She lay back in her chair, and Katrine, gazing at her white face and transparent hands, said nothing.

"I'm glad I stuck to Will, though," the woman went on softly after a minute, "and didn't let him come out here alone. A wife's place is by her husband wherever he goes, and I'd rather die with him than be separated. But there, I do hate the name of gold. It broke up our home, it's broke up our lives, and it's just killed me, that's what it's done. And what's the good of it? Why, as I said to Will before we came, 'We can't be no more than happy, and we're that now.'"

Katrine said nothing. She was one of those women who in society would have gained the name of a good conversationalist, for she always listened attentively and spoke hardly at all.

It grew rapidly darker outside and began to snow a little, the peculiar sharp, small snow of Alaska. The two women could hardly see each other's faces in the gloom, when Katrine rose and offered to light the lamp.

"There ain't no oil left," returned Annie, drearily. "I just sit in the dark most of the time; I don't mind as long as I have a bit of fire. It do seem more lonesome though when you've no light," she added with a sigh.

"Haven't you any money to buy it with?"

Annie shook her head. "Not till Will comes back."

"Well, here's enough to keep you in oil for the next three months," said Katrine, taking a little object from her belt which looked like a well-filled tobacco pouch and putting it on the shelf above her head.

"What's that? dust?" said Annie. "Where-ever do you get so much money?" she added, staring at her.

"I won that last night," returned Katrine, lightly. "I do have such luck. I wish you could come, Annie, and see the fun we have down town of a night, instead of moping up here; and I do have such luck," she repeated again with a half sigh. "I don't know what I'd do if it should change. I'd have to be bar-keep for a living, I suppose. Think I'd make a good bar-keep?" she said, getting up and stretching her arms above her head. All her full lissom figure was revealed to advantage by the attitude, and the firelight fell softly on the gay, bewitching face, slanted over to one shoulder as she put the question.

"I do that," replied Annie, with emphasis. "Your bar would always be crammed by all the chaps in the place, my dear."

Katrine laughed. "I'm glad you think so. I'll bring you some of my oil to burn for to-night, and then I must be off earning my living."

She went into her own cabin and brought back a can of oil with her, trimmed and cleaned and lit Annie's lamp, and then with a kiss bade her good-bye till next day, and took her way down to the main street. She had only a little dust in her belt, just enough to start playing with, and if luck should go against her she would have to return empty handed; but then she always trusted to luck, and it had never forsaken her. Her mode of life, precarious and uncertain, dangerous and unsatisfactory as it might seem to an onlooker, never troubled her. She was in that state of glorious physical health and strength which lends an unlimited confidence to the mind, a sense of being able to cope with any difficulty which might suddenly present itself, when every present or possible trouble looks small, and when mere life itself, the mere sensation of the blood being warm in one's veins, is a joy. She loved the excitement, even the uncertainty of her life, and she had more friends in the town than she could count, who would be glad to lend her all she needed if her luck failed.

That night, when Katrine lay fast asleep in her small inner room, her curly head tucked down comfortably under the rugs, she dreamed she heard a knocking on her door. The sound seemed faint at first, but grew louder, and after a minute she woke up, lifted her head, and listened. Yes, there was a tapping on her door, she heard it quite distinctly. She got up immediately, slipped into her fur coat and boots, and taking one of her pistols in her hand, went to the door. That there was danger in answering such a summons at such an hour she knew quite well, but that did not hinder her. She was accustomed to live with her life in her hand, and she felt instinctively confident of being able so to hold it, and meant to keep a tight grip on it. When she opened the door it was to a vivid moonlight, clear and brighter than day; the whole white world was shining under it.

"Annie!" she exclaimed as her eyes fell on the slight, feeble figure muffled in a blanket that stood on her steps. "What is the matter? Come in," and she put the door wide open and stood back for her to pass.

"Oh, Katie," she said, seizing the other's hands when they stood inside the room, "forgive me for waking you, but I want Will. I feel I'm going to die to-night, and I can't without him—I can't," and she burst into a flood of tears broken by short sobbing coughs. She had slipped to her knees and was holding Katrine's hands in a feverish clutch. The blanket had fallen from her head and shoulders, and showed to Katrine that she was still in her day dress; it did not seem as if she had been to bed at all. There was a dark, half-dried stain upon the front of her bodice.

"I'm dying! Oh, Katie, it's so dreadful all alone there. Will you go and bring Will to me? Oh, do."

Katrine looked down upon her as she tried to raise her to her feet. The fire was still burning brightly and filled the room with light. Many people older than Katrine would have laughed at the woman's statement in face of her ability to come to them and make it, but Katrine's keen perceptions read much, too much, in the bright glazed eyes that looked up at her, in the hoarse grating tones that came from the sunken chest, and the feverish grasp of those burning fingers. She stooped down and put her arms round the kneeling figure and drew her up.

"Why, of course I will. I will bring him to you. But you are only ill, dear; you're not dying."

"Oh, I may not, I know; but if I should, and he not here! Katie, can you go now?—it's so late, and so cold, and so far. I don't see how you can."

"He's working up on Mr. Wood's claim at the west gulch. I suppose if I go to Mr. Wood's cabin he can tell me where to find Will."

"Oh, yes, yes," returned Annie, eagerly, a crimson flush now lighting up each cheek; "go straight to Mr. Wood and ask him for Will. One of Will's ponies is down here, back of our house; you can take him and ride up. Oh, it may kill you to go; I ought not to ask it. Oh, what shall I do?"

Katrine laughed. "Kill me!" she said. "It would take more to kill me than that, I think. I shall be up there and Will down here before you know where you are. Now you've just got to drink this brandy while I go and get some things on. You're just fretting for Will, that's what is the matter with you. I believe you will feel all right when you see him again."

She put the trembling woman into a chair, and went back to her room to put her clothes on. She noticed that her boots, which had been damp the night before, had frozen to the ground, and she had to break them from it by force.

"I shall be lucky if I get back with my feet unfrozen," she thought to herself, looking regretfully at the warm bed she had left; but it never once, even remotely, occurred to her to refuse the unwelcome mission. She put on all her thickest garments, buckled her pistols on her hip, and went back to Annie, who was crouching over the fire in the next room.

"I had better take the pony," she said; "he'll get me there and back quicker than I can walk, if you think the little animal is up to it."

Annie nodded. "He's well fed," she said, "and has had nothing to do since Will's been gone."

Katrine shut the stove up, and the two women went out together.

It was a still dead cold without, the sort of night on which your limbs might freeze beyond recovery, and without your knowing it, so insidious and so little aggressive was the cold.

"You go in and keep warm," said Katrine; "I'll find the pony and manage him," and she pushed Annie gently within her own door, and went round to the shed at the back of the cabin where the pony was. Her hands in that short time had grown so stiff with cold she could hardly put the saddle on and fasten the girth and straps. The pony knew her, and pricked his ears and snorted while she was getting him ready; he had been idle in his stable two days, and by this time was willing to welcome any change in the monotony of life. When she had adjusted everything carefully by the light of the strong moon falling through the little window, she threw herself cross leg upon his back and rode him out of the shed. Annie had her face pressed eagerly against the back window of her cabin, watching for her to appear. Katrine smiled at her, lifted her fur cap above her head for an instant as a man would do, and then the next moment was cantering away over the snowy waste that stretched behind Good Luck Row. She went at a good pace, urged on by that last glimpse of the pale face, with the terrible look of haunted fear on it, pressed to the window.

The temperature was very low, but the absence of wind and dampness in the air made the cold bearable. Katrine, haunted by the fear of frostbite, kept pinching her nose and pulling her ears and banging her feet against the pony's side to keep the blood stirring in them. Inside the first half-hour she was away some distance from the lights of Dawson, and nothing but great snowy stretches lay around her.

That night up at the west gulch it happened that neither Stephen nor Talbot had gone to bed. There is little to choose between night and day there, since half of the day hours are dark as the blackest night, and a man can sleep in them as profitably or more so than in the moonlit hours of the night. Three o'clock in the morning had come, and the two men were still sitting talking on each side of the stove, with an opened whisky bottle on the table between them, in Stephen's cabin, when the dull sound of a horse's footfall broke the blank silence of the gulch. Both sprang to their feet on the instant, and Talbot drew his pistol from his belt and stood listening with it in his hand.

"I always said we oughtn't to keep our gold up here," said Stephen, and his face whitened.

Talbot held up his hand to enjoin silence, and they waited while the sound of hoofs moving slowly over the treacherous and uneven soil came nearer. Then there was a pause, which seemed to the men inside endless. Then two distinct taps at the door. Talbot, who was nearer it, made a forward movement, but Stephen caught his arm.

"What are you going to do?" he whispered.

"Open it and fire," returned Talbot, laconically, and he pushed back the latch and raised his revolver as he opened the door.

Stephen was close behind him, and Talbot almost stepped upon him as he drew back with astonishment the next instant. Katrine jumped from the pony's back and stepped over the threshold without invitation.

"How lucky I am to find you up!" she exclaimed, and then seeing Talbot's hastily lowered revolver in his right hand she burst out laughing. "So you were going to shoot, were you?" she said, drawing out her own. "Well, I was quite ready; I have been all the ride. I am sorry I frightened you."

"Frightened us!" repeated the two men in a breath, with an indignant glance.

"Oh no, of course I didn't mean that," rejoined Katrine, laughing. "Disturbed you, I should say. Oh, Stephen, give me some of that whisky; I am almost dead with cold."

Her face did indeed look frozen white with cold under her fur cap, and her dark eyes shone in it with a liquid splendour that made Stephen's heart beat tumultuously against his side. He poured out some of the spirit for her and pushed her gently into a chair, commencing to pull off her thick gloves for her.

"I want Will Johnson," she said, with her customary directness. "Stephen, I've come up to fetch him. He's one of your men. Tell me where I can find him."

"What do you want with him at this time of night?" questioned Stephen, while Talbot silently extracted a plate of bread and bacon from the cupboard and put it on the table at her elbow.

"I don't want him for myself," she answered mischievously. "His wife has sent me up to find him; she thinks she is dying, and wants to see him to-night. Where can I find him?"

"His cabin is a little higher up the gulch, but you mustn't go there; I will go after him," said Stephen hastily.

"I don't know," replied Katrine; "I'd better ride up there and then take him on home with me, hadn't I?"

"Ride back again to-night!" exclaimed Stephen. "What madness! It was bad enough to make the ride once. She mustn't think of it, must she, Talbot?" and he turned to his friend for corroboration.

"Certainly not, I should say," returned Talbot, in his quiet but final way. "I will ride up to Johnson's place and send him down home, and you can make Katrine comfortable here."

The girl sprang to her feet.

"Why, what an idea!" she said, with a flush on her pale cheeks. "I only came to you to find Will. Of course I can't stay here all night."

"Your mission will be accomplished, won't it, if Will goes to his wife?" returned Talbot quietly. "There is no need to risk your life again. There is no good in it; besides, it will save time if you let Will have the pony at once to take him back. You can have one of ours in the morning."

She looked up at him. She admired Talbot exceedingly. His voice was so invariably gentle and quiet, so different from all the voices that she heard round her daily. Stephen's, though his resembled it, had not the same curious accent of refinement. His manner, too, had the same extreme gentleness; and yet beneath this apparent softness she knew there existed a courage that equalled any in the whole camp. He looked very handsome too, she thought, at this moment, as she met a soft smile in his eyes, and her tones were more hesitating as she repeated—

"I think I ought to return."

"Well, I'm going to despatch Will for you," replied Talbot, turning away. "I leave it to you, Stephen, to persuade her to stay," and he walked out. A second later they heard the pony's hoofs going up the narrow trail past the cabin.

"You can have my room; I'll sleep here on the floor," remarked Stephen.

The girl got up.

"No," she said in her most decided tone. "I'll stay if you let me sleep here on the floor, or I'll go home. Turn you out of your own comfortable bed I will not."

"Go home you can't," said Stephen in an equally decided tone, "so I'll make you up a bed here just in front of the stove."

He went into the next room, and Katrine, left alone, drank up her whisky and gazed round the cabin. It was not at all an interesting interior, and had not the faint suggestions of artistic taste that redeemed Talbot's. A few prints were on the walls, seemingly cut from illustrated papers and principally consisting of views of cathedrals and school buildings, which Katrine's eyes wandered over without interest. At the farthest end from her there were some stout shelves nailed against the wall, and on these rested a row of flat tin pans; between the pans were pushed one or two books, and she recognised amongst them his Greek testament. She rose and strolled over to the shelf, and standing on tiptoe looked into the pans. As she thought, they contained thin layers of gold dust. She was standing there looking into them when Stephen returned and came up behind her.

"They look fine, don't they?" he said. "That's a thirty dollar pan."

Katrine turned, and looking up was startled by the eager light in his face and the greed written in every line of it. For herself, reckless, happy-go-lucky gambler that she was by nature, gold had little value for her except to toss by the handful on the tables to buy half-an-hour's excitement. With a sudden movement she seized the fullest pan by the rim in one hand and the Greek testament beside it in the other, and danced away from him to the other side of the room. Stephen turned with an involuntary cry, and followed her with anxious eyes.

"Now which would you rather lose?" she said, laughing.

His eyes were fixed upon the pan, which was heavy and as much as she could support with one hand. He dreaded each minute to see it tip up and its golden treasure pour out on the floor.

"Oh, I don't know. Don't be foolish," he said in a vexed tone.

Katrine sidled up to the window.

"Answer, or I'll—"

Stephen turned white. He felt she was capable of doing any mad thing when he met those mocking, sparkling eyes.

"Oh—I—I—would rather lose the book," he stammered, in an agony to see the gold safely put back. "I could replace that, you know."

Katrine advanced to him, balancing the pan as if weighing it.

"Stephen, this is very heavy," she said, looking him straight in the eyes.

"Let me take it from you," he said, eagerly stretching out his hands.

"Do you know what makes it so?" she said, still balancing it and still looking at him. "Your soul is in it!" and she gave it back to him.

Stephen reddened angrily, and took both the book and the gold from her and replaced them sulkily on the shelf. Katrine had turned her back and walked over to the fire, humming.

"What a royal couch you've made me!" she remarked, breaking the awkward silence that followed, and looking down on the pile of red blankets he had spread in front of the stove.

He had, in fact, stripped his own bed and collected blankets from every corner to make a comfortable resting-place for her. Before Stephen could answer he was summoned to the door. Talbot looked in upon them, but would not come inside.

"I've sent Will off," he said; "he swore like anything, but he is gone. No, thanks, Steve, I won't come in. I'm tired, and going to my own cabin now. See you at breakfast. Good-night," and before Katrine could thank him he was gone.

The two thus left entirely alone in the deep quiet of the gulch to pass the night together looked at each other for a moment with a shade of silent embarrassment. But the girl, accustomed as she was to take care of herself in all sorts of situations and surroundings, and endued with a certain fierce chastity of nature, recovered herself instantly and spoke quite naturally.

"I feel tired too, and would like to go to sleep now, if I may."

"Certainly," said Stephen. "You have this room to yourself. The stove will burn till daylight, and you have the whisky if you feel cold in the night. Good-night."

His tone was very formal, for he would so much have liked it to be otherwise, and without looking at her he took a match from his pocket and went into the other room, shutting the door after him. The girl waited a moment, then she shut the door of the stove and threw herself down on the soft pile of blankets, and drawing one of them over her to her ears, drew a deep, contented sigh, and was peacefully asleep in a few seconds.

The next morning Stephen rose stiff and cramped from his denuded bed. When he was completely dressed he silently opened his door and crept noiselessly into the adjoining room. The girl was not yet awake, and he stole softly over to the bed on the hearth and looked down at her. She lay warm and sleeping comfortably amongst the blankets. She was fully dressed, just as she had been the previous evening, except that two or three buttons were unfastened at the collar of her dress, and allowed the solid white neck to show beneath the rounded chin. The little head, with its mass of dark silky curls, lay inclined towards the stove, and the curled rosy lips had a softer smile than they generally wore in the daytime. Stephen leaned over her, entranced and breathless. As his eyes followed the dark arch of the eyebrows, the sweet delicate contour of the cheek, he forgot the horror he felt of her sometimes in her waking moments, forgot the hideous background of the saloons, forgot all the evil there might be in her, and bowed before that supreme power that human beauty has over us; he worshipped her as he had never worshipped his God. For a few seconds it was enough for him to gaze on her, then came an overwhelming impulse to stoop and kiss the soft youthful lips, to touch them even if ever so lightly. If he could without awakening her! But no, she was his guest, under his roof and protection. All that was best in his nature rose and held him motionless like a hand of iron. After a few seconds Katrine stirred, and Stephen, feeling she was about to awake, would have moved away, but his eyes seemed fixed and as impossible to remove from her face as one's hands are from an electric battery. The next minute her lids were lifted, and her eyes, two wells of living light, flashed up at him.

"Good-morning," she said, sitting up. "How dreadfully pale you look, Stephen! What is the matter?"

"Do I?" he answered, with a forced laugh, feeling the blood, which had seemed to rest suspended in his veins for those few seconds, rush to his heart again in great waves.

"You do indeed," she said, getting up. "I expect you want your breakfast. Tell me what I can do to make myself useful."

She shook her hair straight, fastened the collar of her bodice, and, was dressed. She needed no toilet apparently, but looked as clean and fresh as a rose waking up in its garden.

"Nothing," returned Stephen hastily. "Go over and tell Talbot to come in to breakfast, if you like; I'll have it ready when you come back."

Katrine looked round regretfully, as if she would have liked to stay and help him; then concluding she had better do as she was told, she took up her fur cap and went out.

The west gulch looks magnificent in the first early light, with all degrees of shadows, some black, some dusky, some the clearest grey, lingering in its snowy recesses, and the first glimpse of gold falling down it from the east. Katrine stopped and gazed up at the impressive beauty above and around her: trees in the gulch, now covered with a thick snowy mantle, stood assuming all sorts of grotesque forms, and extending their arms as if calling the spectator to their cold embrace. It was beautiful, but to Katrine it seemed so silent, so overawing, and so death-like, that she shivered as she looked up and down from the flat plateau where she stood, and hurried on the few necessary yards to Talbot's cabin.

When they came back together they found Stephen had all in readiness, the fire blazing on the hearth and the breakfast waiting on the table. He made Katrine sit at the head and pour out the coffee for them, which she did with pleased, smiling eyes. Talbot said good-bye to her and went out to his claim immediately it was over, and Katrine and Stephen were left alone. He said he would go and get a pony for her and Katrine rose, but then Stephen hesitated and did not go after all. He turned to her instead, and came back from the door to where she was standing.

"Will you listen to something I want to say to you?" he said, his heart beating wildly.

"Why, certainly I will," the girl answered simply, and she sat down in the chair behind her and folded her hands. Then she looked up inquiringly, waiting for him to begin, but Stephen's voice was dried up in his throat. He stood in front of her, one damp hand nervously clasping the back of a chair, unable to articulate a word. Confusion and excitement overwhelmed him, and he stood turning paler and paler, staring at the proud, handsome face framed in the living yellow sunshine before him. At last he felt he could not even stand, and he turned away with a groan and sank down on the nearest chair with his face in his hands. Katrine, who had been watching him anxiously for the last few seconds, sprang up and went over to him.

"What is the matter?" she said, laying her hand on his shoulder. "Are you ill?"

"No, oh no," said Stephen, catching the little hand in both of his. "No, I want to tell you I love you. Do you care for me? Will you marry me right away, and come up and live here with me?"

His voice had come back to him all right now, and he turned and gazed eagerly up at her.

Katrine did not answer immediately, but she did not withdraw her hand that he was pressing hotly between his own, and a faint smile that came over her face showed she was not displeased; and here Stephen missed his cue—he should have taken the hesitating figure into his arms and kissed the undecided lips. In the sudden awakening of womanly feeling, in the momentary excitement, in the glimpse into passion, Katrine would have consented, welcoming as her nature did any new emotion; but Stephen was embarrassed and afraid. Fear and uncertainty held him back, the kiss burned ungiven on his own lips, and Katrine uninfluenced by passion could think clearly.

What! come up here and live in this deathly quiet, away from even such amusement as the camp offered? Submit to all his tiresome religious conversations, and, above all, give up those feverish nights of excitement? the hazard and the stimulus of the long tables and the little heaps of gold dust? and her free life, her incomings and outgoings, with no one to question her? No, it was an impossibility.

The next thing Stephen knew was that she was smiling and looking down into his eyes, shaking her head.

"No, Stephen, I can't do that. I like you awfully, and should like you to come and see me; but I wouldn't do for your wife at all, and if you knew all about me you wouldn't want it either."

Stephen clung fast to her hand.

"What is it that I don't know?" he said desperately, putting, as people always do, the worst construction he could upon her words, and at the same time feeling he would forgive her everything, and in a sort of background in his brain contemplating the figure of the forgiven Magdalen at the feet of Christ.

Katrine dragged her hand away suddenly. She was not going to tell him she was a gambler and devoted to the excitement of the tables. She knew that if she did their pleasant talks in the evenings would be at an end. He could never come to see her without thinking it his duty to try to reform her; and as she knew she was not going to reform, what would be the good of it?

"What does it matter to you? I am not your wife, and am not going to be; I am an acquaintance. If you like me as I am, very good; if you don't, no one cares."

Stephen got up and faced her. He was as white as the snow outside.

"You make me think the worst by refusing to confide in me."

Katrine laughed contemptuously.

"I don't care a curse what you think! Haven't I just told you so? Great heavens," she added, with a burst of conviction, "it would never do for us to marry! Never! Your one idea is to curtail a person's liberty."

"No," answered Stephen quietly, "not liberty in a general way; only the liberty to sin and do evil, the liberty to be ignorant and do things which have terrible consequences that you don't know."

He looked very well at this moment, his pale ascetic face and sympathetic eyes lighted up with enthusiasm. Katrine looked at him and then smiled with her quick, impulsive smile.

"Stephen, you are a good man, and perfectly charming at times; but I am not a good woman, and don't want to be, and we should never get on. So don't let's bother any more about this question at all."

An exceedingly pained expression came over Stephen's face, and Katrine was quick enough to feel that from her words he judged her errors to be other than they were. In a few words she might have cleared his mind from the idea of her actual immorality, but she was too proud to stand upon her own defence before him; besides, if her faults were not of that class, he would want to know what they were, and in his eyes a girl that gambled and drank and swore, and preferred the dance halls and variety shows to the mission church any day, was quite bad enough; so she concluded in her thoughts, "It doesn't matter if he is mixed."

Stephen at the moment was afraid to press her further, and did not know quite how to treat her; but he was not wholly discouraged, and he thought it best to retain the ground he already had.

"Well, I shall be in town in a few days," he said, "and I shall come to see you as usual, mayn't I?"

"Of course," returned Katrine, and they did not speak again till they were outside and she was mounted at the head of the trail.

What a morning it was! The crisp air was like a bath of sparkling sunlight; the untrodden snow glittered everywhere. Far above the trail a ridge of dark green pine broke against the pale azure of the sky. Stephen leaned against the pony's side and gazed into the warm, lustrous eyes.

"Good-bye, my darling—my own darling perhaps some day."

"I don't think so," she answered, with a mischievous smile, and set the pony at a trot down the trail.

She had to pass Talbot's cabin on her way back, and as she approached she saw him a little way up the creek surrounded by his men. She reined in her horse to a walk as she passed, and contemplated him. His figure always pleased and arrested her eyes—it had a certain height and strength and grace that marked it out distinctly from others; and then what an advantage it was, she thought, he had no religion and believed in none of those things, and, in short, was quite as bad or worse than she herself was. She walked her horse on slowly, thinking. Somehow it seemed to her that life in his cabin would be far more piquant and amusing than in Stephen's. Yet he neither drank nor gambled, and as for the dance halls and theatre,—well, he had told her he liked dancing; and what a waltz that had been they had had together! But life with Stephen! He would be too good for her, and too stupid. She had a vague sense that what she lived for, excitement, he condemned in all its forms. Just what she cared for in drink, in play, in the dance, the electric pleasure of them, was just what he shrank from as a wile of the Evil One. Even the religious services of the High Church he condemned for the same reason. No, it would never do; life with him would be as cold as the snow around her. She was glad that her answer had been as it had. There was a level place in the trail here, and she put the horse to a gallop, and so came into town with her cheeks stung into rich crimson by the keen air, and her spirits exhilarated and ready for any mischief going.

She went at once to No. 14 in the row, and found Will sitting by his wife's bedside like a model husband. The girl was lying down, her weak white hand clasped in and nearly hidden by the swollen, rough red hand of the miner. She gave a little cry as Katrine entered, and buried her head under the blanket.

"You are not angry with me for sending you up when it wasn't really necessary?" came a smothered voice.

Katrine flung herself on her knees beside the bed and put her arms impetuously round the thin form under the coverlet.

"Angry with you for not dying!" she said, between laughing and crying. "Why, I think you're the best girl in the world, and Will's a pretty good doctor, too!" she added, glancing up at him.

Will coloured and looked a little uneasy, remembering his oaths of last night when he was roused to a ten-mile ride; but Katrine couldn't or wouldn't notice anything amiss. She said sweet things to both of them, and then, unwilling to rob Annie of any part of Will's company, she withdrew to her own cabin.

Two or three weeks passed, and dreary weeks they were. The temperature fell below the zero mark and stayed there, the sun hardly ever shone, the whole sky being blotted out as behind a thick grey curtain. The few hours of daylight that each twenty-four hours brought round was little more than a dismal twilight. Times were dreary, too, provisions ran scarce and very high, and the cheerless cold and darkness seemed to paralyse the energies of the strongest and lay a grip upon the whole town. Many months of the winter had already gone by, and strength and spirits were beginning to flag; health and courage had worn thin, and men who had faced the bitterness of the cold with a joke when it had first set in felt it keenly now like the rest. In Good Luck Row matters were worse than anywhere else in the town; the occupants were mostly very poor, and the pressure of the high prices was sharpest upon them. In addition to all else they had to suffer, typhoid broke out amongst them, and another horrible fear was added to the terror of the cold. In the universal gloom that hung over the city, under the mantle of darkness, want and starvation and fear and disease wrangled together, while Death walked silently and continually about the darkened streets. During all this time Katrine was about the only one who kept up her spirits and courage. She was the light and comfort of the row, there was not a cabin in it that had not been brightened and cheered by her smiles and benefited by her gifts. She was absolutely without fear herself. The quality seemed to have been left out of her composition, or perhaps it was only that her great physical health and strength made her feel unconsciously that it was impossible for any harm to come to her. She went in and out of the fever-stricken cabins all day, doing what she could for each one of the inmates, and always with her brilliant smile, which was a tonic in itself, and half the night she would sit gambling in the saloons, winning the money to spend upon her sick patients the following day.

As soon as Stephen learned that typhoid had broken out in the row, he came down to her and urged her to marry him and come away to the west gulch, if only as an asylum. But Katrine simply laughed and joked, and would not listen to him. Then he begged her to look upon herself merely as his tenant; he and Talbot would share the same cabin, and she could occupy his in perfect peace and security, and be safely away from the depressing influences of the town and its disease-laden atmosphere. Then she grew very grave, and said simply in a sweet tone that echoed through all the chambers of his heart—

"Dear Stephen, you are very good to be so anxious for me, but I'm not a bit anxious for myself. I should feel like a coward if I went away from the row now. These people are so dependent upon me, and I can do so many little things for them. I feel it's a duty to stay here, and I'd rather do it;" and Stephen had kissed her hand passionately and gone back to the gulch, more in love with her than ever.

She saw very little of him, and was too busy to think about him or note whether he came or not, having so many anxieties on her mind just then, of which the heaviest was the girl-wife Annie in the next cabin. Since the semi-crisis in her illness, over which Katrine had helped her, there seemed to be little change in her condition from day to day. That is, the change did not show itself externally; within the delicate structure, the disease, aided by the cold, the foul damp air of the town, and hopeless spirits, crept steadily and quickly on, but gave little or no outward sign, and Katrine hoped against hope that she could possibly tide her over the time till Will perhaps made a strike and could take her away. She knew how the sick woman clung to this idea. For months now she had been shut off from all communication with the outer world, she never saw a paper or a book, she could not move from her cabin, her whole sphere was bounded now by its four rough walls, and so the one idea that was left to her starved brain and heart was that Will should make a strike. And as a weed runs over a bare and neglected garden, so will one single idea completely absorb and fill a neglected brain, and grow and grow to gigantic strength. This was Annie's one idea; she brooded over it, pondered over it, nursed it, slept with it, and talked to Katrine of it with burning eyes, till the latter felt if it could only be fulfilled the joy of it would almost cure her. And it might be fulfilled, she knew, any day. It was early days in the Klondike then, and plenty of good ground lay around waiting to be discovered. She heard from Stephen that Will was steady and energetic, had given up drink, and was set upon the idea of prospecting for land of his own. Katrine's heart beat hard with pure sympathy as she heard, and she begged Stephen as the one thing he could do for herself to facilitate Will's efforts in every way and aid him for her sake. Meanwhile, her own care was to keep the fragile creature who was living upon hope still on this side of the Great Divide. And to this end she worked night and day. She kept her cabin clean and well lighted and well warmed. She bought and made soup, and gave fabulous prices for meat and wine, and sat with her long hours cheering her with stories heard in the saloons and picked up in the streets, and scraps of news from the gulch and farther points.

The disease seemed so quiescent that Katrine began to hope more and more that she should be rewarded, and one morning a hurried note scribbled in pencil was brought in to Annie while Katrine was scrubbing the cabin floor, telling her in a few ill-spelt words that Will thought he might get in to town that night. A bright flame of colour leaped over the woman's pale face, and then the next moment faded as her hands with the note in them fell listlessly to her lap.

"He ain't made no strike yet," Katrine heard her mutter to herself.

"You don't know," rejoined Katrine, looking up flushed and warm from her hard work. "He may have some good news to tell you any way."

Annie merely shook her head and gazed out of the window.

"He'd have told me," she murmured, and that was all.

Katrine had a long and heavy round of visits to make that day, and for two long hours she sat motionless by a dying woman's bedside, fearing to withdraw her hand, to which the poor terrified enterer into the Valley of the Shadow was clinging. In her arms, and with her tired head on Katrine's young bosom, the woman drew her last breath; and Katrine, feeling her own soul wrenched asunder and her body aching with strain and shock, came round in the afternoon to Annie. She would not say a word to her of the death-bed from which she had come. With an effort she talked of cheerful things, of the spring-time that was on its way to them, of the pleasure of seeing Will again, and so on, till her head ached. She did a few domestic offices for the girl, and then feeling she must break down herself if she stayed longer, she said she needed sleep, and if Annie could take care of herself for a time she would go and lie down. Annie noticed how heavy the lids were over her eyes and begged her to go at once, though a strange fear, like a child's of the dark, came over her.

"Will will be soon with you now—the best company," Katrine said, with a tired smile; "and if you want me, a knock on the wall here will bring me to you," and Annie was left alone.

As the afternoon closed in her cough seemed to grow more and more troublesome; the pain in her chest, too, had never been so bad; she had to keep her hand there all the time as she laboured round the room putting everything to rights, making sure that the cabin was neat and tidy against Will's return. At last she sat down in the circle of hot light round the fire, and little Tim crawled into her lap. She put her arms round him and held him absently. She was thinking over Katrine's words. The Spring! were they really near it? "so near," she had said, "it was almost here." Her eyes looking upwards to the darkening windows caught the old and smoke-hued almanac pinned up to the wall beside it. She set the child down, and getting up walked slowly over to it and ran one trembling finger down the dates. Each one from December, when they had first hung it up, had a heavy black line against it, where she had scratched it out with eager fingers; only the last days had no mark against them. She had been too weary, too heart sick, to note them any longer. What did it matter to her when the Spring came? the almanac for her would have come to an end before that. But now a fresh gleam of hope seemed to have entered her heart, and with a feverish movement she drew the old stump of pencil from her pocket and scratched off the unmarked days, and then stood gazing at the date of that day; they were still far, far from the Spring—too far. Oh, to go back in the Spring, to escape from this prison of darkness, this country of horror and starvation and misery, to be back once more in her home in the Spring! Her mind fled away from the dreary interior of the darkening cabin. She stood once more in the rich grassy meadow with the golden sunlight of an evening summer sky warm around her, the song of the birds in her ears, the hot scent of the meadow-sweet in her nostrils, before her the little narrow path leading to the cottage that seemed to bask sleepily in the yellow glow. She made a step forward with dilated eyes, then the cough seized her, the vision dissolved and fled. Again the cabin with its blackened rafters enclosed her. She turned from the calendar. What was the Spring's coming? It might come, but they would not go back. What right had she to think of it? They had made no strike, and had not Will sworn he would never go back without the gold? This accursed gold! If they could but have found it as others had! She put her hands to her head to drive away the thoughts, they were familiar and so useless. She had thought them over and over again so often. As she went back to the fire she noticed one of Will's woollen shirts lying on a chair. Why, that was the one she had meant to wash that morning! How could she have forgotten it? And now perhaps she would not get it done before he returned. Her heart began to beat, her limbs trembled. How weak and queer she felt this afternoon! Still, she would do it somehow. There was hot water on the fire that Katrine had put there. She lifted with an effort the great iron kettle from the fire, and with that in one hand and the shirt in the other she went into the adjoining sloping roofed compartment that served as scullery, wood-shed, pantry, and wash-house. It was many degrees colder here, and the long iron nails that kept the boards together overhead had sparkling icicles on them that glittered as the firelight from the inner room touched them, and she could hardly draw her breath. Nevertheless she walked over to the wash-tub and poured in the water, and set to work with shaking hands. "Had ever shirt seemed so large?" she wondered vaguely, and her thin arms moved slowly, lifting it up and down with difficulty. It seemed getting so dark, too. She should have lighted the candles, it wouldn't look so cheery for Will if he came back to find the cabin dark. But was this only the twilight falling? No, it was in her eyes. She leaned heavily on the edge of the wooden tub, trembling, the floor unsteady beneath her, a strangling suffocation in her throat, a swimming darkness before her eyes. A sense of terrible loneliness pressed in upon her, and then suddenly she knew that in the chill of that dark twilight she was alone with Death. He had come for her at last.

Oh, to have had Will's strong arms round her, a human breast to lay her head down upon, and so die! A nameless terror possessed her, overwhelmed her; she started from the wash trestle. There was a sudden cry, "Will! Will!" and she fell forward on the damp flooring, a little eager scarlet stream of blood pouring out from the nerveless lips to stain the soap-suds under the trestle.

The child sitting playing in the ring of warm firelight in the adjoining room heard that last cry, and startled, dropped his toys, looking with round eyes to the blackness beyond the open door. He listened with one tiny finger in his mouth for many minutes, but no further sound came to disturb him from the wash-house, and he went on playing.

An hour passed perhaps before Will set foot in Good Luck Row, and he tramped up it with a sounding pace. There was fire in his eyes, the blood ran hard in all his veins, his rubber boots had elastic springs in their soles. Yet he carried an extra weight with him. There was something in his pocket in a buckskin bag that burned his hand as if it had been red-hot iron when he touched it. As he came to No. 14 and saw the windows dark he merely hurried his pace, and hardly stayed to lift the door latch, but just burst through the half-opened door and brought his huge burly frame over the threshold.

"Well, Annie, my girl, we've struck it at last," he shouted at the top of his voice, "and you shall come home right away. Where are you, Annie? Didn't I say wait a bit for me?"

He had entered by the wash-house, but the darkness was thick, almost palpable, before his face and revealed nothing. He went forward to the open door, beyond which the burned-down fire gave only a faint red light, and his foot kicked something heavy on the floor. With a curious feeling gripping his heart, he stopped dead short where he stood and fumbled for a match. Then he struck it, and in its sickly glare looked down. "Annie, my dear!" he called in a shaking voice, and bent down holding the match close to the upturned face. The light played for an instant upon it and went out. "Annie!" he called again, and the word broke in his throat.

A thin wail went up from little Tim in the dusk of the inner room. Where the man stood was silence and darkness. His strike had come too late. His wife was dead.

* * * * *

Half-an-hour later a man burst into the "Pistol Shot." It was between hours, and the bar-tender was just going round lighting the lamps; the place was nearly empty, only a few miners were standing at the end of the counter, talking together. The new customer staggered across the floor as if already under the influence of drink, kicking up the fresh sawdust on the ground; then he reached the counter and demanded drink after drink. He tossed the whiskies handed to him down his throat, and then retreated to a bench that stood against the wall and sat down staring stupidly in front of him. The little group of men looked at him once or twice curiously, and then one said—

"Why, it's Bill Johnson, who's just made a strike. Come up, boys, let's congratulate him."

The men moved up to the motionless, staring figure, and one of them slapped him on the shoulder.

"Say, Bill, old man, you're in luck, and we'll all drink your health. Got any gold to show us?"

The sitting figure seemed galvanised suddenly out of its stupor. Will raised his head with a jerk, and the men involuntarily drew back from the glare of his bloodshot eyes. He put his hand to his pocket and drew out a small dirty buckskin bag. He dashed it suddenly on the ground with all his force, so that the sawdust flew up in a little cloud.

"Curse the gold!" he said, and got up and tramped heavily out of the saloon.



CHAPTER IV

GOD'S GIFT

They buried Mrs. Johnson very soon. As one of the neighbours sensibly, if rather crudely, remarked, "Their cabins were too small for them to keep corpses knocking around in them." And so the second day after her death, in a flood of thin, sweet sunshine, they buried her who had so loved the light and the sun, and had longed so wearily for them through so many days.

Katrine and Talbot stood side by side at the open grave. He had been in the town that day and met Katrine on the street, learned from her where she was going, and accompanied her. He knew something of all she had done for the dead woman, and he watched her now with interest and surprise at her composure. Katrine's face was unmoved, and her eyes were dry through it all.

"Another that gold has killed," she said to him as they turned away, and her face looked grave and grey in the flood of the cold sunlight.

Will was not present. He was down at the "Pistol Shot." He had been on a big drunk for the past two days, not even returning to his cabin at night, and the body of his wife would have lain unguarded had not Katrine brought her fur bag and slept beside it each night on the deserted hearth. Little Tim had been taken in by a neighbour, all the mothers round seeming anxious for the honour after it was known that Will had "made his strike."

They walked in absolute silence for some time up the incline. Talbot was going back to the west gulch, and Katrine said she would walk a little of the way in that direction too. The afternoon was bright and clear, and the air singularly still, so still that the intense cold was hardly realised. The rays of sunshine struck warmly across the snow banks piled on each side of the narrow path they were treading. The sky was pale blue, and the points of the straight larches on the summit of the ridges cut darkly into it like the points of lances. There was something in the atmosphere that recalled a day in late autumn in England. They were nearing the top of the ridge, and both had their gaze bent on the narrow ascending path before them, when suddenly a tiny object darted into the middle of it and ran up the opposite bank. On the instant Katrine drew one of the pistols from her belt and fired. The little dark form rolled down the bank, dropped back into their path, and lay there motionless. It was a fine shot, for the tiny moving thing was fully thirty yards from them and looked hardly the size of a dollar. Talbot glanced at her with startled admiration. He himself never shot except for food or other necessity, and wanton killing rather annoyed him than otherwise, but here the skill and the correctness of wrist and eye were so obvious that they compelled him to an involuntary admiration.

"You are a good shot!" he exclaimed, looking at the bright, clear-cut face beside him, warmed into its warmest tints by the keen air and the continuous mounting of their steps.

"But not a good woman," she answered shortly, quickly reading the thoughts that accompanied his words. She did not look at him, but straight ahead.

"You might be both," he said, with a sudden impulse of interest and regret.

Katrine laughed.

"I don't know," she said lightly. "Good women are not usually good shots. You don't generally find them combined. But any way, what have I to do with goodness? I don't need it in my business."

He did not answer, and they walked on in silence till they came up to the little dark lump in the road. It was a small marmot. Katrine glanced at it and passed on. Talbot stooped and picked up the scrap of blood-stained fur.

"What did you do it for?" he asked curiously.

"Practice, that's all," she answered.

"Don't you feel sorry to kill merely for the sake of practice?"

"No. I should have been sorry if I had wounded it; but it's a good thing to be dead, I think. I wouldn't have shot unless I had been almost entirely sure I should kill it."

There was another silence, and then she said suddenly, "One must keep up one's practice here, going about as I do in all sorts of places and making my living as I do. These," and she tapped her pistols, "are my great protection. Only last night a great brute leaned over me and wanted to kiss me—would have done, only he saw I should shoot him if he did."

"Would you shoot a man for kissing you?" replied Talbot in an astonished tone, elevating his eyebrows.

"Yes. Why, I'd rather be shot than kissed!" exclaimed the girl fiercely, with an angry flush on her smooth cheek.

Talbot looked at the contemptuous, curling lips, at the whole beautiful hard face beside him, and walked on in silence, wondering. Her momentary anger was gone directly, and they were good comrades all the rest of the way.

At the point where she stopped to say good-bye to him, she held out her hand: "Thank you for coming to the burial with me, it was good of you," and she pressed his hand with a grateful smile.

It was about a fortnight later on, one of those dreary grey afternoons of late winter, nearly dark already, though still early by the clock, and the mercury in the thermometers had gone out of sight and stayed there. Katrine came tripping along a side street on her way back to the row, warm in her skin coat, and her face all aglow and abloom under her fur cap. She had turned into the "Swan and Goose" saloon on her way up, had put in half-an-hour over a game, and won a fat little canvas bag stuffed with gold dust; had thinned it out somewhat in hot drinks across the bar, and now, warmed through with rum, and light-hearted, she was returning with the bag still well lined in her waist-belt.

She had recovered from the great shock of Annie's death. Her nature, though essentially kind, was not of that soft, tender stamp that receives deep and painful impressions from other's sufferings. She would exert herself strenuously for another, as she had done for Annie, but it was not in her nature to sorrow long or deeply for the irrevocable. There was a certain hardness and philosophy in her temperament that her life and surroundings and all her experience had tended to develop. And in Annie's death there was nothing striking or unusually sad in this corner of the world, so crowded with scenes of suffering, so filled with pathos of every form. There were women hoping and waiting, and longing and starving, in every street of the town, she knew; sickness and sorrow and death looked her in the eyes from some poor face at every corner. Annie had been but one poor little unit in the crowd of sufferers, but one example of the misery of the town, the plague-stricken town, the town stricken with a curse—the curse of the greed of gold.

Matters had brightened very much in Dawson lately, a new feeling of hope and fresh life had gone through the town. The weather was less severe, the days were lengthening, the skies were brighter, the sickness had died out, and people went about their work looking cheerful again; and Katrine, freed from her anxieties and nursing, felt her elastic spirits bound upwards in response to the general brightness of the camp.

She came along humming behind her closed lips, and then suddenly turning a corner, stopped dead short with a horrified stare in her eyes. She had come round by one of the lowest dens in the city. Katrine knew it both inside and out, for there was no place from hut to hut in Dawson that she was afraid to enter. The door was standing open. It opened inwards, and there was a group of men, some inside and some outside, and amongst them they were forcing into the street a drunken woman. The entry to the place was beneath the level of the ground, and reached by a few uneven, miry steps, and up these the unfortunate was blindly stumbling under a rain of blows, pushes, and curses. She was old, and her hair streamed in ragged streaks across her bloodshot eyes, her tawdry skirt was long, and got under her unsteady feet. Just as she had managed to totter to the topmost step, a young man in the group behind her struck her a heavy blow between the shoulders. She tripped in the long skirt and trod on it, tearing it with a ripping sound from the waist, and fell forward, striking her face on the uneven frozen ground. Katrine sprang forward, but before she could reach her the woman had staggered to her feet and turned to face her tormentors, the blood streaming now from her cut lips, her trembling hands vaguely grasping at her torn skirt and trying to keep it to her waist. A roar of laughter burst from the men at the pitiful sight, and then died suddenly as they recognised Katrine. She stepped in front of the old woman, and faced them with a scorn in her eyes beyond all words. Then she turned in silence, put her arm round the helpless creature's waist, and supported her frail, tottering steps over the slippery, uneven ground. For an instant the men stood abashed and ashamed, then when the spell of those great fearless, scornful eyes was removed, their natures reasserted themselves, and a general laugh went round.

"Birds of a feather!" shouted one, mockingly, as the two retreating figures disappeared in the gathering darkness. Katrine heard it, and winced; but she did not relax the hold of her supporting arm, and by gentle and repeated questioning managed to elicit from the helpless old being where she lived. Katrine turned her steps in the given direction, and drawing out her handkerchief wiped the blood from the old woman's face, and smoothed her straggling grey hair back behind her ears. When they reached her cabin at last, Katrine saw that the stove was black and empty. There was no light of any sort in the place, and the freezing darkness of the interior chilled her through. She would not leave the old woman until she had lighted a fire and candle for her and got her to bed; then, without waiting to listen to the mumbled and incoherent thanks showered upon her, she went out gently and on to her own place. She felt in a very serious mood as she made her cup of coffee and cooked herself a plate of bacon, and then sat down in the red glow of her well-tended hearth to her solitary meal.

"Birds of a feather!" that hateful sentence echoed round her, until the silent walls themselves seemed taunting her. Was she not, after all, really akin to that old woman, and might she not some day end like her? What was all her own drinking and card-playing and knocking about in the saloons to end in? She shivered, and threw a frightened glance round her. This girl, who would have laughed all sermons, advice, and admonitions scornfully aside, was almost startled now into a sudden reformation by the chance object-lesson of this afternoon. She could not forget it, and in the silence the whole scene rose up vividly before her. She began to long for Stephen to come and break the silence, and glanced impatiently at the clock many times. He was coming in to town that night, she knew. It was a relief such as she had never experienced when at last he arrived, and she had not her own company only any longer.

She was unusually silent all the evening. Stephen did not try to force her into conversation; he was content to sit on the opposite side of the hearth and let his eyes rest upon her in silence. She was paler, he thought, as he watched the orange light from the flames play over the oval face and throw up its regular lines. She was sitting sideways to him, gazing absently into the heart of the glowing coals, and her shadow, formed by the lamp between her and Stephen, fell strongly and clearly outlined upon the opposite wall. Stephen sat in his corner and gazed at it through half-closed eyes. He had been working hard all day, and in the keen, biting air; the warmth and the rest were grateful to him. The silence in the room had lasted so long that he began to feel drowsy under the influence of this quiet warmth. He watched the shadow sleepily, and dreamy fancies floated across his brain. The clean-cut, delicate profile was magnified to colossal proportions on the blank wall. So it seemed to Stephen that beautiful presence would dominate his life, fill in completely the blank of his colourless existence, as the large shadow filled the wall. Then, as his gaze followed its outlines, he saw what his eyes had not found before: a huge upright line of shade, formed by her chair back, ran up beside and mingling with the other lines. It seemed to curve over towards her shoulder, and then a few seconds more, and to Stephen's drowsy gaze, the harsh line expanded into a hideous grotesque figure. Out of those few shades upon the wall there leaped a picture to his eyes: the girl, and at her side, bending over her, a hideous devil, a strange vampire, hovering nearer or farther, in blacker or lighter shades, as the flames in the fire rose and fell. Stephen watched in a fascinated stupor, and then suddenly, as the light died down in the grate and the shade leaped out nearer and blacker, he started to his feet with a sudden exclamation.

The girl started too, and looked up. "What is it?" she asked.

Stephen pointed to the wall. Katrine turned, the blaze sprang up on the hearth, the shadows were gone, the illusion vanished.

"What is it?" she said again, wonderingly.

"Oh, nothing—a hideous shape on the wall," stammered Stephen. "I was watching your shadow, and another seemed to come up and threaten it. Imagination, I suppose—perhaps I had fallen into a dream," he added hurriedly, fearing she would laugh at him.

But Katrine did not laugh: she looked at him gravely and in silence. In her mind she was pondering a question, hesitating, half fearing to speak to him, half impelled to, and half held back, and the equal opposite forces acting on her mind kept her silent.

Stephen, unused to her present mood, felt perhaps she was annoyed or wearied, and drew out his watch. It was past ten.

"I will say good-night," he said, rising.

Katrine got up too. Her face paled yet more, her bosom rose and fell quickly. "Take me away from here," she said abruptly and suddenly.

She had been thinking all the evening how she would approach the subject with him, and then at last his leave-taking had startled away all her circuitous phrases and left her only the crudest words at her command to express her meaning.

Stephen was startled and confused, but his voice was very tender as he took her hand in his and said, "I don't understand, dear; what do you mean?"

He felt her hand tremble in his. She looked up at him appealingly. Her eyes seemed frightened and uncertain. She was more womanly at this moment than she had ever been. To Stephen she was infinitely more fascinating than she had ever been. Accustomed to her bright, fearless independence, admire that as he might, in this weakness, whatever its cause, she was irresistible.

"Well, I mean," she said, speaking nervously, but with an effort to control her excitement, "the other day you spoke of our being married, and I said I couldn't stand a quiet life. Stephen, I will marry you now, and go anywhere with you. I will be content with any life, any monotony—only take me from here at once! I loathe this place, this life." She stopped suddenly, and a wave of crimson blood swept over the white face. "I want to be taken away," she repeated.

Stephen looked at her a moment in silence, with a sense of apprehension and alarm. He could not do as she asked; he was not free—his claim held him.

"I don't know quite what you mean," he said, a little stiffly, though he felt he did know. "It would be quite impossible for me to go away now; my whole heart's in the work, and I've sunk all I had in it."

"Yes; and your soul too," said Katrine suddenly, looking at him with shining eyes and a calm face. "You're a slave now to your gold, the same as we all are here—a community of slaves," and she laughed.

Stephen grew red, and looked confused, alarmed, and angry, all at the same time.

"Nobody would go now," he said, remonstratingly, "and leave ground like that. It would be insanity. Ask Talbot, ask anybody if they would."

"Talbot!" repeated Katrine, scornfully; "he's the worst slave of all; but then he never preached about his soul, and wanting to reform people."

"No one can reform you if you won't reform yourself," replied Stephen, coldly; and there he spoke the truth.

"Who was it who has put in our prayer, 'Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil'? Here I live in temptation: I am always thrown into evil. If I were not—" Her voice was very quiet, and had a strange pathetic note in it. It ceased, and then there was silence.

Stephen felt as if a hand were laid on his lips and crushed down the voice that kept struggling from his heart. A second more, and then the girl laughed suddenly.

"Oh, I was stupid! I did not know what I was saying, did not mean it anyway. It's quite right for you to stick to your claim and the idea you started with, and so on. You will make a great success if you do, and that is all you want!"

Her tone was jesting and cynical as ever now—the usual hardness had come back to her face. The moment of submission, of confidence, of repentance, had passed—a moment when she could have been moved and won to any life he wished, and he had lost it. He felt it. Yet how could he have done otherwise?

"Forget what I said—quite," she added; "and go now. It's getting late, and I want to get down to the saloons."

A thrill of horror went through Stephen, as she knew it would. He gazed at her blankly with a horrible feeling, as if he were murdering somebody, clutching at his heart.

"What are you waiting for?" she said, impatiently. "Why don't you hurry back to your claim?"

"Katrine ... I—" he stammered, staring at her, but even as he looked a great wall of gold seemed to rise between them and shut her from him. "Forgive me," he muttered brokenly; "I can't give it up now."

"Good-night," said Katrine, and he turned and fumbled for the door handle and went out.

When he was gone Katrine turned to her small square of looking-glass that hung beneath the lamp on the wall.

"What a fool I was to-night!" she said, looking at the sweet reflection and smiling lips.

A few minutes after Stephen had gone, a slight figure, muffled up to the eyes, slipped out of No. 13 and hurried with quick steps down the uneven footway of Good Luck Row.

That night Stephen climbed to his cabin with his head on fire and a singing in his ears. A terrific struggle was going on in his breast. He felt the path of duty was clear to him now, and equally that he did not want to follow it. He had tried to shut his eyes to it; tried to believe that it was not clear, that he did not know what was right or necessary to do, and therefore that he might be excused if he did not do it, but he could close his eyes no longer. They had been dragged open to-night, and he could not wilfully close them again. As he strode up the narrow little snow path leading to his cabin he felt that he knew his duty, and he groaned out aloud in the silent icy night.

To leave now meant to endanger, perhaps to sacrifice, the million dollars that he felt in a month or two he could take out of his claim; and to stay meant to endanger, perhaps to sacrifice, a human soul! A million dollars, a human soul! These two ideas possessed him. A million dollars, a human soul! the two thoughts rang alternately through his brain until it seemed as if voices were crying them out upon the soundless air. According to his religion, spirits combated for the soul of man, and it seemed to Stephen that night as he mounted the solitary path under the far-seeing eyes of the frosty stars above him, that spirits really fought around him, good and evil, for the victory. "A million dollars!" shouted the evil ones, "do not throw them away." "A human soul!" wailed the others, "do not let it fall into evil." His sensitive, excitable mind trembled before the crisis. His own soul shuddered and sickened, for he seemed to see the hosts of greed of gold, and they were stronger than the hosts of light. And Stephen himself now was badly equipped for the conflict. He felt and recognised with dismay he had not the strength and the fervour now that had brought him through former battles. He was as a warrior that has fallen asleep and awakened to find his arms grown rusty while he has been sleeping.

Gradually for the last six months the lust for gold had been eating into his spirituality and destroying it. You cannot serve God and mammon: had he not entered into the services of mammon, and been held there by the rich rewards?

He thought of the rich pans he had been getting out. There was no claim like his in the camp. There was no man more envied nor considered more lucky than he. Yes, mammon had paid him well in the six months he had served it, showered upon him more than God had done in six-and-twenty years; and here was God's gift, a human soul, a sweet human life, he could save and make his own—and Stephen groaned again, for he felt that the gold was dearer to him. How could he have so changed, he wondered. A year ago he would have laughed at the idea of a million dollars being a bribe for him to sin. He looked into his heart now and found there was nothing there but a passion for gold, gold! It was a yellow rust that had eaten into his Christian's sword.

Then his thoughts strayed to the girl he had just left, and her bright fresh face seemed to sway before him as he walked. His excited fancy painted it upon the snow banks at his side. She was so young, she seemed so fresh and lovely, it was impossible to think of her as tainted already with vice and sin. It was only if she were kept in this snow-bound prison, this mournful land of darkness and suffering, where, as she said, she had no place nor aim, that she would fall as those bright meteors were falling now far in the distant darkness. He could be her deliverer, her saviour, if—if he could.

In the icy cold of that arctic night, great drops of sweat broke out hotly on Stephen's forehead as his brain was wrenched to and fro in the struggle. He tried to bribe even himself, tried to let his thoughts dwell on his passion for the girl, tried to think of the mere human sweetness that would go hand in hand with his victory over evil. If he won that bright clean soul for God, would he not also win that loved human form for himself? But even the voice of passion was drowned in the clamour of the greater greed.

The next morning, as soon as it was light, Stephen went out to his claims. None of his men had come up to work yet. Stephen stood and looked over the stretch of ground beneath which he believed his fortunes lay. A light covering of snow had fallen on it during the night and lay about a foot deep in one unbroken sheet, not even the mark of a bird's foot disturbed its blank evenness: the claims looked very cold and drear in the dull dusky grey light of the dawn under that leaden sky. But Stephen's heart beat quickly as he gazed upon them. What did it matter that cold, dreary, surface, when the gold lay glowing underneath!

Stephen felt as only a man of his sensitive conscience could feel his defeat of the previous night. His heart, all his better nature was crushed under a sickening load of mortification, and he sought desperately to find relief and justification for himself in contemplating the treasure for whose sake he had accepted it. As in other circumstances a man would solace himself for all sacrifices by gazing on the face of a mistress for whom he had relinquished worldly ambitions, and find excuses for himself in her beauty, telling himself a hundred times she was worth it all; so Stephen now gazed upon his claims, for which he had given up his scruples, his principles, his conscience, and his God, and tried to hug to himself the comfort that they were worth it. After a few seconds he tramped across the frozen snow to the line marked out by the banks of gravel where they had been at work the previous day.

That evening he could not stay in his cabin, he felt restless and ill at ease. A nervous sense of anxiety hung over him. He seemed to himself to be expecting some misfortune. His nerves, weakened by the lonely life he had been living for the past months, and exhausted by the sleepless hours of the previous night, kept presenting picture after picture of possible ills. He looked over both his revolvers, to make sure they were in good order for defence if he were attacked that night. Then he drew his fur cap tightly down on his forehead and went out. The stillness of his own cabin and the clamour of his own thoughts were unbearable. The night was still and starlit, the air keen and thin as a knife-blade. Stephen strode along the narrow frosty path, and took the road down into the town. On his way he passed Talbot's cabin. It was lighted up. The little window made a square of yellow light in the darkness; the blind over it was drawn only half-way down. Stephen stepped up over the bank of frosted snow and looked in. The great fire lighted up the whole of the small interior, and threw its red light up to the cross logs in the roof. In the centre of the room, at a table. Talbot sat working. There were some sheets of paper before him, and he held a pen in his hand with which he was checking off some figures. His face was turned to the window; it looked pale and tired, but there was a curious expression of extreme tranquillity upon it—a settled, serene patience that struck the onlooker. He sat there working on steadily, motionless, calm as a figure in stone; and poor Stephen, torn in the struggle of his desires, slipping into the cold slough of self-condemnation, and burnt with the fever of greed, groaned aloud as he stood outside. Then he turned from the window and plunged back through the snow to the path that led to the town. He wanted to see Katrine, and yet he hated the thought of facing her after their parting of last night. What must she think of him? With her quick mental perceptions she would have seen through and through his miserable mind; seen that the gold had got hold of him, held him now, and that his boasted religion had no power against it. No, he thought, he could not face her—he was still some distance from the town; then as he drew nearer, the unappeasable desire to see her and hear her fresh bright voice came over him. When he reached Good Luck Row he went straight to No. 13. He might have saved himself the trouble of his decisions. Katrine had decided for him whether he should see her that night or not. The window was dark; he tried the door, it was fastened; she was evidently not there. A chill ran over Stephen from head to foot, and then he recognized how much he had really wanted to see her. He stood outside the door a long time; the row was quiet, there were few passers. He waited, hoping to see her come up each minute—perhaps she had only gone out on some errand; but the minutes passed and he grew cold standing there, still she did not come. At last Stephen moved away from the door and wandered disconsolately down the row. He went on mechanically, not heeding where his footsteps took him, and found suddenly that he had reached the main street down by the river. There was no darkness nor quiet here, all the stores had their windows wide open, and the light from them poured out upon the black slippery mass of ice and melted snow that lay over the frozen ground. The saloons were in full blast, brilliantly lighted and filled with noisy crowds of miners. The dance halls, of which there were some dozen along the street, seemed doing a good business. A shooting gallery that had been fixed up in a tent was not only filled inside, but a crowd of men and some women were gathered round the tent entrance, pushing and pressing each other in their efforts to get in; the glare from the flaming lights inside fell on their faces, and Stephen glanced eagerly over them to see if Katrine was amongst them. He passed on, disappointed. There was another tent a little farther on, where a cheap band was playing, and a board outside announced in pen-and-ink characters the attraction of a "Catherine Wheel Dance." The crowd here was even larger, and lights were fixed outside flaring merrily in the frosty air. Stephen walked on, past the stores and warehouses, past the noisy crowded saloons, past the brilliant dance halls and the variety show tents. It was to him all a hideous, tawdry, glaring mockery of merriment; and on the other side of him was the sullen blackness of the frozen river. He walked on until he had outwalked the town front, outwalked the straggling tents, till he had left the noise, and light, and laughter behind him. When he glanced round he saw he had nothing but the river and a waste of darkness beside him. There was an old log in his path; he sat down upon it and looked back to the mist of light that hung over the town, then his gaze wandered back disconsolately and rested on the ice-bound river.

Katrine had passed that day wretchedly too. She had been down idling in one of the saloons through the afternoon, but the old resorts seemed to have lost their charm. The old pleasure had gone, and the stimulus would not come back. The cards looked greasy and dirty and revolted her, and the drink seemed to turn to carbolic acid in her mouth. She left at last, and went home to her lonely cabin and flung herself down in the dark in the chimney corner and tried to sleep, but horrible faces danced before her, and women with grey hair and wrinkles, with her own face, stared at her from the walls.

She was still lying face downwards on the skins, half dozing now after that long conflict with horrible visions, when a light and very timid tap came on the door outside. She got up and went straight to it; her face was flushed and tear-stained, and her hair ruffled and in disorder, but she never thought to go first to the little square mirror that hung in the corner to improve her appearance before admitting visitors. As she threw open the door, the stream of hot light showed Stephen upon the threshold white as a spectre, chilled almost to death by his vigil at the river, with a strained smile on his lips and a great hunger in his eyes. His conscience reproached him: he knew he had not come bravely with his hands full of the sacrifice, having conquered himself, and ready to lay down all for her sake; but like a coward, still in the thrall of his money-lust and yet longing to attain her too, unable to give her up. He knew all this, and stood timidly as the friendless dogs will gaze through an open hut-door, wistfully, expecting to be driven away with blows; but Katrine met him with neither harsh words nor looks, she just simply put out both her warm hands and drew him in over the threshold. The welcome, the smile, the warm touch overcame him.

"Katrine," he muttered suddenly, as she closed the door and barred it, "if I—if—I gave—up," and then the words died, strangled in his throat. Katrine held up her hand.

"Don't begin to talk about anything like that," she said, gently pushing him down on the chair by the hearth, "till you are warm again. Where have you been freezing yourself like this?"

She was busy lighting the lamp and setting her little old blackened coffee-pot over the flames. Stephen told her of his long lonely tramp by the river, and watched her with keen eager eyes as she made the coffee and poured him out a cup.

"Now drink it all quick," she said imperatively, handing him the boiling mixture, from which the steam came furiously.

"It's like the ordeal by fire," answered Stephen, meekly taking the cup. With a heroic effort he swallowed three parts of it, and colour began to come back to his face.

Katrine observed this, and sat down contentedly on the floor in front of the ambitious fire, that seemed trying to leap up the chimney through the roof.

"Stephen," she said very slowly and gently after a minute, "it was selfish of me to ask you to leave your claims. I've been thinking of it all day. I won't do it, and I will come and help you work them."

Stephen felt the room whirl round him as he heard. Was he not in some rich, warm dream that would dissolve and leave him suddenly? His claims, those golden claims! and Katrine too—he seemed to see her dressed in gold, framed in gold, gold in her eyes and hair. Her movement, as she turned to look at him, brought him back to realities.

"Do you mean it?" he said, stooping over her and catching her hands almost roughly in his. She met his feverish eyes with a bright, tranquil smile. He looked at her keenly for an instant, and involuntarily an exclamation broke from his lips: "Katrine! it's too much happiness for any man!"

Perhaps the gods above, who eye jealously the lives of mortals, here made a note of this remark in their pocket-books.

Katrine knitted her brows angrily. "I don't think so," she said. "You had better hear what sort of girl I am."

Stephen turned pale, and leaned down over her as she sat on the hearth, her head against his knees. The cabin was full of the warm red firelight, that leaped over the walls and up to the rough blackened rafters above them. It glistened on the silky dark hair beneath his hand, and fell ruddily over the smooth oval face turned up to him. Stephen looked down at her and felt content.

"No, no," he said hastily; "never mind anything in the past; we will efface it all; we make a fresh start from to-night." He would have stooped and silenced her with a kiss, but an arrogant look came over her pale face, and she pushed him back with her hand.

"No, I don't like that idea. We must have things cleared up and tidy before we marry. You must know the truth from me, and then you will know how to meet any one who comes to you with talk about me afterwards; and they may come, for I'm known in all the saloons of Dawson."

Stephen shuddered.

"If they keep to the truth about me, you must just accept it; if they tell lies, you'll just shoot them."

Again a cold thrill passed through her lover. To talk of shooting—taking a human life—murder—as though it were no more than a snapping of the fingers! His mind flew on a sudden bound of remembrance back to the little school teacher in the village of Arden, who could not bear the sight of a rabbit's blood on the trap, and whose quiet days were spent between the village schoolroom and the village church; yet he knew he had never loved that little teacher as he loved Katrine, that she could never rouse him as this woman did whom he believed to be an epitome of evil, who, as she lay now in the firelight by his feet, reminded him of the emblem of sin that crept into man's Eden. Yet it was a pleasure—what pleasure to be near her, to touch that smooth skin! But what was this pleasure?—was it also evil? What was this passion? His thoughts flew onward feverishly, and then Katrine's voice struck across them and brought him back to outer consciousness again.

"Listen," she was saying, "while I tell you all, and then we can start afresh, as you say."

Stephen put his hand over his eyes, and waited in silence. He dreaded unspeakably what he thought he was going to hear, and with a man's moral cowardice would have deferred her confession, slurred over and tried to forget her wrong-doing, rather than hear and forgive it. They had changed places since he had asked her that morning in his cabin to confide in him.

"Well, to begin with," went on her clear, soft voice, "I drink—I like drinking. You think it wrong to drink anything but water; I like wine and spirits, anything that excites me, and I can drink with any man in town. But I have never been drunk, Stephen, you understand that. Then I like all kinds of gaiety, and like to spend all my time dancing and laughing, and what your friend Talbot calls 'fooling.' And I gamble," Katrine paused a second before she said the decisive words, and then went on rapidly, "oh, Stephen, you don't know, I haven't told you, but I love the tables. I can sit up all night and play with the boys; I love excitement, I love the winning and raking in the gold dust. I spend all my nights playing; it's what I live for in this awful place."

There was silence, then Katrine's voice broke it again—

"Now you think that so wicked, I bet you don't want to marry me now."

There was a half laugh with a sad ring in it as she looked up to his covered face. Now Stephen heard, but the words fell on his ears dully; he was waiting in strained painful tension for what was to come. It was true he loathed gambling as a hated vice, and but for the apprehension that gripped his mind her confession so far would have been horrible to him. Still it was as a Christian that he abhorred these things. What he expected to hear he would have abhorred as a man and a lover; and the former abhorrence is considerably milder than the latter.

"Go on," he said at last, in a stifled voice.

"There is nothing more," returned Katrine, dejectedly.

She thought she was being condemned and despised, and to none is that a cheering feeling. Stephen sat up suddenly, and then bent over, clasping his hands round her waist, lithe and supple even in her rough clothing, and drew her up to him.

"Is there nothing?" he whispered eagerly in her ear. "Have you nothing more to confess to me?"

Katrine gave herself up to his embrace, a delicious sense of peace and protection and warm comfort stealing over her such as she had never known.

"Nothing," she murmured, with her soft lips close to his ear and her silky curls touching his neck. She felt Stephen grasp her close to him, and a tremor ran through his whole frame.

"Have you never lain like this in a man's arms before? never felt a kiss on your lips?" he persisted, holding her to him with a fierce intensity of growing passion.

"Never, never," Katrine answered, opening her calm dark eyes and looking straight up to his.

Stephen met their gaze for one long second, a proud, tranquil, fearless look that sunk deep into his soul and poured balm into every wound she had ever made there. The next moment she felt a torrent of hot kisses on her face, a pressure that almost stifled her on her breast, a murmur of "Darling, my darling," and knew nothing very clearly any more except that she was loved and very happy.



CHAPTER V

GOLD-PLATED

The next afternoon, when Stephen returned to the west gulch and Talbot heard his news, he said he was glad, and meant it. Life at the gulch was very desolate and dreary, and such a bright glad presence as the girl's would alleviate the monotony and disperse the gloom.

For the following week both men were busy preparing Stephen's cabin for her reception and trying to impart to it a bridal appearance. The hands were left to do the work on the claims, and Talbot and Stephen were too busy indoors to even oversee them. The cabin was large and well built. It stood looking across the gulch, and half-way down it, over the tops of the dark green pines and facing towards the western horizon, where the pink lights played and the little sundogs gambolled in the fall of the short grey snowy afternoons. Stephen was down in town once in the week, and came back with his pony laden with mysterious packages, and when Talbot came in in the evening he found Stephen on his knees, tacking down strips of carpet by the bed in the inner room. Narrow curtains had also been nailed up beside the window, and altogether the cabin presented a luxurious appearance.

"This is quite magnificent," remarked Talbot, strolling about with an admiring air.

"D'ye think so?" replied Stephen in a pleased tone, lifting a flushed face from his tacks and sitting back on his boot heels. "She's awfully handsome, isn't she? Say, it's strange to come to a hole like this and meet the handsomest girl you've ever seen!"

"She is very handsome," assented Talbot, sitting down by the stove and stretching out his frozen feet before it. He was in the other room, but close to the open door leading into the bedroom, and facing Stephen as he sat on the floor with the screw of tacks by his side that had been paid for in gold.

"And good, too, eh? good at heart, don't you think? Only not exactly religious, of course," he continued.

"No, she's not very religious," returned Talbot, with the dry, hard tone in his voice that his subordinates knew and hated.

"But it's not every one who says, 'Lord, Lord, that shall enter the kingdom of heaven,'" quoted Stephen; "you remember, Christ said that," he pursued in an anxious tone, peering up at the other for encouragement.

Talbot gave his slight, quiet laugh.

"You've got the handsomest girl in the place," he said, "and a very nice, charming one, too. I don't see what more you want."

To his strong, determined character this perpetual straining after a religion that was cast to the winds first at the temptation of gold, and then at a saloon-keeper's daughter's smile, was rather contemptible.

"And 'there's more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,' etc.," Stephen continued, anxious to persuade himself into a comfortable frame of mind.

"Has Miss Poniatovsky repented?" asked Talbot, still more dryly.

"Why, yes; I told you all she said. She won't gamble any more."

Talbot was silent; through his mind was running a line of Latin to the effect that wool once dyed scarlet can never recover its former tint, but he said nothing.

It did not take Katrine long to prepare for her wedding. There was no such thing as buying a trousseau in Dawson. She gathered together her coarse woollen underclothes, her stout short dresses, and thick boots, and packed them in two flat cases, such as can be strapped to a burro's side, and these were to be all she would take up to the cabin in the gulch besides her wealth of natural beauty. She did go to many of the stores around, buying trifles such as might happen to find themselves there and suit her: a small looking-glass here, a ribbon or a piece of lace there, and as she leaned across the rough trestle counter she generally remarked to the storekeeper, "I'm going to be married." She said it in the shyest, happiest tone imaginable, and a little blush stole over her smooth cheeks. In this way the news got round to Katrine's old friends and associates. She would have liked to have told them herself, but the old hunting grounds were forbidden to her now, and Stephen's wishes made a barrier between her and the entrance of all the saloons. He had tried to make her give him a solemn promise never to enter one again, but this Katrine would not do.

"I can't be tied like that," she had said. "Something might occur to make it necessary for me to go into one of those places; and if I had promised you in this way, I could not. You have said you don't wish me to go; I have said I won't. Isn't that enough?" And Stephen had looked into the clear dark eyes and had said "Quite."

The day of Stephen's marriage, the day when Katrine was to arrive as a bride at the west gulch, was calm and still. There was no wind and no snow falling. The sky stretched black and gloomy above the plains of snow; it was a day of the Alaskan winter, but still a good day for that. Stephen had gone down the previous day, and slept the night in Dawson. Talbot was waiting at the cabin to receive them on their return. As he stood at the little window that overlooked the trail, waiting for the first glimpse of them, and staring across the dismal waste that ran into grey and dreary mist in the distance, a great revolt stirred in his usually calm and philosophic breast—a sudden longing swept over him for the blue skies and warm air of the lands he was accustomed to, and a wilder longing still for a glimpse of the sunlight held in two eyes that were fairer than any sky. He shut his teeth hard, and his hand closed tightly on the window frame. "Only a little longer," he muttered to himself, and then far in the distance came a soft silvery tinkle of bells. Recalled to himself, he relaxed his face in a pleasant smile, and went to the door and opened it. In a second or two they came in sight, riding single file up the narrow trail, the girl first and Stephen following. She wore a large skin coat of some shaggy fur which concealed her figure, though not its splendid upright pose, and on her head was a small fur cap of some light colour, white fox or rabbit. Beneath showed her dark glossy hair curling upwards over the brim, and her glowing face rich and fresh as a Damascus rose.

Talbot was greatly struck. The realisation of her beauty came home to him very forcibly in this cold, envious light of open day. "Stephen's not such a fool, after all," was his inward comment as he went forward to meet them. As he lifted her from her pony and bade her welcome to the cabins and the west gulch, she smiled down upon him. What a mysterious, magic thing human beauty is, and the human smile! It seems to light the dreariest sky, people the loneliest landscape. Where there is a human smile to reflect one's own, not even a desert seems desolate, not even a prison cell seems cold. Talbot felt this very strongly in that moment. As the warm, bright, laughing, youthful face looked into his, the sun seemed to have suddenly burst out upon that dreary snowy plain, and as the two men escorted her over the threshold it seemed to both that they were throwing open the door not only to her concrete self but to the abstracts, warmth and light, and gaiety and laughter, and that these all flowed in with her into the simple rough interior, transforming and illumining it.

Katrine was delighted with her new home; she walked about examining every detail and showing her joy and pleasure in each little trifle that had been prepared for her. She had a very soft voice and manner when she chose,—she was too young yet for her gambling, drinking, and rough associates to have spoiled,—and Stephen stood in the centre of the room, flushed and silent with the fulness of his pleasure, following her eagerly with his eyes. After all, in this world of ours, everything stands in such close relation to its surrounding objects and circumstances that there is no absoluteness left. Or you may consider it the other way, that the feelings are absolute and always the same. A millionaire bridegroom could not receive more pleasure from the pleasure of his bride when viewing the mansion he had prepared for her, than Stephen did now from Katrine's approval of his log hut, and her thanks and smiles were as sweet over a little wooden shelf tacked against the wall, as if a two thousand dollar chandelier had called them forth.

Then Stephen took her arm and drew her into the next room, and here she was so shy and nervous she could not look about at all. Stephen took off her cloak and all her outer wraps, and then made her come and see her reflection in a little square looking-glass that he had obtained for her at quite a high price; but Katrine could not face the mirror, and hid her blushing cheeks and downcast eyes on his shoulder instead. Stephen put his arm round her. "You don't regret what you have done?" he asked in alarm, pressing her close to him.

"No, oh no, dear Steve, only it's all so strange; let's go back to the other room."

They returned, as she wished, and found that Talbot had laid the dinner for them,—a dinner he had spent all the morning in preparing,—and they sat down to it with a gaiety that made up for the shortness of supplies. After dinner they drew close round the fire and prolonged the roasting and eating of chestnuts and drinking whisky throughout the afternoon,—for whisky was there, strongly as Stephen objected to see her drink it; still it was their wedding day, and he let it pass. As darkness came down a whirling snow-storm swept through the gulch; they could see the thin sharp flakes fly past the window on the cutting wind, and hear the whistling roar of the storm as it struck and beat upon the cabin. They only flung more logs into the stove, and gave a backward glance over their shoulders from time to time towards the window. By nine in the evening, when Talbot was leaving them to go to his own cabin, it had calmed down a little, though the wind still moaned in the hollows of the gulch.