John Keith saw the sun. He had seen the murky glow of it before this,
fighting to break through the pall of fog and haze that hung over the
Barrens, but this sixth day it was the sun, the real sun, bursting in
all its glory for a short space over the northern world. Each day after
this the sun was nearer and warmer, as the arctic vapor clouds and
frost smoke were left farther behind, and not until he had passed
beyond the ice fogs entirely did Keith swing westward. He did not
hurry, for now that he was out of his prison, he wanted time in which
to feel the first exhilarating thrill of his freedom. And more than all
else he knew that he must measure and test himself for the tremendous
fight ahead of him.

Now that the sun and the blue sky had cleared his brain, he saw the
hundred pit-falls in his way, the hundred little slips that might be
made, the hundred traps waiting for any chance blunder on his part.
Deliberately he was on his way to the hangman. Down there--every day of
his life--he would rub elbows with him as he passed his fellow men in
the street. He would never completely feel himself out of the presence
of death. Day and night he must watch himself and guard himself, his
tongue, his feet, his thoughts, never knowing in what hour the eyes of
the law would pierce the veneer of his disguise and deliver his life as
the forfeit. There were times when the contemplation of these things
appalled him, and his mind turned to other channels of escape. And
then--always--he heard Conniston's cool, fighting voice, and the red
blood fired up in his veins, and he faced home.

He was Derwent Conniston. And never for an hour could he put out of his
mind the one great mystifying question in this adventure of life and
death, who was Derwent Conniston? Shred by shred he pieced together
what little he knew, and always he arrived at the same futile end. An