Stephen and Katrine stood at the window a second after he had gone, looking out into the curious misty whiteness and blackness commingled of the night.

"I am sorry there should be such a storm the first day you are here, darling," said Stephen softly, putting his arm round her waist.

"Why, what does that matter? I do not mind, I have you to protect me. You will always now, Steve, won't you, from everything? I don't want ever to go back to that gambling life again."

He drew her into his arms.

"Of course, of course I will," he said, kissing her. "I will always take care of you."

Her arms were interlaced about his neck, they looked into each other's eyes, and neither knew any more whether it was a storm or a calm in the night outside.

For the first few weeks after their marriage Katrine was more than happy, and it seemed to those lonely beings, sheltered from the savage siege of Nature only by those frail little cabins built by their own hands on the edge of the snow-filled gulch, that a new life had blossomed for them suddenly—a perfect spring in winter. The girl's wonderful health and unfailing spirits were in themselves a delight, and she was possessed of such a sweet and even temper, that it seemed to smooth out and round off the hard edges of their rough, comfortless existence. Nothing seemed to have the power to disturb her, the most irritating and annoying incident never even brought a frown to her face; it filled her with consternation for the men, and an immediate desire to smooth it over for them, if possible to prevent their being ruffled by it. For herself, she seemed above the reach of any circumstance to disconcert. One morning the men had an instance of this. They were all three living together in Stephen's cabin now. That is to say, Talbot took all his meals there, and used it as his own home in every way, except that he still went back to his cabin to sleep. It had seemed cheerless to both Katrine and Stephen for Talbot to be eating alone a few yards from them, and though it gave the girl more work, and for that reason Talbot was slow to accept the arrangement, she herself coaxed him into it. They came in late from the claims to lunch, and found her bending over the fire, with flushed cheeks and happy eyes. She was stirring a great saucepan of inviting looking and smelling stew, that she had spent the whole morning in preparing. The large handle of the pan projected from the stove some distance, and as Stephen threw off his overcoat he managed in some way to tip up the saucepan with a sudden jerk that sent the contents half into the fire, half over the girl's bare arm, from which her sleeve was rolled to the elbow. She did not utter a sound as the scalding liquid ran burning over her flesh, but Talbot saw her face grow deadly pale with the sickening pain. After a second of agony, when she found her voice, and Stephen was remorsefully spreading fat over the blistered, cracking flesh, the first thing she said, with her eyes full of disappointed tears, was, "Oh dear! how unlucky! Now you won't get anything hot for lunch." And as soon as a bandage was twisted round her scalded arm, she was over at the cupboard collecting all the best of her cold supplies and laying them out on the table.

There was not a word of anger or reproof to Stephen for his carelessness, not a word of her own pain. The great sorrow that she was anxious to smooth over and atone for to them was that they would have to put up with a cold luncheon!

Her one idea, the sole thought that occupied her, was to make these two men happy, at any cost to herself. All day she studied how she could make their life, so hard and rough smoother for them, how she could alleviate the labour and monotony of it. She rose in the morning long before either was awake, and had the fires blazing, wood brought in, water melted out, and the coffee made by the time they came into the sitting-room, looking white and sleepy in the flare of the common candles. All the house work they had formerly found hard, when counted in addition to their outside labour, she took entirely upon herself, and insensibly they both felt the relief very great. There was no coming home now, worn out and frozen, to a cheerless cabin, and being obliged to chop wood and light fires and split ice before they could get warm and rested. A glowing hearth, a laid table, a smiling face, always awaited them. Often coming up from the dump at the lower end of the claim, they could see the square patch of red light flung out from the window on the snow, bidding them hurry in to the welcome warmth and light inside.

The daylight only lasted them now from ten to two, and for these hours the men worked out of doors. During their absence the girl went out on shooting expeditions of her own. She had invented a modified snow-shoe, broad and short, with slightly curved-up ends, and with these strapped on to her lithe feet, her fur coat fastened up to her chin, and her fur cap drawn over her ears and to her brows, she defied the fall of the mercury, and skimmed over the snow as silently and swiftly as a shadow moving.

She enjoyed these long, lonely excursions, with her heart kept warm by the hope of discovering something she could bring down with her pistol or her shot-gun, and carry back as a surprise and a treat for the men for supper. There was not much indeed to be found; but a small breed of snow-bird was prevalent, and quite a flock of these would very often follow or precede a snow-storm, and whenever Katrine's keen eye caught sight of the little dark patch that a cluster of them made against the snow, she would glide swiftly over in that direction, and have eight or ten of them swinging at her belt to take home. They were small, but cooked as she knew how to cook them, they were a delicacy beyond price to the men who for months had tasted little but beans and hard bacon. Katrine felt quite happy if she could return through the suddenly falling gloom of the afternoon and cross the darkened threshold just as the men came back, half frozen, from the creek, and show her cluster of victims swinging by their long-necked heads from her waist.

She thought of them, planned for their comfort, and worked for them all day; while to her husband she was absolutely devoted, and one would think that for such devotion a few smiles, a kiss, and some kind words was a small price to pay. Yet after the first few weeks, and even during them, Stephen, who worked all day to secure his mining gains, would not even exert himself to that degree to return the affection that was worth all his claims put together. One kiss given before he went out to his work in the morning would have made Katrine happy all day, one tender inquiry on his return would have amply rewarded her for all her labours, yet he invariably went out to the claims without bestowing the one, and returned without making the other. Hard work, privations, loneliness, even the absence of all the amusements she had delighted in, would not have broken her spirits; she would have accepted them all cheerfully, if her husband had only thrown over them the little light and warmth of his affection that she longed for. Each day she hoped it might be different; but no, he grew more and more absorbed by the gold fever that was eating away his heart and brain, and the girl grew more and more depressed and resentful. "It would be no trouble to him," she murmured to herself over and over again, as she stood at the wash-tub, wringing out his shirts, or knelt on the floor of the cabin scrubbing the boards, "just a kiss or a smile."

She did not in the meantime relax any of her attention to him. Her smile for him was always as sweet when he returned, her efforts to please him as untiring, but in her heart her thoughts turned more and more constantly day by day to the idea of leaving him, of returning to her own life, where at least she had not been tormented by this perpetual hope and expectation and disappointment.

Stephen never dreamed that the girl's thoughts were as they were; though if he had done so, he probably would not have altered his own course—for Katrine in several angry outbursts had appealed to him, had told him how she hungered after, not great and difficult proofs of his love, but the little ones, the trifles, how he was starving and killing her love for him by his neglect of it, and he either could not, or would not, understand. But that she contemplated ever leaving him never crossed his brain, any more than the conception of the passionate hate she felt for him at times when he left undone some trifling thing, that if done, would have roused an equally passionate access to her love. He, jaundiced with this mental yellow fever, thought his rich claims, his great wealth, had probably had some influence on the daughter of the Polish Jew when she accepted him. He relied, in fact, on his wealth, and on the material advantages she would gain by clinging to him, to hold her to him. And with Katrine this was a rope of sand. She cared no more for Stephen's wealth and for his claims than if they had been ash heaps. There was not a touch of avarice, of calculating greed, in her whole character, and to gratify her own impulse she would have cast all material advantages aside. From Stephen she wanted love, and that only, and this was the only chain that could hold for an instant her proud, independent, reckless will.

There were the makings of a splendid character in the girl, all the foundations of all the best qualities in her: a little care, a little culture bestowed on them, and she would have developed into a fine and noble woman; but Stephen's eyes were blinded by the glare of the gold he saw in his visions, and the far greater and more wonderful treasure, the living human soul, that chance had given over to his care, unfolded itself slowly before him in all its beauty, and he could no longer see it. To Talbot it seemed incredible that Katrine through her mere physical beauty did not obtain a greater hold upon him, that she seemed so unable to absorb him, that she could not triumph over him by the road of the senses. Talbot himself was absorbed in his work, but even he, the onlooker, the outsider, felt the influence of this brilliant young presence that had come suddenly into their sordid life, like the sun rising in radiant majesty over a barren plain. The common table at which they sat seemed no longer the same now that she was at the head, with her beautiful figure rising above it, and her laughing, lovely nineteen-year-old face looking down it. To him, those liquid flashing eyes, and arching brows, and curled red lips seemed to light, positively light, the small and common room. But the eye grows accustomed to beauty and ceases to heed it, just as it grows accustomed to, and ceases to heed, ugliness and deformity, especially where there is no standard, no measure for it, no comparison with other objects. Just as any shortcoming, any mental or physical defect that a man hardly notices in a woman he loves, when alone with her, becomes painfully apparent to him when he sees her surrounded by others, so does her beauty strike him when reflected in other eyes, and pass unheeded when seen only by his own. Katrine was alone, there was no other woman's face to either rival or be a foil to hers, and after the first six weeks her beauty ceased to sting and surprise Stephen's senses. She, as it were, became the standard, since there was no other. And there is no absoluteness about beauty, nor our admiration for it. When we say we admire a woman because she is beautiful, we mean we admire her because she is more beautiful than other women. If all others were the same as she, she would cease to be called a beautiful woman, and if there were none others than she, then she would simply be a woman for us. We could not know whether she was beautiful or not. Man's senses are made not to perceive, but to compare, and he cannot judge except by comparison. Talbot knew all this, and he could not help feeling sorry that a girl such as this should be so isolated with them, and that the man who possessed her should realise his good fortune so little. He suggested often, for the girl's sake, excursions down into the town; but Stephen, partly from his religious views, and more from his anxiety not to waste a minute of his literally golden time, always frowned down the question, and though the girl looked at him wistfully she never complained against his decisions. She seemed to have completely accepted the idea that her marriage meant the renunciation of all the things she had delighted in, and if her marriage had given her more of what she had hoped for, she would have been contented with the change.

One evening, when Stephen was out in the shed at the back of the cabin stacking up some wood by the light of a candle stuck in a chink of the logs, Talbot and the girl were sitting idle on each side of the stove, and somehow, though Talbot seldom opened his lips on such matters, seldom in his life offered opinion or advice to others, they had now been speaking of her marriage, and Stephen's attitude towards her.

There were tears in her great eyes, and her under lip quivered and turned downwards like a wet rose-leaf.

"He is so very wrapped up in all this digging business, why did he want to marry me at all?" she said, in a sort of helpless childish wonder.

Talbot was silent, looking at her, and then instead of answering her question, said—

"Why don't you make him notice you more? why can't you appeal to him?"

"Appeal to him!" she repeated; "it's no use. Why, he is gold-plated—eyes, ears, touch, everything, all plated over; you can't reach him through it."

"Have men nothing like affection in them?" she said, after a minute. "Have they nothing between their mad bursts of passion and a cold incivility? What do they do with all the charming ways they have before they possess a woman? Stephen was so gentle, so nice, so interested, when he used to visit me down town; and now you see how rude and hateful he is very often. Why do they change? I have not changed. I am still as attentive, as eager to please him, more so, than when he came to my cabin. Oh," she added, after a minute, "I'm getting so tired of it all, I feel I'd like to throw it all up and go back to my own life and freedom. All the men are so civil and so nice and so devoted as long as a woman does nothing for them," she said simply, not fully realising perhaps the terrible ironical truth she was half-unconsciously uttering.

"I could love him immensely," she added, stretching out her arms; "oh, he could have such a love from me, if he wanted it; but as it is, I don't see much use in my staying with him. I feel I'd like to go back to my own life and forget I ever married him."

"Oh, you must not do that," said Talbot, startled out of his usual calm, and fixing his eyes on her; "pray don't think of such things."

"Do you think he would care?" she said, opening her eyes in her turn.

"I'm sure he would," Talbot answered, with so much emphasis and decision that the girl sat silent and impressed for some seconds.

"Why is he not more amiable then?" she asked.

"It's men's way," returned Talbot, not knowing exactly what to say, and accidentally hitting the truth completely.

"They're fools," replied Katrine, angrily, while the hot tears fell thickly into her lap.

Stephen came in at the moment, and though Katrine made no attempt to conceal the fact that she was crying, he took no notice of her, but began talking to Talbot about the wood.

"We shall have to take the sleigh to-morrow and go up the gulch and get some more wood somehow, if we can. There's only a few bundles left," he said, blowing out the candle and dragging some heavy logs over to the fire.

"Can I come with you?" asked Katrine, looking at him with her soft pathetic eyes, still brimming with tears.

"Why—yes—I suppose so," returned Stephen, slowly opening the stove and looking in.

"I shall enjoy it so much," answered Katrine, her face beginning to sparkle with its accustomed smiles. "We have not had a sleigh ride together once, have we? I'd like to go with you better than anything. You'll like it too, won't you?"

"I don't know; it's a confounded nuisance having to leave the claims a whole afternoon, I think."

Katrine got up suddenly from where she was sitting and walked into the next room without a word. Her tears were dried, her smiles killed.

The following day was clear and bright, and a cold, pinky-looking winter sunlight filled the air. Katrine and Stephen started early, and Talbot did not expect them back till dark. He was out on the claims all the morning, and came in to his lunch late and did not go out again immediately. It was a day for a half-holiday, and all his men left early; the claims were deserted, and Talbot found himself in solitary possession of the gulch. He felt restless and unsettled, and walked about his little bare room in an aimless way quite unusual to him, and the early part of the afternoon had passed away before he realised it.

In one of his walks he went up to the window and stood looking out. The gulch always impressed him; it had a solemn melancholy majesty and desolate grandeur that is not easy to define in words: an icy splendour by moonlight, and a horrible gloomy beauty towards the fall of the day. It was at this time that Talbot stood looking out at its rugged edges and the snow-drifts turning grey as the sunlight left them, and listening with a sort of mechanical tension to the unbroken and oppressive stillness round him, when his eye caught sight of a man's figure, moving slowly towards the house. It had appeared so suddenly where for hours there had reigned unbroken silence and loneliness, that Talbot started a little with sheer surprise; and then another appeared, and another. They were coming, one behind the other, singly, round the corner of the house, and as they emerged into view on the level platform in front of it Talbot looked them over and saw at a glance to what order they belonged.

"As tough a crowd of claim-jumpers as I have seen," he murmured to himself as he watched their movements. They did not seem very decided or certain, nor well agreed amongst themselves. There were six in all, and they advanced towards the house in a loitering way, pausing once or twice to talk with each other, and glancing over the cabin. They were all dressed alike, in large slouch hats, thick boots and high leggings, and short coats with a belt round the waist, from which depended their enormous six-shooters. As they finally, in their loitering fashion, neared the door, Talbot walked to it, threw it wide open, and asked them what they wanted. They hung back from the door a little and looked at each other, and then one said he had a lease on the claims from General Marshall.

"I am the only person who has power or authority to give a lease on these claims," returned Talbot in a short, hard voice.

The men hesitated. Talbot looked pretty tough himself as he stood there facing them, clothed in buckskin from head to foot, his head nearly touching the lintel of the doorway above him, his revolver on his side, and behind him looming the tunnel, a gaping mouth of blackness.

The men shuffled their feet on the snow and grinned at each other uneasily. It did not seem they could work the game of bluff here that they had thought out in the town.

"Well, that's your opinion," returned the leader in a bantering tone, while the others closed in nearer the threshold in a jeering circle; "but a lease from General Marshall's good enough for us, and I guess we're coming in."

"You'd better try it," returned Talbot, and he slammed to the heavy door in their faces, and fastened it on the inside.

He expected them to force it, and he hastily dragged together some sacks of rich dirt that were lying in the tunnel and piled them up, forming quite a respectable barricade. Behind these he took his stand, his revolver in his hand. With six against one he felt they must win in the end, but he thought he could put a bullet through half of their number as they advanced, and he'd sell his claim and his life dear.

He waited some moments, but nothing happened. There was silence outside, and after a second or two he stepped back to his sitting-room and looked out of the window. A council of war was taking place seemingly. The men had all withdrawn to a little distance, where there was some old tin piping. They had seated themselves on this, and were now in earnest conversation. Talbot stood at the window and watched them with a dry smile. He could tell their talk almost from their expressions and their gestures. It was one thing to come up and bluff a man out of his property, and walk in and take it as he walked out; and another to force a narrow tunnel against the straight, steady fire of a fearless devil like this. They could overpower him in the end, there was no doubt of that; but then when they walked in it would be over his dead body, that was clear, and several others besides him, for he was known to be the quickest, straightest shot in the district, and could certainly get away with some of them. It was this part they did not like, for each man felt he might be the one to be picked off and stretched stiff in the tunnel. So there was considerable parleying and hesitation amongst them, and Talbot stood motionless at the window watching them as they sat there, and noting the length of their six-shooters that dangled down the sides of their legs. At last there was a concerted movement amongst them: they got up with one accord, and without another glance at the cabin walked slowly away across the plateau in front of the house and round the corner of it towards the town trail, the way they had come. Talbot watched them disappear in the grey light of the gulch with surprise, and then drew a deep breath. He hardly knew whether he felt relieved or disappointed. His blood was up then, and he would have liked to send a bullet through a few of them. He roamed about restlessly for some time, and went to the back of the house to a little square window, and from there watched the last of them mount the trail and disappear from the gulch. Then all was silence and solitude again, in the swiftly falling darkness. He turned into his sitting-room, and stirred the fire into a blaze and lighted up the lamps—his lamps always burned well and brightly, being kept scientifically clean and trimmed with his own hands,—then he flung himself into a chair and sat there gazing into the flames, his revolver beside him on the table. He half expected the men to return, and his ears remained attentive to the slightest sound without. But there was nothing, absolute stillness reigned all around him; not a crackle of the frosted snow nor the fall of a leaf broke the grave-like silence.

When the other two came in, he told his afternoon's adventure in the quietest, simplest way possible, and the fewest words. The girl listened with flushing cheeks and sparkling eyes.

"What fun!" she said at last when he had finished, and kicking off her snow-laden boots as she sat by the stove. "And you held off six men by the 'power of your eye?' what a convenient eye that is! I don't see you've any need to carry a six-shooter! I wish they'd come back to-night, we'd give them something of a reception."

Talbot laughed, and looked pleased at the praise from her bright young lips. Stephen only looked anxious.

That night they sat up rather later than usual, and Katrine was quite in a pleased state of expectation. No visitors made their appearance, however, and at last Talbot left to go to his own cabin.

"Now, if they come in the night," remarked Katrine, laughing, as she said good-night, "don't slay them all with your eye, mind, but give me a chance."

Talbot promised to use his eye mercifully, and Katrine and Stephen put their lights out and went to bed.

It seemed to Katrine she had been asleep some time, when she awoke suddenly and put her hand on her husband's arm. "Steve, I hear steps."

"Nonsense," murmured Stephen, drowsily; "it's your fancy. Go to sleep."

But Katrine's ears were like those of a wild animal, quick and not to be deceived.

"Go to sleep yourself, if you can," she retorted, and sprang up in the darkness, found her day clothes, and hustled them on. There was silence now outside, but Katrine hurried all she could, and then with one revolver in her belt and one in her hand went into the other room. Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, there was a crash, a sound of tearing and splitting wood, and the door was crushed inward, letting in a blast of icy air. There was pitch darkness within and without. Katrine answered immediately by two shots fired in succession; there was a heavy groan, a muttered curse, and some shuffling of feet outside. Katrine, standing flat against the wall to avoid offering a mark for wandering shots, chuckled inwardly and waited. A second later a shot came in return, but the bullet went high. Katrine heard it whizz into the wood somewhere between the wall and roof.

She stood motionless, listening. Just in front of her, on the other side of the room, was the stove, and in this there still glowed an unextinguished portion of log, making one small spot of blood red in the surrounding darkness. Katrine fixed her eye on this glowing spot. To enter farther into the cabin the men must pass between it and her. She raised one of her revolvers into a line with it. When that spot was obliterated, she would know, however silently they moved, the enemy had advanced, and in that second she meant to fire; the stove was high, and a man passing in front of it would have that red spot in a line with his heart.

With her heart beating fast with exultation, and not a tremor in her steady fingers, she waited motionless as a statue against the wall. She was not a girl of a cruel nature, but her husband lay behind that slim partition on her right, and unarmed, for Stephen would never carry a pistol, and she would have shot unhesitatingly each man in succession that tried to pass her to him. There seemed to be some talking outside and a trampling of feet on the broken wood of the door, and then suddenly the soft red fire spot was eclipsed in the total darkness around, and on the instant Katrine's finger had pulled the trigger. There was no groan this time after the shot, only a heavy thud and a crash as a falling body struck some fire-irons by the stove. The red spot glowed out of the darkness again and stared Katrine cheerfully in the eyes. There was a confusion of voices outside: Katrine could hear the thick oaths and one man apparently enjoining another to come out of there and have done with the business. Katrine smiled as she heard. She guessed that the man addressed was the one that lay now between her and the stove, and his ears were for ever closed. In the same moment she heard the inner door open, and for an instant Stephen appeared, pale and in his night clothes and with a flaring candle in his hand. With a spring like a leopard Katrine had reached him and put her hand over the flame of the candle, crushing it out beneath her palm. The darkness she knew was their only shield. By their voices and their footsteps she could tell the men without numbered not less than four or five. Once let a light reveal to them that the house was held only by a single girl, they could overpower her in a few seconds. It was only that horrible pitchy darkness, out of which those deadly shots came ringing with such precision and promptness, that filled them with the idea that the cabin was protected by a body of desperate and straight-shooting miners. It was the fears of the besiegers now simply that was protecting the besieged.

"Go back," she said, with her lips on his ear, "unless you can find a pistol, and be ready to shoot," and she pushed him within the door again.

She stood as before, in an even line with the red bull's-eye of the stove, and listened; there was still a scraping of feet and muttering of voices outside, but not so near the door, and she wondered if the enemy were going round the cabin to attack it from another side. Suddenly a shot rang out in the stillness outside, then another, and the ball came through the window behind her and passed over her shoulder; there seemed to be a rush and stampede towards the door. She turned and faced it, raising both revolvers, and as she heard the wood of the fallen door split under the trampling feet, her fingers had almost drawn the triggers to welcome the incomers, when out of that cold blackness beyond the door came a slight cough. Katrine's hand dropped to her side, a sick, cold horror came over her as she realised what she would have done in the next instant. That was Talbot's cough. One second more of silence, one more step forward, and her shot would have found his heart. She reeled where she stood, against the wall, with the sickness of the thought. She could not shoot again now: he was there outside amongst them—and Stephen, was he there too, or inside? Talbot, she supposed, roused by the noise, had come out and attacked them between the two cabins. Then what she had said to Stephen recurred to her. Suppose he had searched and found a gun, and should come out from the inner room, he would not count upon Talbot's presence any more than she had done; he would naturally shoot at the first who crossed the threshold, as she herself had done; he would shoot in the dark, by her orders. The thoughts flashed quicker than lightning through her brain. The horror of the situation, this uncertainty, this killing blindly in the confusion and the darkness, was too great to be borne. The danger now was greater than even the light could bring. She dropped the pistols on to a stool beside her, drew a match from her pocket, and heedless of the perfect mark she herself offered now, struck it and held it over her head. In a second, the body across the hearth, the wrecked door, and two pale faces looking in at her from the opening, leaped into sight; the enemies, the living ones, were gone. A pool of blood beyond the threshold, and blood on the splintered wood, and their dead companion, only remained. For a moment the three faces, all pale with fear and anxiety, not for themselves, but for each other, stared nervously into each other's eyes in silence. Then Katrine broke it with a laugh, and brought down the match from over her head and put it to the lamp on the table.

"Oh, you frightened me so," she said, as she turned up the wick and made it burn, and the men stepped over the door and came in. "I thought I might kill you."

She looked up at them both in the lamplight, as if to reassure herself they were really there alive.

Talbot laid his six-shooter on the table.

"You frightened me," he returned, jestingly. "I wouldn't come under that straight fire of yours for anything. The men outside were easier to deal with, they got so scared with you shooting in here and me shooting in their rear; they thought we were a band of a dozen at least."

"I'd no idea you were there," murmured Katrine, shuddering still, as she moved from the lamp to the fire, and began drawing the half-burnt logs together.

"Stephen climbed out of the back window and came round to me, but the first shot had already wakened me; I was getting my clothes on when he came," answered Talbot, walking over to where the dead man lay between the hearth and the door, and surveying him. "Some of your good work, I see," he said, after a minute. "This is one of the lot that came up yesterday afternoon. Tough-looking chap, isn't he? Well, you see I did not kill them all. I gave you the chance you asked for," he added, looking at her with admiring eyes.

"And haven't I made the most of it?" she returned, lifting her flushed face, sparkling with smiles, from the fire.

Stephen had crept in, pale-faced as the corpse itself, and stood now staring at it in a dumb horror. He could not understand how Talbot and his wife could laugh and jest with that terrible object lying motionless between them. Had the danger and excitement turned her brain, he wondered, and looked at her apprehensively, but Katrine gave no sign of mental or physical collapse. She looked smiling and well pleased with herself, and was stirring the fire and settling the coffee-pot over the flames as if nothing the least startling or disconcerting had occurred, as if no cold body was lying stretched there by the threshold. Stephen, reassured for her, let his eyes travel to the corpse, and then, with a sort of groan of horror, sank back on a chair with his face covered in his hands. Katrine looked up quickly from the fire, and then went over to him, putting an arm softly round his neck.

"What is it, Steve, dear? you weren't hurt, were you?"

"Oh, to have killed him! to have killed a man, how horrible!" muttered Stephen, without lifting his head.

Katrine looked amazed. "Well, but he would have killed us if he could," she answered. "You kill a mosquito if it annoys you, and that's right. You only kill a man if he tries to kill you, that's quite fair."

"But a murderer!" and Stephen shuddered. She felt the shiver of horror under her hand.

"Isn't it better to be a murderer than murdered?" she asked, with a little smile, feeling she had an unanswerable argument.

"Murdered, your body is killed, murderer, your soul," came back in the same stifled voice.

Katrine was silent. She was thinking what a nuisance it was to have a soul that needed so much looking after, never seemed to do any good, and was always obtruding itself and spoiling your best moments of fun in this life.

"We'll take him away," she said softly, after a minute, noticing that Stephen kept his fingers closely locked over his eyes, as if to shut out some fearful sight. "Talbot, let's take him out," she said to their companion, who stood with his back to the fire watching them. Stephen made no sign.

Talbot and the girl walked over to the body. It was stiffening rapidly, and the wide-open eyes glared up glassily to the black rafters of the cabin.

"Might this be useful?" said Talbot, stooping over the man and half drawing the second large revolver from his belt.

"No, take nothing," answered Katrine, hastily; "we want nothing."

Talbot let the weapon slide back to its place, and they both bent down and lifted the corpse between them. Talbot walked backwards over the cabin door behind him. It was dark outside—a thick, pitchy darkness, with only a grey glare close to the ground from the snow.

"Let's take him to the gulch," whispered Katrine, "and send him down it; it will worry Stephen so if he sees him again."

It was only a few yards to the edge of the ravine; they moved towards it cautiously and stopped upon the brink.

"Are you ready?" Talbot asked in a low tone, and Katrine whispered back "Yes." There was a heavy thud, then a soft rolling sound, and then silence, as the drift snow in the bottom of the gulch received and closed over its gift. They waited a second, then Talbot stretched out his hand towards her, found her arm in the darkness, and they both walked back together.

"It's a pity Steve is so sensitive," said Katrine, plaintively. "I just saved him, and his house, and his precious gold, and everything, to-night, and he does not like me a bit for it."

"I think you are a very brave little girl," said Talbot, softly.

"Do you?" returned Katrine, in a pleased voice; and Talbot felt that she turned her face and looked up at him in the darkness. "Steve and I don't fit very well, do we?" she added, with a sigh; "and he does not fit this life. Somehow, I don't believe we shall ever leave this place alive—I have a presentiment we shan't. You will—you'll make a success and go back; but we shan't."

Talbot did not answer, as they were at the cabin.

Stephen met them at the door as they came in, with a white stricken face. "Where have you put it?" he asked in an awed, trembling whisper.

"Down the gulch," replied Katrine, composedly. "Now, Steve, you're not to worry about it any more—it was a necessity."

She glanced round the room and saw that Stephen had been too much shaken to think of putting it in order. The coffee-pot stood where she had left it, and the coffee was boiling over and wasting itself in the fire. She ran to it, took it off, and began pouring it into the cups on the table; as she did so the men noticed blood dripping from her wrist into one of the saucers.

"Oh, yes," she said indifferently, in answer to Stephen's startled exclamation, "I thought I felt my sleeve getting very damp and sticky; there's a graze on the shoulder, I think, and the blood has been crawling slowly down my arm, tickling me horribly. Let's see how it looks!"

She unfastened her bodice and took it off, seemingly unconscious of Talbot's presence. He stood silently by the hearth watching her, and thought, as he saw her bare white arms and full, strong white neck, how well she would look in a London ball-room. Stephen, all nervous anxiety, was examining her shoulder. A bullet had gone over it, leaving a furrow in the flesh, where the blood welled up slowly. Katrine turned her head aside and regarded it out of one eye, as a bird does. Stephen bent over her and kissed her, murmuring incoherent words of remorseful sorrow. Katrine flung her arms round him and laughed.

"Why, I am delighted! it's been quite worth it, the fun we've had to-night. That's all right—it will be healed in a couple of days; just tie it up with your handkerchief."

It was an easy place to bind, by passing the bandage under the arm, and this, by Katrine's directions, Stephen did, with trembling fingers. Talbot had turned away from them, and occupied himself by fixing up the door and stuffing the chinks where the wood had broken. When this was done and the bandaging finished, Stephen brought a shawl from the other room and wrapped it round the girl's shoulders, and they all drew in round the fire in a close circle with their cups in their hands.

Their common danger and the sudden realisation of how much they were, each of this lonely trio, to the other; how easily any one of them might have been taken from the circle that night, and how irreparable would have been the loss, drew them all closely together as they had never been before—that delicious chord of sweet human sympathy that lies deep down, but ever present, in the human breast, vibrated strongly in their hearts, and they sat round the cheery blaze, talking and laughing softly, and looking at one another, and then smiling as their eyes met, for mere lightheartedness.



CHAPTER VI

MAMMON'S PAY

This little excitement quite delighted and pleased Katrine. She had spoken just the truth when she said she wished something like it would happen every day; and the only thing that spoilt the fun of it was Stephen's dejection and the persistently depressed way he looked and felt over it. After a day or two the pleasant sense of life having something worth living for passed away again, and the time seemed heavier and slower than ever. Day followed day in a dreadful monotony, and the girl visibly lost health and spirits. She changed a good deal, and both men noticed it. She lost her wonderful sweetness and evenness of temper and her bright smiles, and became fretful and irritable, discontented, and sharp in her replies. In the long winter mornings now she would not spring up in the early darkness as formerly, but try to fall asleep again after waking, and put her arm across Stephen and tell him there was no use of getting up, that the day was long enough anyway, and it was too dark to do anything; and then she would abuse him if he insisted on getting up in spite of her, and let the breakfast wait so long, that after a time the men drifted into the habit of having it alone, and going out without seeing her. Katrine had grown to hate the day, to hate every minute in fact when she was not sleeping, and to try to make the night last as long as possible. Stephen noticed all this, and spoke to Talbot about it in distress. Talbot merely said, "Perhaps it's her health; you'd better ask her." Stephen did so, and found there was a reason for her apparent illness, which delighted and consoled him; but when Katrine flew into a passion, declared it was detestable, that it would take away her freedom and her power to ride and enjoy herself, Stephen was shocked and grieved, and said he was disappointed in her; whereupon Katrine replied she hated him, and Stephen quoted scripture texts to her till she ran out of the cabin and rushed across to Talbot's in a passion of sobs and tears. At least, she knew he would not quote texts to her. Talbot did all he could to smooth out matters between the two, and after that Katrine spoke very little; she took refuge in a dejected silence, and grew paler each day. It was only when the men had gone out to work, and she was left alone with a great pile of things to mend, work which she hated, that she would go to the door and stand looking out over the grey waste under the snow-filled lowering sky, with the tears rolling silently down her checks. From where she stood she could see, through the greyish air, the men working far down at the other end of the claims, and the long line of trenches and the banks of frozen gravel; sometimes, in the light fog, made of the tiny sharp snow-flakes, sifting through the air, they would look misty, like ghosts or shadows; and sometimes the dulled click and scrape of the spades would reach her.

"Slaves, slaves, just like slaves," she would think, watching the muffled-up figures continually bending over their work; "and they're digging graves, graves." And she would think of Annie, and the grave Will had been digging for her while he dug for gold. A red sun, dull as copper, hung above them, and sometimes the great Northern Lights would send up a red flame behind the horizon; and to Katrine it seemed like a blood-covered sword held up by Nature to warn them off a land not fit for men. One afternoon, when the sun looked more sullen and the sky more threatening than ever, and the men moving at the end of the claim looked no more than mere blots in the cold mist, she stood watching the steady red blade shoot up in the ashen sky, and began comparing its colour to other things. "It's as red," she said to herself softly, "as Hearts and Diamonds;" and then her thought wandered to the cards themselves, and she thought of the hot saloons at nights crowded with faces, and the tobacco smoke in the air, and the jabber of voices, and the laughter of the miners, and their oaths and jokes and stories, and their friendly ways to her, and the admiration on their rough and sometimes honest faces, and the long tables and the spat, spat of the falling cards as they were dealt, and the chink of the glasses and the hot spirits burning your throat, and then the feeling of jollity, and then the warmth and life and cheeriness of it all. Her eyes brightened and her chest heaved a little as she leaned against the lintel. If she could have one night of it again! And here, what would it be when the men came back? Supper, and then Talbot and Stephen talking of their work, and the probable value of the claims, and the pans they could make, and what the dirt would run to, and then dismissing the whole subject as impossible to decide till the spring came and they could wash the gravel, and then having so dismissed it, they would fall to speculating again what the spring would show them the dirt was worth, and so on all over again from the beginning. Oh, she had heard it so often, nothing, nothing but the same topic night after night, and after that, cups of coffee, of which she was sick, or water, and then reading a chapter of the Testament, and then going to bed, and Stephen too dead tired to give her a good-night kiss. If they had had a game of cards in the evening now, all together, and become interested in that and forgotten to talk of their claims, and some good whisky after it, or cleared out one of the cabins and had a dance there with some of the hands who lived near, and a man to whistle tunes for them if there was no other orchestra; but no! Stephen thought that cards were wrong and wouldn't have them in his house, and whisky too, and dancing worst of all, and only the sin of avarice and the lust of gold was to be connived at there. As she stood there, the thought slipped into her mind quite suddenly, so suddenly that it surprised herself, "Why not go down to town and have a good time as she used?" Her heart beat quickly, and the old colour came into her cheek. She glanced at the dull, coppery sun growing dimmer and dimmer behind the thickening snow fog, and the pink light flickering on the horizon, at the dim figures of the men and the grey wastes on every side. There was a thick silence, broken only by a faint far-off click of a shovel from the trenches. There would be half-an-hour's more daylight, half-an-hour before the men returned to miss her. She would get a good start anyway. She turned into the cabin again, her face aglow and her eyes sparkling. She knew that Stephen would be fearfully angry with her—she had not been once to the town since her marriage—but she had a stronger nature than Stephen's, and felt no fear of his anger.

"He thinks I am a reformed character," she muttered contemptuously to herself, as she put on her thick rubber boots. "Well, I told him there was only one chance to reform me, and that was to take me away from here, and he wouldn't do it."

She built up the fire in an enormous bank, and left the men's slippers and dry socks beside it. Then she slipped into her long skin coat, and crushed the fur cap down on her eyebrows and pulled it over her ears. As she went out she took a long look at the claims—the men were still busy there. "Slaves," she muttered. She closed the door with a sharp snap and left the key hanging on it, as was usual when she was inside. Then she turned her face to the town trail, and set off at a long steady stride through the dead silent air. The town was within easy walking distance for her, and though it would be dark before she reached it, that mattered very little, her eyes were strong and almost as good as a wild cat's in the dark. On every hand the sky seemed to hang low and threatening over the earth, and the air had the grip of iron in it, but Katrine pushed on at the same even pace without even an apprehensive glance round. Her spirits rose as she walked. She felt the old sense of gladness in her youth and strength and health, and in her freedom, and she bounded along over the hard, glittering snow, full of a mere irresponsible animal pleasure, such as moves the young chamois in his bounds from rock to rock. Darkness had come like a blot upon the earth before she had done half the distance, but now she had the twinkling lights and the reddish haze of Dawson before her. Her own eyes brightened as she caught sight of them, and she hastened her steps. By the time night had fairly settled down she came into the side streets of the town. Dawson is an all-night town, and things were in full blast—saloons, shooting-galleries, dance-halls, and dog-fights going on just as usual. She noted with satisfaction that nothing seemed to have altered a little bit since she saw it last, and as she turned into Good Luck Row, to walk down it for old acquaintance' sake, a big, disreputable old yellow dog she had fed through last winter, came bounding up and leaped all over her in delighted recognition. Katrine was pleased at this welcome, and spent quite a time at the corner with him, asking how many dog-fights he had had lately, and being answered with short triumphant barks that she took to mean he had demolished all the small dogs of that quarter. Then she went on and passed her own former house, and saw to her surprise it was vacant, and so was Annie's next it. That looked as if Dawson was not pressed for space. As she was turning out of the row she saw ahead of her another old acquaintance, this was a human one, and Katrine felt as if she had quite slipped back into her own life as she hailed him.

"Sam!" she called gently. "Hello, Sam!"

The miner turned, and as soon as he saw her a broad, genial smile overspread his countenance and stretched his mouth from one edge of his fur ear-flaps to the other.

"Why, Kate, you down here again; you've cut the parson fellow, eh?"

"Oh, no," said Katrine hastily, reddening a little; "I'm just in town for a day or so. How's your wife?"

"Well," answered Sam slowly, as he put himself at her side and slouched heavily along the side-walk with her. "She's all right—leastways I reckon she ought to be; she's in 'eaven now."

"Oh, Sam!" said Katrine, in a shocked voice, "is she dead? How did she die? when?"

"Why, I reckon it was the cold like, she kind of froze to death. When I got home one night the fire was out, and she was just laying acrost the hearth; the room was awful cold, and there warn't no food neither—I 'spect that helped it. I'd bin away three or four days, and the food give out quicker than I thought, and the firin'. I arst a doctor here wot it was, and he said it was sincough or sumthin'."

"Syncope?" suggested Katrine.

"Yes, that's what 'e said; but I sez it was just the cold a ketchin' of her heart like, and stopping it."

"What were you doing?" asked Katrine.

"Why, I was out arter gold, o' course."

Katrine shivered. They passed the "Sally White" at that moment, with its flaring lights and noise of merriment within.

"Let's go in, Sam, and get a drink. Your tale has pretty near frozen me."

They turned in, and as Katrine pushed open the door there was a shout of recognition and welcome from the men round the bar. The door fell to behind them, shutting out the icy night.

* * * * *

When the light failed, and the night had come down on the claims like a black curtain let fall suddenly, the men left the ground, and stiff with cold, their muscles almost rigid, plodded slowly and silently back to the cabin. The hired men dispersed in different directions, some going down town and some to their cabins near. When Stephen and Talbot entered they found the fire leaping and crackling as if it had just been tended, and both men sat down to change their boots in the outer room. The door into the bedroom was shut, and they supposed Katrine was within. They were too tired and frozen to speak, and not a word was exchanged between them. After a time Stephen got up and went into the inner room; there was no light in it, and the door swung to behind him. Talbot, with a white drawn face, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

When Stephen entered he thought Katrine was probably asleep upon the bed, and crossed the room to find a light. When the match was struck and a candle lighted, he stared round stupidly—the room was empty. He looked at the bed, Katrine was not there; then his eyes caught a little square of white paper pinned on to the red blanket. He went up to it, unpinned it slowly, and read it with trembling fingers. Talbot, waiting in the other room, hungry and thirsty, got up after a time and began to lay the supper. This done, he made the coffee, and when that was ready and still Stephen had not reappeared, he rapped at the door. There seemed a muffled sound from within, and Talbot pushed the door a little open. Inside, he saw Stephen sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the paper in his hand.

"What's the matter?" said Talbot.

Stephen handed him the paper in a blank silence, and Talbot took it and held it near the candle. This is what he read:—

"I have gone down to the town to get a little change and to relieve the dreadful monotony of this life. Don't follow me; just leave me alone, and I'll come back in a day or two. There's no need to be anxious. You know I can take care of myself."

Talbot laughed quietly, and walked back into the sitting-room.

"Well, she gives you good advice," he said; "I should follow it. Let her have a day or two to herself—a day or two of liberty. She'll come back at the end all the better for it."

Stephen followed him into the firelight; his face was the colour of wood ash, and his eyes looked haggard and terrified. With all his faults he really loved his wife, in his own narrow, limited, selfish way, intensely.

"Oh, Talbot! to think she's gone back to it all! How awful!"

Talbot gave a gesture of impatience. He understood the girl so much better than Stephen ever had that his methods seemed unreasonably foolish to him. And now he was excessively tired and cold and hungry, and his supper seemed of more importance than a world full of injured husbands.

"You can't wonder at it, old man," he said. "This life must be intolerable for a girl like that."

"Why? how?" questioned Stephen, blankly.

"Oh, so quiet; no excitement."

"But women ought to like quiet, and excitement's sinful," returned Stephen hotly, becoming the Low Church missionary school-teacher at once.

Talbot merely laughed and shrugged his shoulders, but his laugh was not friendly, and there was an angry light in his eyes.

"What am I to do?" asked Stephen mechanically, still standing, the pallor and the horror of his face growing each minute.

"I've told you. Let her have the few days' enjoyment she asks for; then her heart will reproach her, and she will come back to you."

"But she might think me indifferent," murmured Stephen, his voice almost choked in his throat.

"I shouldn't leave her long. If she does not return the day after to-morrow, then you might go; but if you go now and attempt to force her back, you'll probably make a mess of it."

"But think—my wife—"

"That's all right," returned Talbot, looking at him and understanding what he was thinking of. "In one way, at least, you know she is a good girl. She will only gamble a little and drink and get very jolly, and she'll come back to you in a day or two with no harm done—what are you doing?" he broke off suddenly, as Stephen began to tear off his slippers and socks and get his thick wet boots on.

"I'm going after her," he said sullenly, in a thick voice, "to bring her back home here—alive or dead."

"It will be dead probably, and you'll be exceedingly sorry," returned Talbot in a cutting tone.

Stephen made no answer, but continued fastening his boots.

"You'd better have your supper before you go out again," remarked Talbot, sarcastically.

Stephen made no reply. When he had his boots on he put an extra comforter inside his fur collar, put his cap on, and walked over to the door. There he hesitated and looked back. Talbot sat unmoved by the fire, his profile to the door. Stephen stood for an instant, then came back to the hearth.

"Talbot!" he said, standing in front of him.

The other looked up. "Well?"

"Come with me. Help me to find her and bring her back."

Talbot compressed his lips.

"Aren't you capable of managing your own 'wife yourself?" he asked.

"You have so much influence with her," said Stephen, pleadingly.

"I suppose I only have that influence because I am not quite a fool," returned Talbot angrily, commencing to pull off his slippers.

He was angry with Stephen, and feeling excessively wearied and disinclined for further effort. He hated to turn out again, and his whole physical system was craving for food and rest. But he was not the man to resist an appeal in which he saw another's whole soul was thrown, and angry and annoyed as he was with Stephen, he still disliked the idea of letting his friend go out alone in the Arctic night on such an errand. It seemed to him supremely ridiculous for Stephen to have to call in another man's aid in these personal matters, but then he was more than twice Stephen's age, and had got into the habit of making excuses for him. So, tired and exhausted though he was, he dragged on his frozen boots again, and prepared to accompany Stephen.

"You'd better have some of this first," he said, pouring out a cup of the coffee he had made, which stood ready on the stove.

They each took a cup standing, and then turned out of the cabin, locking the door behind them. The atmosphere and aspect, the whole face of the night, had changed since the girl started. The fog had lifted itself and rolled away somewhere in the darkness. The air was now clear and keen as the edge of steel. The stars were of a piercing brilliance, and all along the black horizon flickered and leaped a faint rosy light. The two men, stiff, tired, and aching, took much longer to accomplish the distance than the girl had done with her light, eager feet, and when they got down to the town the night was well on its way. At the bottom of Good Luck Row, which is, as explained already, one of the first streets you come to, on the edge of the town, they halted and took counsel as to where they would be most likely to find the object of their search.

"Perhaps she's gone up to the 'Pistol Shot,'" suggested Stephen. "We'd better go up to old Poniatovsky."

"She hasn't come down to see her father, I should imagine," remarked Talbot, in his dryest tone.

But Stephen persisted she might be there, and so they tramped straight across towards the main street and turned into the "Pistol Shot." They pushed their way unheeded through the idle, lounging, gossiping crowd within, found their way behind the bar, and asked for Poniatovsky. The little Pole came out of his back parlour and met them in the passage. He listened to their story, his long pipe in one hand, his mouth open, and his own vile whisky obscuring and clouding his brain.

"Wot! she haf run away?" he exclaimed, as Stephen paused; "and who is de cause? Is it this shentleman here?" and he stared up at Talbot's slight, tall figure, imposing in its furs, and at the finely-cut, determined features that presented such a contrast to Stephen's weak boyish face.

"No, no," said the latter angrily; "she hasn't run away at all. She has only come down here for an hour or so. I thought she might have come here to see you."

"No," replied the Pole deprecatingly, shrugging his shoulders and spreading out his hands, "I haf not seen her. If she come here, I shut the door upon her. I say, 'I vil haf no runaway wives here.' My fren, before you vos marrit did not I say, a truant daughter make a truant wife. She haf left me first, now she haf left you."

He had taken Stephen by the front of his coat, and was pushing in his words by the aid of a dirty forefinger.

Talbot abandoned Stephen to argue the matter out with his drunken father-in-law, and strolled back through the passage, through the bar-room, and then stood, with his gloved hands deep in his fur-lined pockets, at the saloon door, looking up and down the street. Presently one of the wrecks of the night came drifting by, a girl of nineteen or so, with her cheeks blue and pinched in the terrible cold under their coat of coarse paint. He signalled to her, and she drifted across to him, and stood, with her hands thrust up her sleeves, in the light from the "Pistol Shot."

"I expect you've seen the inside of most of the drinking-houses to-night," he said, speaking in a kind voice, for the pitiful, cold face of the girl touched him; "have you seen anything of Katrine Poniatovsky, a girl who used to live here?"

"Wot's she like?" the girl asked sullenly. She was so hoarse that she could hardly make the words audible.

"A tall girl, dark, and very handsome."

"Yes, I seed her, not more'n an hour ago, in the 'Cock-pit.' She's a-makin' more money in there than I can make if I walk all night. Curse her! She sits there, and the devil sits behind her, a-playing for her, I know; but she'd better look out—you don't play with that partner long."

"The 'Cock-pit.' That's on the other side, isn't it, away from the river?" Talbot's heart sank a little as he recognized the name of the worst den for gambling in the whole town.

"Go down here, and turn to your left. Any one will tell you where the 'Cock-pit' is," said the girl, with a hollow laugh.

Then she lingered in the light, and looked at Talbot wistfully. He put some money into her hand. "Go into the warmth," he said kindly, "and get yourself something."

Then he turned back into the saloon to find Stephen. He met him, having broken away at last from the fatherly advice of the Pole, and brushing the front of his coat down with his hand. He was very flushed and angry.

"You'd better waste no more time," remarked Talbot, calmly. "She is down at the 'Cock-pit,' playing."

Stephen gasped. "How did you find out that?" he asked.

"I've just been told by one of the habitues. Come along at once." Both the men went out, and Talbot, following the girl's directions, marched on decidedly, scarcely noticing Stephen's questions, which he could not answer.

"I don't know," he said, for the fiftieth time, to Stephen's last absurd query as to how long she had been there.

The houses became poorer and shabbier as they walked. Even in log-cabins there is a great difference marked between the respectable and the disreputable. And the figures that passed them from time to time, though more rarely here in this quarter, looked of the toughest, most cut-throat class.

"How can she like to come here alone?" exclaimed Stephen, with a shudder. "I wonder she is not afraid. I'm surprised she has not come to some harm long ago."

Talbot smiled to himself inside his fur collar and said nothing. The girl's absolute fearlessness was the point which he admired most in her character, and the immunity from danger seemed in her case, as in others, the natural accompaniment of it. Fortune is said to favour the brave. Misfortune certainly seems to spare them.

"I think this is the place," said Talbot at last, and they stopped before a large, but old and dirty-looking cabin. It was sunk beneath the usual level of the ground, and reached by some crooked, slippery steps. At the foot of these steps was a sort of yard, which you had to cross before reaching the cabin door itself. What was in the yard, or what its condition was, it was too dark to see, but a sickening smell came from it as the men descended the steps, and the ground seemed slippery or miry in places above the frozen snow. The windows of the cabin in front gave out no light whatever, but that there was light inside, and very bright light, was evidenced by that which burst through the chinks all over it.

"I shouldn't wonder if I stumbled over a corpse next," muttered Talbot, as he slipped and almost fell in the darkness on a slimy something under his feet that reminded him of blood. They got up to the door and tried the latch. It would not yield; then they thumped on it with their gloved fists.

The latch was drawn back by some hand inside, and the door opened just wide enough to admit them, and was pushed to again. Stephen and Talbot found themselves in a crowd of loiterers inside the door, who apparently took no notice of them beyond a sodden stare.

It was a long, low room that they entered, so low that it seemed to Talbot the ceiling was almost upon their heads. The atmosphere was stifling, evil-smelling beyond endurance, and so clouded with tobacco smoke that they could not see the farther end.

A long table covered with green cloth took up the centre of the room, and all round the walls were ranged smaller ones. The place was full when the two men entered, all space at the centre table was occupied, the side tables were filled, and men standing up between blocked the way up the room. The windows at the end were barred and shuttered, not a breath of outer air could enter. The cheap lamps nailed at intervals along the grimy walls were mostly black and smoking, adding their acrid fumes to the thick atmosphere. There were very few women present, some painted, worn, unhappy-looking creatures, hovering like restless phantoms round the tables where the thickest crowds were, that seemed all. Stephen looked round on every side with haggard face and anxious eyes. She was nowhere near the door, and after a hurried survey of all those lower tables they forced and pressed and pushed their way towards the other end. At last they caught sight of her. She was sitting at a small table, with her face turned towards the room, intent upon the game. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement. She had flung her fur cap aside, and her ruffled black hair lay loose upon her forehead. The collar of her bodice was open and turned back a little from her round white neck. She looked, with her soft young face, like a fresh flower dropped by chance into this evil, tainted den. Talbot gave her a keen scrutiny as they approached, and understood Stephen's infatuation. As for Stephen himself, his heart went out to her, and he was filled with a bitter self-reproach and sudden resolutions. His love and his darling! How could he have let her be found here! His claims and his gold, they might all go. He would take her away in safety at once. He would not hesitate again.

When they reached the table they saw there was a large stake on the cloth between the two players. Her companion was a youngish man, seemingly a miner, dressed in the roughest clothes. Neither looked up till both men were close by them and between them and the lights. Then Katrine raised her eyes and started violently as she recognised them. Her face flushed deeper, and her eyebrows contracted with annoyance. Stephen went round to the back of her chair and laid his hand on her shoulder.

"Come away; oh pray, come away," he said, in an imploring tone. It was all he seemed able to articulate.

"I'm just in the middle of a game," she answered petulantly. "You mustn't interrupt me."

"But it isn't safe for you to be here."

"Stuff! I used to be here every night before I married you!"

A death-like pallor overspread the man's face as he heard. He could not believe her, could not realise it. Had she indeed been here night after night?

"Why do you come here and interfere?" she continued pettishly, looking up from Talbot to his companion. "I always have such luck, and I'm likely to lose it if you worry me."

The young miner sat back in his chair, thrust both hands in his pockets, and stared rudely at the intruders. He did not mind the interruption as much as she did, since he was losing, and had been steadily ever since he sat down to play with Katrine, and doubts and angry questionings of his opponent's methods began to stir in his dull, clouded brain, as toads stir the mud in some thick pool.

"You ought not to be here at all," said Stephen hotly.

"Well, why shouldn't I make money as well as you?" returned the girl quickly, with a flash of scorn in her dark eyes, and Stephen whitened and winced.

"Haven't you made enough for one night, in any case?" interposed Talbot quietly.

"Yes, I think I have," she answered, with a glance at the glistening pile on the cloth. "I'll come," she added suddenly, "if Jim's no objection. What do you say, Jim?" she asked, looking across to the young fellow, who had been a sulky, silent spectator of the whole scene. "Shall we quit for to-night?"

"If you give me back my money," he answered. "That's mine," he said, pointing to the pile. "It's my money, gentlemen; she's been winning all the evening."

"Yes, I always do have luck," retorted Katrine. "I told you so when we began."

"You may call it luck; I don't," muttered the miner, his face turning a dusky purple.

"And what do you call it?" returned Katrine, white with anger in her turn at the insinuation, while Talbot, who saw what was coming, tried to draw her away.

"What does it matter? Come away; leave him the money."

No one in the room noticed what was going on in their corner. The others were all too busy with their own play, absorbed in their own greed; besides, squabbles over the tables were of such common occurrence, they ceased to excite any curiosity.

"I shan't," returned Katrine, shaking herself free.

The oily, smoky light from above fell across her face; it seemed to bloom through the foul, dusky air like a rose.

"It's my money—I won it."

"Yes, by cheating," shouted the miner, forgetting everything but the approaching loss he foresaw of the shining pile.

"You lie," said Stephen, hoarsely. "She has not cheated you."

The miner staggered to his feet, and before any of them realised it he had drawn his pistol and fired. His hand was unsteady from drink and rage, and the ball passed over Stephen's shoulder and went into the wall behind him. Talbot tried to draw Stephen to one side. The miner, blind with anger, half conscious only of what he was about, and drawing almost at random, turned his revolver on Talbot. Like a flash Katrine interposed between them, and Jim's bullet found a lodgment in her lungs. She had fired also. The shots had been simultaneous, and the miner fell, without a groan, without a murmur, forward across the table, carrying it with him to the floor. The gold pile scattered amongst the filthy sawdust on the ground. Katrine sank backwards into Talbot's arms, and her head fell to his shoulder like that of a tired child falling to sleep.

In an instant they were surrounded by an eager inquiring throng. All the tables, with some few exceptions, were deserted; the players all crowded up to the end of the room, and Stephen and Talbot were carried back to the wall by the pressing crowd. Some of the men raised the body of the miner; he was dead. The people pressed round, and one glance at the set face told them. A momentary awe spread amongst them, and the men who had raised the body carried it to a bench and laid it there. Stephen, pallid as the dead man himself, looked round in desperation on the staring crowd.

"Is there a surgeon or a doctor here?" he asked.

Katrine heard him, and raised herself a little in Talbot's arms; he was standing against the wall now. She turned her eyes towards Stephen and stretched out her hand.

"It's no use, Steve, dear," she said; "I'm done for. Don't worry with a doctor. I shall be gone in five minutes."

Stephen dropped on his knees and seized the little soft brown hand extended to him, covering it with kisses.

"Oh no, no, don't say it," he said in a voice suffocated with anguish, heedless of the staring faces around. Some of the mob looked on with interest, some turned back to their own tables, others went down on their hands and knees to scrape up the scattered gold dust that had mixed in the trampled sawdust.

"Lay me a little flatter," she murmured to Talbot, and he sank on one knee and so supported her, her head resting on his arm.

"If we could get her to the air," Stephen exclaimed.

"No, the moving pains me; let me be," she replied. "I tell you I'm dying."

Stephen groaned.

"Pray then, pray now. Oh, Katie dear, pray before it is too late. Aren't you afraid to die like this, in this place?"

Katrine shook her head wearily. "No, I don't think I've ever been afraid," she murmured.

"Did I kill him?" she asked a second later, opening her eyes.

Talbot looked down and nodded. Stephen's voice was too choked for utterance.

"I'm glad of that," she murmured, letting her eyes close again; "I never missed a shot yet."

"Oh, Katie, Katie," moaned Stephen. The room was black to him; it seemed as if he saw hell opening to swallow up for ever his beloved one.

Katrine opened her eyes at his agonised cry.

"Now, Steve, it can't be helped; I'm dying, and it's all right. I only don't want you to worry over it. Nothing is worth worrying for in this world. And I guess we'll all meet again very soon in a warmer place than Alaska."

Stephen, utterly broken down, could only sob upon her hand.

Talbot felt a sort of rigor passing through the form he held, and thought she was dying. He was stirred to the innermost depths of his being by her act. She had stepped so calmly between him and death, given up her life with the free generous courage of a soldier or a hero.

"Why did you come between us?" he asked, suddenly bending over her; "why did you do it?"

The calm light eyes looked down into the dark passionate depths of the dying girl's pupils, and a long gaze passed between them. What secrets of her soul were revealed to his in that instant when they stood face to face with only Death between? Then Katrine turned her head wearily.

"I don't know," she answered faintly; "mere devilry, I think." And she laughed.

The laugh shook the wounded lung. Her face turned from white to grey, her teeth clenched. There was a spasm as of a sudden wrenching loose from the body, then it sank back, collapsed, motionless, against Talbot's breast.

The two men carried her out between them. The crowd made way for them, standing on either side in respectful silence. Such incidents were not uncommon, and excited nothing more than a dull and transient interest. They took her out, and the gold for which two lives had been sacrificed was left unheeded, scattered in the dust. They went out the way they had come, through the noisome court, up the narrow flight of rotten, slippery stairs into the pure icy air.

Stephen turned to Talbot and took the girl's body wholly into his arms.

"I want to carry her up to my cabin," he said in a choking voice, and the other nodded.

The night was glorious with the deadly glory of the Arctic regions; the air was still, and of a coldness that seemed to bite deep into the flesh; but overhead, in the impenetrable blackness of the sky, the stars shone with a brilliance found only in the north, throwing a cold light over the snowy ground. To the south and east, low down, burned two enormous planets, like fiery eyes watching them over the horizon.

Slowly the two men walked over the hard ground. Not another living being was within sight.

Stephen walked first with heavy, uneven steps, and his breath came quickly in suppressed and sobbing gasps. Talbot followed closely, deep in painful thought. All had happened so suddenly. The whole horrible tragedy had swept over them in a few minutes; she had passed away from them both for ever. His brain seemed dazed by the shock. He could not realise it. He saw her dark head lying on Stephen's shoulder. It seemed as if she must lift it every second. He could not believe that she was lifeless, lifeless, this creature who had always been life itself, with her gay smiles, and light tones, and quick movements. Now, she and they were blotted out for all time. She had died against his breast, and for him. That was the horrible thought; it came into his brain after all the others, suddenly, and seemed as if it must burst it. And why, why should she have done it? Her last words rang in his ears, "mere devilry." So she had always been; reckless, open-handed, generous, she had often risked her life for another, and now she had given it for him. And in her last words she had tried to minimise her own act, tried to relieve him of the burden of a hopeless gratitude. But for all that he would have to bear it, and it seemed crushing him now. That she should have given her life, so young, less than half his own, so full of value and promise, for his! It seemed as if a reproach must follow him to the end of his days.

He walked as in a dream. He had no sense of the distance they were going, hardly any of the direction, except that he was following mechanically Stephen's slow, uneven, halting footsteps, and watching that little head that lay on his shoulder. Once when Stephen paused, he stretched out his arms and offered to take the burden from him, but Stephen repulsed him fiercely, and then the two went on slowly as before, how long he did not know, it seemed a long time. Suddenly, in the middle of the narrow pathway before him, Talbot saw Stephen stagger, fall to his knees, and then sink heavily sideways in the snow, his arms still tightly locked round the rigid body of the girl. Talbot hurried forward and bent over him, feeling hastily in his own pockets for his flask. Stephen's eyes were wide open and gazed up at him with a hopeless, despairing determination that went to Talbot's heart and chilled it.

"I can't go any farther, not another step," he muttered.

Talbot had been searching hurriedly through all his pockets for the flask he always carried.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, "I haven't got it; I must have dropped it coming up here, or they stole it in that hell down town."

Stephen feebly put up his hand.

"Don't trouble, I don't want it. I am just going to lie here and wait with her. Was she not lovely?" he muttered to himself, raising himself on his knees and laying the body before him on the snow.

The sky above them arched in pitchy blackness, but the starlight was so keen and brilliant that it lighted up the white silence round them. Stephen, on his hands and knees, hung over the still figure and gazed down into the marble face. The short silky black hair made a little blot of darkness in the snow, the white face was turned upward to the starlight. Talbot, looking down, caught for an instant the sight of its pure oval, its regular lines, and the sweet mouth, and the passionate, reasonless face of the man crouching over it, and then looked desperately up and down the narrow lonely trail. They were five miles from the town, a little over three from the cabins. Glistening whiteness lay all around, till the plains of snow grew grey in the distance; overhead, the burning, flashing, restless stars; and far off, where the two planets guarded the horizon, the red lights of the north began to quiver and flicker in the night.

The man on the ground noticed them, and straightening himself suddenly, looked towards them.

"The flare of hell!" he muttered, with staring, straining eyes; "it's coming very near."

Talbot saw that his reason had gone, failed suddenly, as a light goes down under a blast; he was delirious with that sudden delirium born of the awful cold that seizes men like a wolf in the long night of the Arctic winters.

For a second the helplessness of his situation flashed in upon Talbot's brain—alone here at midnight on the frozen trail, with a madman and a corpse!

He saw he must get help at once, and the cabins were the nearest point where help could be found. He could get men who would carry Stephen by force if necessary, but would he ever live in the fangs of this pitiless cold till they could return to him? He stood for one moment irresolute, unwilling to leave him to meet his death, and that horrible fear that he read in those haggard eyes watching the horizon, alone; and in that moment Stephen looked up at him and met his eye, and the madness rolled back and stood off his brain for an instant. He beckoned to Talbot, and Talbot went down on his knees beside him on the snow.

"My claims," muttered Stephen; "those claims will be yours now, do you understand? I've arranged it all with that lawyer Hoskins, down town. They were to be hers if anything happened to me, but we shall both go to-night, and they will be yours. She said I had sunk my soul in them, Talbot; she was right. The gold got me, I neglected her; I let her slip back into evil; I've murdered her for the claims. They are the price hell paid me. But you keep them. All turns to good in your hands. They can't harm you. Keep them. They are my grave."

"Stephen, rouse yourself! You are alive! you've got to live," said Talbot desperately, shaking him by the shoulder. "I am going now to bring men back with me to help you home. You've got to live till I return, do you hear?"

Stephen had turned from him again and put his arms round the motionless form before them.

"They are coming nearer," Talbot heard him mutter; "but they shall burn through me first, little one;" and he stretched himself across the corpse as if to shield it from the approaching flames, and far off the red eyes of the planets sank nearer the horizon, but still seemed to watch them across the snowy waste.

Talbot felt the only one thin thread of hope was to go as fast as his fatigue-clogged feet could move up to the cabins, and he rose and faced the homeward trail. He felt the hope of saving Stephen was just the least faintest flicker that ever burned within a heart; still there was the chance—the chance that, even should he be already in the sleep that ends in death when he returned, they could rouse him from it and drag him into life again. He forced his heavy feet along, and with a great effort started into a run. His limbs felt like lead, and all his body like paper. The long hours of cold and fatigue, the excitement, the rush of changing emotions he had gone through, had been draining his vitality, but he called upon all that he had left and put it all into the effort to save his friend. He knew that any one second lost or gained might be the one to turn the balance of life or death, and he urged himself forward till a dull pain filled all his side, and his temples seemed bursting, and the great lights before him swam in a blood-red mist.

Stephen, left alone, raised his head and gazed round him once, then he laid his cheek down on the cold cheek, pressed his lips to the cold lips, and his breast upon the cold breast just over where the bullet had ploughed its way through the flesh and bone. The night gripped him tighter and tighter, and slowly he sank to sleep.



L'ENVOI.

Noontide in June. A sky of the clearest, palest azure, and a rollicking, swelling, tumbling sea, full of smooth billowy waves chasing each other over its deep green surface—waves with their white crests blown backwards, throwing their spray high in the air and seeming to laugh and call to each other in gurgling voices; and between sea and sky the liquid golden sunlight filling the warm, throbbing air, spreading itself in dazzling sheets upon the water, and glinting in ten thousand glittering points on the flying spray thrown up by a steamer's screw. It was the steamer Prince, homeward-bound from Alaska, carrying passengers and a cargo as rich and yellow as the sunshine. And as if it knew of its precious and costly charge, the steamer cut proudly through the turbulent water, cleaving its straight passage homeward, homeward. On the deck of the boat, leaning back idly in a long chair, his calm, grey eyes fixed on the receding shores, where the golden sunshine seemed palpitating on their perilous loveliness, Talbot was sitting, with the freshening breeze stirring his hair and bringing to him the breath of a thousand spring flowers on the land. He was returning, and returning successful, with his work accomplished, his toil over, his aim achieved, and amongst all the lines of pain stamped on his pale and quiet face there was written a certain triumph, that yet perhaps was not so much triumph as relief. It was just four months since that terrible night when he had lost both his comrades, just a little less than four months since he had seen them both laid side by side in their lonely grave in the west gulch; and those four months would ever be a blot of horrible blackness on his life. Should he ever be able to forget the blank desolation that had closed in upon him night after night as he sat by his lonely hearth or paced the floor, his steps alone breaking the awful stillness? Yet he had forced himself to stay and face it, had continued his work and his method of life unchanged. His men had noted little difference in him. He had stayed the time he had appointed for himself, had accomplished his self-appointed task, and at last, when the summer burst in upon the gulch and loosened all Nature's fetters, he found himself also free; and now, like a black curtain rent in twain and torn from the bright face of a picture, the clouds of the past seemed falling away, leaving his future clear to his gaze. It stretched before him bright as the laughing sunlit sea beneath his eyes. If they could but have shared his joy, if they could have had their home-coming, his fellow-toilers, his fellow-prisoners! and the salt tears stung his lids until he closed them, shutting out the vivid yellow light, as he thought of the desolate grave in the gulch.

THE END