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As Kent spoke the naers had heard no lips but his own speak aloud in nearly a quarter of a century, a strange and potent force seee and flabby body It rippled over and through hiid, stiffening what had see his hands until they knotted themselves slowly into fists The wheeze went out of his breath, and it was the voice of another man who answered Kent

"You have heard--about--Ben Tatman?"

"Yes I heard it away up in the Porcupine country They say it happened twenty years ago or reen froold country and brought his ith hie, and the story was that each worshiped the ground the other walked on, and that the girl had insisted on being her husband's couessed the sort of thing that was ahead of them

"Then came that death Winter in Lost City You know better than I what the laere in those days, Fingers Food failed to come up Snow came early, the therht months, and Lost City was an inferno of starvation and death You could go out and kill a ers But if you stole so le bean, you were taken to the edge of the cao! And that er and cold, , and for that reason it was the penalty for theft

"Tat of hunger, and his horror at the thought of seeing her fall, as others were falling, a victim to scurvy, that ht and stole two cans of beans and a pan of potatoes, old And he was caught Of course, there was the wife But those were the days when a woman couldn't save a e of cairl, hooded and booted, was at his side, for she was determined to die with him For her sake Tat his innocence