures that limbered every muscle in her body and sent the red blood racing through her veins. After that she quickly slipped into her blouse, knickers, stockings and deerskin boots, to at last go tiptoeing down the corridor toward the large living-room where she heard the roar of the open fire as it raced up the chimney.
She found her host sitting by the fire. In the uncertain light he appeared haggard and worn, as if quite done in from some great exertion. Of course Marian could not so much as guess how he had spent the night. She had slept through it all.
With a smile of greeting the old man motioned her to a seat beside him.
“You’ll not begrudge an old man a half hour’s company?” he said.
“You’ll wish to ask me things. Everyone who passes this way wants to. Mostly they ask and I don’t tell. A fair lady, though,” there was something of ancient gallantry in his tone, “fair ladies usually ask what they will and get it, too.”