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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14654 ***
+
+A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS
+
+by
+
+JACK LONDON
+
+Author of _The Son of The Wolf_, _The Call of the Wild_,
+_The People of the Abyss_, etc.
+
+With Illustrations by Frederick C. Yohn
+
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers--New York
+
+1902
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"All ready, Miss Welse, though I'm sorry we can't spare one of the
+steamer's boats."
+
+Frona Welse arose with alacrity and came to the first officer's side.
+
+"We're so busy," he explained, "and gold-rushers are such perishable
+freight, at least--"
+
+"I understand," she interrupted, "and I, too, am behaving as though I
+were perishable.  And I am sorry for the trouble I am giving you,
+but--but--"  She turned quickly and pointed to the shore.  "Do you
+see that big log-house?  Between the clump of pines and the river?  I
+was born there."
+
+"Guess I'd be in a hurry myself," he muttered, sympathetically, as he
+piloted her along the crowded deck.
+
+Everybody was in everybody else's way; nor was there one who failed to
+proclaim it at the top of his lungs.  A thousand gold-seekers were
+clamoring for the immediate landing of their outfits.  Each hatchway
+gaped wide open, and from the lower depths the shrieking donkey-engines
+were hurrying the misassorted outfits skyward.  On either side of the
+steamer, rows of scows received the flying cargo, and on each of these
+scows a sweating mob of men charged the descending slings and heaved
+bales and boxes about in frantic search.  Men waved shipping receipts
+and shouted over the steamer-rails to them.  Sometimes two and three
+identified the same article, and war arose.  The "two-circle" and the
+"circle-and-dot" brands caused endless jangling, while every whipsaw
+discovered a dozen claimants.
+
+"The purser insists that he is going mad," the first officer said, as
+he helped Frona Welse down the gangway to the landing stage, "and the
+freight clerks have turned the cargo over to the passengers and quit
+work.  But we're not so unlucky as the Star of Bethlehem," he reassured
+her, pointing to a steamship at anchor a quarter of a mile away.  "Half
+of her passengers have pack-horses for Skaguay and White Pass, and the
+other half are bound over the Chilcoot.  So they've mutinied and
+everything's at a standstill."
+
+"Hey, you!" he cried, beckoning to a Whitehall which hovered discreetly
+on the outer rim of the floating confusion.
+
+A tiny launch, pulling heroically at a huge tow-barge, attempted to
+pass between; but the boatman shot nervily across her bow, and just as
+he was clear, unfortunately, caught a crab.  This slewed the boat
+around and brought it to a stop.
+
+"Watch out!" the first officer shouted.
+
+A pair of seventy-foot canoes, loaded with outfits, gold-rushers, and
+Indians, and under full sail, drove down from the counter direction.
+One of them veered sharply towards the landing stage, but the other
+pinched the Whitehall against the barge.  The boatman had unshipped his
+oars in time, but his small craft groaned under the pressure and
+threatened to collapse.  Whereat he came to his feet, and in short,
+nervous phrases consigned all canoe-men and launch-captains to eternal
+perdition.  A man on the barge leaned over from above and baptized him
+with crisp and crackling oaths, while the whites and Indians in the
+canoe laughed derisively.
+
+"Aw, g'wan!" one of them shouted.  "Why don't yeh learn to row?"
+
+The boatman's fist landed on the point of his critic's jaw and dropped
+him stunned upon the heaped merchandise.  Not content with this summary
+act he proceeded to follow his fist into the other craft.  The miner
+nearest him tugged vigorously at a revolver which had jammed in its
+shiny leather holster, while his brother argonauts, laughing, waited
+the outcome.  But the canoe was under way again, and the Indian
+helmsman drove the point of his paddle into the boatman's chest and
+hurled him backward into the bottom of the Whitehall.
+
+When the flood of oaths and blasphemy was at full tide, and violent
+assault and quick death seemed most imminent, the first officer had
+stolen a glance at the girl by his side.  He had expected to find a
+shocked and frightened maiden countenance, and was not at all prepared
+for the flushed and deeply interested face which met his eyes.
+
+"I am sorry," he began.
+
+But she broke in, as though annoyed by the interruption, "No, no; not
+at all.  I am enjoying it every bit.  Though I am glad that man's
+revolver stuck.  If it had not--"
+
+"We might have been delayed in getting ashore." The first officer
+laughed, and therein displayed his tact.
+
+"That man is a robber," he went on, indicating the boatman, who had now
+shoved his oars into the water and was pulling alongside.  "He agreed
+to charge only twenty dollars for putting you ashore.  Said he'd have
+made it twenty-five had it been a man.  He's a pirate, mark me, and he
+will surely hang some day.  Twenty dollars for a half-hour's work!
+Think of it!"
+
+"Easy, sport!  Easy!" cautioned the fellow in question, at the same
+time making an awkward landing and dropping one of his oars over-side.
+"You've no call to be flingin' names about," he added, defiantly,
+wringing out his shirt-sleeve, wet from rescue of the oar.
+
+"You've got good ears, my man," began the first officer.
+
+"And a quick fist," the other snapped in.
+
+"And a ready tongue."
+
+"Need it in my business.  No gettin' 'long without it among you
+sea-sharks.  Pirate, am I?  And you with a thousand passengers packed
+like sardines!  Charge 'em double first-class passage, feed 'em
+steerage grub, and bunk 'em worse 'n pigs!  Pirate, eh!  Me?"
+
+A red-faced man thrust his head over the rail above and began to bellow
+lustily.
+
+"I want my stock landed!  Come up here, Mr. Thurston!  Now!  Right
+away!  Fifty cayuses of | mine eating their heads off in this dirty
+kennel of yours, and it'll be a sick time you'll have if you don't
+hustle them ashore as fast as God'll let you!  I'm losing a thousand
+dollars a day, and I won't stand it!  Do you hear?  I won't stand it!
+You've robbed me right and left from the time you cleared dock in
+Seattle, and by the hinges of hell I won't stand it any more!  I'll
+break this company as sure as my name's Thad Ferguson!  D'ye hear my
+spiel?  I'm Thad Ferguson, and you can't come and see me any too quick
+for your health!  D'ye hear?"
+
+"Pirate; eh?" the boatman soliloquized.  "Who?  Me?"
+
+Mr. Thurston waved his hand appeasingly at the red-faced man, and
+turned to the girl.  "I'd like to go ashore with you, and as far as the
+store, but you see how busy we are.  Good-by, and a lucky trip to you.
+I'll tell off a couple of men at once and break out your baggage.  Have
+it up at the store to-morrow morning, sharp."
+
+She took his hand lightly and stepped aboard.  Her weight gave the
+leaky boat a sudden lurch, and the water hurtled across the bottom
+boards to her shoe-tops: but she took it coolly enough, settling
+herself in the stern-sheets and tucking her feet under her.
+
+"Hold on!" the officer cried.  "This will never do, Miss Welse.  Come
+on back, and I'll get one of our boats over as soon as I can."
+
+"I'll see you in--in heaven first," retorted the boatman, shoving off.
+"Let go!" he threatened.
+
+Mr. Thurston gripped tight hold of the gunwale, and as reward for his
+chivalry had his knuckles rapped sharply by the oar-blade.  Then he
+forgot himself, and Miss Welse also, and swore, and swore fervently.
+
+"I dare say our farewell might have been more dignified," she called
+back to him, her laughter rippling across the water.
+
+"Jove!" he muttered, doffing his cap gallantly.  "There is a _woman_!"
+And a sudden hunger seized him, and a yearning to see himself mirrored
+always in the gray eyes of Frona Welse.  He was not analytical; he did
+not know why; but he knew that with her he could travel to the end of
+the earth.  He felt a distaste for his profession, and a temptation to
+throw it all over and strike out for the Klondike whither she was
+going; then he glanced up the beetling side of the ship, saw the red
+face of Thad Ferguson, and forgot the dream he had for an instant
+dreamed.
+
+
+Splash!  A handful of water from his strenuous oar struck her full in
+the face.  "Hope you don't mind it, miss," he apologized.  "I'm doin'
+the best I know how, which ain't much."
+
+"So it seems," she answered, good-naturedly.
+
+"Not that I love the sea," bitterly; "but I've got to turn a few honest
+dollars somehow, and this seemed the likeliest way.  I oughter 'a ben
+in Klondike by now, if I'd had any luck at all.  Tell you how it was.
+I lost my outfit on Windy Arm, half-way in, after packin' it clean
+across the Pass--"
+
+Zip!  Splash!  She shook the water from her eyes, squirming the while
+as some of it ran down her warm back.
+
+"You'll do," he encouraged her.  "You're the right stuff for this
+country.  Goin' all the way in?"
+
+She nodded cheerfully.
+
+"Then you'll do.  But as I was sayin', after I lost my outfit I hit
+back for the coast, bein' broke, to hustle up another one.  That's why
+I'm chargin' high-pressure rates.  And I hope you don't feel sore at
+what I made you pay.  I'm no worse than the rest, miss, sure.  I had to
+dig up a hundred for this old tub, which ain't worth ten down in the
+States.  Same kind of prices everywhere.  Over on the Skaguay Trail
+horseshoe nails is just as good as a quarter any day.  A man goes up to
+the bar and calls for a whiskey.  Whiskey's half a dollar.  Well, he
+drinks his whiskey, plunks down two horseshoe nails, and it's O.K.  No
+kick comin' on horseshoe nails.  They use 'em to make change."
+
+"You must be a brave man to venture into the country again after such
+an experience.  Won't you tell me your name?  We may meet on the
+Inside."
+
+"Who?  Me?  Oh, I'm Del Bishop, pocket-miner; and if ever we run across
+each other, remember I'd give you the last shirt--I mean, remember my
+last bit of grub is yours."
+
+"Thank you," she answered with a sweet smile; for she was a woman who
+loved the things which rose straight from the heart.
+
+He stopped rowing long enough to fish about in the water around his
+feet for an old cornbeef can.
+
+"You'd better do some bailin'," he ordered, tossing her the can.
+"She's leakin' worse since that squeeze."
+
+Frona smiled mentally, tucked up her skirts, and bent to the work.  At
+every dip, like great billows heaving along the sky-line, the
+glacier-fretted mountains rose and fell.  Sometimes she rested her back
+and watched the teeming beach towards which they were heading, and
+again, the land-locked arm of the sea in which a score or so of great
+steamships lay at anchor.  From each of these, to the shore and back
+again, flowed a steady stream of scows, launches, canoes, and all sorts
+of smaller craft.  Man, the mighty toiler, reacting upon a hostile
+environment, she thought, going back in memory to the masters whose
+wisdom she had shared in lecture-room and midnight study.  She was a
+ripened child of the age, and fairly understood the physical world and
+the workings thereof.  And she had a love for the world, and a deep
+respect.
+
+For some time Del Bishop had only punctuated the silence with splashes
+from his oars; but a thought struck him.
+
+"You haven't told me your name," he suggested, with complacent delicacy.
+
+"My name is Welse," she answered.  "Frona Welse."
+
+A great awe manifested itself in his face, and grew to a greater and
+greater awe.  "You--are--Frona--Welse?" he enunciated slowly.  "Jacob
+Welse ain't your old man, is he?"
+
+"Yes; I am Jacob Welse's daughter, at your service."
+
+He puckered his lips in a long low whistle of understanding and stopped
+rowing.  "Just you climb back into the stern and take your feet out of
+that water," he commanded.  "And gimme holt that can."
+
+"Am I not bailing satisfactorily?" she demanded, indignantly.
+
+"Yep.  You're doin' all right; but, but, you are--are--"
+
+"Just what I was before you knew who I was.  Now you go on
+rowing,--that's your share of the work; and I'll take care of mine."
+
+"Oh, you'll do!" he murmured ecstatically, bending afresh to the oars.
+"And Jacob Welse is your old man?  I oughter 'a known it, sure!"
+
+When they reached the sand-spit, crowded with heterogeneous piles of
+merchandise and buzzing with men, she stopped long enough to shake
+hands with her ferryman.  And though such a proceeding on the part of
+his feminine patrons was certainly unusual, Del Bishop squared it
+easily with the fact that she was Jacob Welse's daughter.
+
+"Remember, my last bit of grub is yours," he reassured her, still
+holding her hand.
+
+"And your last shirt, too; don't forget."
+
+"Well, you're a--a--a crackerjack!" he exploded with a final squeeze.
+"Sure!"
+
+Her short skirt did not block the free movement of her limbs, and she
+discovered with pleasurable surprise that the quick tripping step of
+the city pavement had departed from her, and that she was swinging off
+in the long easy stride which is born of the trail and which comes only
+after much travail and endeavor.  More than one gold-rusher, shooting
+keen glances at her ankles and gray-gaitered calves, affirmed Del
+Bishop's judgment.  And more than one glanced up at her face, and
+glanced again; for her gaze was frank, with the frankness of
+comradeship; and in her eyes there was always a smiling light, just
+trembling on the verge of dawn; and did the onlooker smile, her eyes
+smiled also.  And the smiling light was protean-mooded,--merry,
+sympathetic, joyous, quizzical,--the complement of whatsoever kindled
+it.  And sometimes the light spread over all her face, till the smile
+prefigured by it was realized.  But it was always in frank and open
+comradeship.
+
+And there was much to cause her to smile as she hurried through the
+crowd, across the sand-spit, and over the flat towards the log-building
+she had pointed out to Mr. Thurston.  Time had rolled back, and
+locomotion and transportation were once again in the most primitive
+stages.  Men who had never carried more than parcels in all their lives
+had now become bearers of burdens.  They no longer walked upright under
+the sun, but stooped the body forward and bowed the head to the earth.
+Every back had become a pack-saddle, and the strap-galls were beginning
+to form.  They staggered beneath the unwonted effort, and legs became
+drunken with weariness and titubated in divers directions till the
+sunlight darkened and bearer and burden fell by the way.  Other men,
+exulting secretly, piled their goods on two-wheeled go-carts and pulled
+out blithely enough, only to stall at the first spot where the great
+round boulders invaded the trail.  Whereat they generalized anew upon
+the principles of Alaskan travel, discarded the go-cart, or trundled it
+back to the beach and sold it at fabulous price to the last man landed.
+Tenderfeet, with ten pounds of Colt's revolvers, cartridges, and
+hunting-knives belted about them, wandered valiantly up the trail, and
+crept back softly, shedding revolvers, cartridges, and knives in
+despairing showers.  And so, in gasping and bitter sweat, these sons of
+Adam suffered for Adam's sin.
+
+Frona felt vaguely disturbed by this great throbbing rush of gold-mad
+men, and the old scene with its clustering associations seemed blotted
+out by these toiling aliens.  Even the old landmarks appeared strangely
+unfamiliar.  It was the same, yet not the same.  Here, on the grassy
+flat, where she had played as a child and shrunk back at the sound of
+her voice echoing from glacier to glacier, ten thousand men tramped
+ceaselessly up and down, grinding the tender herbage into the soil and
+mocking the stony silence.  And just up the trail were ten thousand men
+who had passed by, and over the Chilcoot were ten thousand more.  And
+behind, all down the island-studded Alaskan coast, even to the Horn,
+were yet ten thousand more, harnessers of wind and steam, hasteners
+from the ends of the earth.  The Dyea River as of old roared
+turbulently down to the sea; but its ancient banks were gored by the
+feet of many men, and these men labored in surging rows at the dripping
+tow-lines, and the deep-laden boats followed them as they fought their
+upward way.  And the will of man strove with the will of the water, and
+the men laughed at the old Dyea River and gored its banks deeper for
+the men who were to follow.
+
+The doorway of the store, through which she had once run out and in,
+and where she had looked with awe at the unusual sight of a stray
+trapper or fur-trader, was now packed with a clamorous throng of men.
+Where of old one letter waiting a claimant was a thing of wonder, she
+now saw, by peering through the window, the mail heaped up from floor
+to ceiling.  And it was for this mail the men were clamoring so
+insistently.  Before the store, by the scales, was another crowd.  An
+Indian threw his pack upon the scales, the white owner jotted down the
+weight in a note-book, and another pack was thrown on.  Each pack was
+in the straps, ready for the packer's back and the precarious journey
+over the Chilcoot.  Frona edged in closer.  She was interested in
+freights.  She remembered in her day when the solitary prospector or
+trader had his outfit packed over for six cents,--one hundred and
+twenty dollars a ton.
+
+The tenderfoot who was weighing up consulted his guide-book.  "Eight
+cents," he said to the Indian.  Whereupon the Indians laughed
+scornfully and chorused, "Forty cents!"  A pained expression came into
+his face, and he looked about him anxiously.  The sympathetic light in
+Frona's eyes caught him, and he regarded her with intent blankness.  In
+reality he was busy reducing a three-ton outfit to terms of cash at
+forty dollars per hundred-weight.  "Twenty-four hundred dollars for
+thirty miles!" he cried.  "What can I do?"
+
+Frona shrugged her shoulders.  "You'd better pay them the forty cents,"
+she advised, "else they will take off their straps."
+
+The man thanked her, but instead of taking heed went on with his
+haggling.  One of the Indians stepped up and proceeded to unfasten his
+pack-straps.  The tenderfoot wavered, but just as he was about to give
+in, the packers jumped the price on him to forty-five cents.  He smiled
+after a sickly fashion, and nodded his head in token of surrender.  But
+another Indian joined the group and began whispering excitedly.  A
+cheer went up, and before the man could realize it they had jerked off
+their straps and departed, spreading the news as they went that freight
+to Lake Linderman was fifty cents.
+
+Of a sudden, the crowd before the store was perceptibly agitated.  Its
+members whispered excitedly one to another, and all their eyes were
+focussed upon three men approaching from up the trail.  The trio were
+ordinary-looking creatures, ill-clad and even ragged.  In a more stable
+community their apprehension by the village constable and arrest for
+vagrancy would have been immediate.  "French Louis," the tenderfeet
+whispered and passed the word along.  "Owns three Eldorado claims in a
+block," the man next to Frona confided to her.  "Worth ten millions at
+the very least."  French Louis, striding a little in advance of his
+companions, did not look it.  He had parted company with his hat
+somewhere along the route, and a frayed silk kerchief was wrapped
+carelessly about his head.  And for all his ten millions, he carried
+his own travelling pack on his broad shoulders.  "And that one, the one
+with the beard, that's Swiftwater Bill, another of the Eldorado kings."
+
+"How do you know?" Frona asked, doubtingly.
+
+"Know!" the man exclaimed.  "Know!  Why his picture has been in all the
+papers for the last six weeks.  See!" He unfolded a newspaper.  "And a
+pretty good likeness, too.  I've looked at it so much I'd know his mug
+among a thousand."
+
+"Then who is the third one?" she queried, tacitly accepting him as a
+fount of authority.
+
+Her informant lifted himself on his toes to see better.  "I don't
+know," he confessed sorrowfully, then tapped the shoulder of the man
+next to him.  "Who is the lean, smooth-faced one?  The one with the
+blue shirt and the patch on his knee?"
+
+Just then Frona uttered a glad little cry and darted forward.  "Matt!"
+she cried.  "Matt McCarthy!"
+
+The man with the patch shook her hand heartily, though he did not know
+her and distrust was plain in his eyes.
+
+"Oh, you don't remember me!" she chattered.  "And don't you dare say
+you do!  If there weren't so many looking, I'd hug you, you old bear!
+
+"And so Big Bear went home to the Little Bears," she recited, solemnly.
+"And the Little Bears were very hungry.  And Big Bear said, 'Guess what
+I have got, my children.'  And one Little Bear guessed berries, and one
+Little Bear guessed salmon, and t'other Little Bear guessed porcupine.
+Then Big Bear laughed 'Whoof!  Whoof!' and said, '_A Nice Big Fat
+Man_!'"
+
+As he listened, recollection avowed itself in his face, and, when she
+had finished, his eyes wrinkled up and he laughed a peculiar, laughable
+silent laugh.
+
+"Sure, an' it's well I know ye," he explained; "but for the life iv me
+I can't put me finger on ye."
+
+She pointed into the store and watched him anxiously.
+
+"Now I have ye!"  He drew back and looked her up and down, and his
+expression changed to disappointment.  "It cuddent be.  I mistook ye.
+Ye cud niver a-lived in that shanty," thrusting a thumb in the
+direction of the store.
+
+Frona nodded her head vigorously.
+
+"Thin it's yer ownself afther all?  The little motherless darlin', with
+the goold hair I combed the knots out iv many's the time?  The little
+witch that run barefoot an' barelegged over all the place?"
+
+"Yes, yes," she corroborated, gleefully.
+
+"The little divil that stole the dog-team an' wint over the Pass in the
+dead o' winter for to see where the world come to an ind on the ither
+side, just because old Matt McCarthy was afther tellin' her fairy
+stories?"
+
+"O Matt, dear old Matt!  Remember the time I went swimming with the
+Siwash girls from the Indian camp?"
+
+"An' I dragged ye out by the hair o' yer head?"
+
+"And lost one of your new rubber boots?"
+
+"Ah, an' sure an' I do.  And a most shockin' an' immodest affair it
+was!  An' the boots was worth tin dollars over yer father's counter."
+
+"And then you went away, over the Pass, to the Inside, and we never
+heard a word of you.  Everybody thought you dead."
+
+"Well I recollect the day.  An' ye cried in me arms an' wuddent kiss
+yer old Matt good-by.  But ye did in the ind," he exclaimed,
+triumphantly, "whin ye saw I was goin' to lave ye for sure.  What a wee
+thing ye were!"
+
+"I was only eight."
+
+"An' 'tis twelve year agone.  Twelve year I've spint on the Inside,
+with niver a trip out.  Ye must be twinty now?"
+
+"And almost as big as you," Frona affirmed.
+
+"A likely woman ye've grown into, tall, an' shapely, an' all that."  He
+looked her over critically.  "But ye cud 'a' stood a bit more flesh,
+I'm thinkin'."
+
+"No, no," she denied.  "Not at twenty, Matt, not at twenty.  Feel my
+arm, you'll see."  She doubled that member till the biceps knotted.
+
+"'Tis muscle," he admitted, passing his hand admiringly over the
+swelling bunch; "just as though ye'd been workin' hard for yer livin'."
+
+"Oh, I can swing clubs, and box, and fence," she cried, successively
+striking the typical postures; "and swim, and make high dives, chin a
+bar twenty times, and--and walk on my hands.  There!"
+
+"Is that what ye've been doin'?  I thought ye wint away for
+book-larnin'," he commented, dryly.
+
+"But they have new ways of teaching, now, Matt, and they don't turn you
+out with your head crammed--"
+
+"An' yer legs that spindly they can't carry it all!  Well, an' I
+forgive ye yer muscle."
+
+"But how about yourself, Matt?" Frona asked.  "How has the world been
+to you these twelve years?"
+
+"Behold!"  He spread his legs apart, threw his head back, and his chest
+out.  "Ye now behold Mister Matthew McCarthy, a king iv the noble
+Eldorado Dynasty by the strength iv his own right arm.  Me possessions
+is limitless.  I have more dust in wan minute than iver I saw in all me
+life before.  Me intintion for makin' this trip to the States is to
+look up me ancestors.  I have a firm belafe that they wance existed.
+Ye may find nuggets in the Klondike, but niver good whiskey.  'Tis
+likewise me intintion to have wan drink iv the rate stuff before I die.
+Afther that 'tis me sworn resolve to return to the superveeshion iv me
+Klondike properties.  Indade, and I'm an Eldorado king; an' if ye'll be
+wantin' the lind iv a tidy bit, it's meself that'll loan it ye."
+
+"The same old, old Matt, who never grows old," Frona laughed.
+
+"An' it's yerself is the thrue Welse, for all yer prize-fighter's
+muscles an' yer philosopher's brains.  But let's wander inside on the
+heels of Louis an' Swiftwater.  Andy's still tindin' store, I'm told,
+an' we'll see if I still linger in the pages iv his mimory."
+
+"And I, also." Frona seized him by the hand.  It was a bad habit she
+had of seizing the hands of those she loved.  "It's ten years since I
+went away."
+
+The Irishman forged his way through the crowd like a pile-driver, and
+Frona followed easily in the lee of his bulk.  The tenderfeet watched
+them reverently, for to them they were as Northland divinities.  The
+buzz of conversation rose again.
+
+"Who's the girl?" somebody asked.  And just as Frona passed inside the
+door she caught the opening of the answer: "Jacob Welse's daughter.
+Never heard of Jacob Welse?  Where have you been keeping yourself?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+She came out of the wood of glistening birch, and with the first fires
+of the sun blazoning her unbound hair raced lightly across the
+dew-dripping meadow.  The earth was fat with excessive moisture and
+soft to her feet, while the dank vegetation slapped against her knees
+and cast off flashing sprays of liquid diamonds.  The flush of the
+morning was in her cheek, and its fire in her eyes, and she was aglow
+with youth and love.  For she had nursed at the breast of nature,--in
+forfeit of a mother,--and she loved the old trees and the creeping
+green things with a passionate love; and the dim murmur of growing life
+was a gladness to her ears, and the damp earth-smells were sweet to her
+nostrils.
+
+Where the upper-reach of the meadow vanished in a dark and narrow
+forest aisle, amid clean-stemmed dandelions and color-bursting
+buttercups, she came upon a bunch of great Alaskan violets.  Throwing
+herself at full length, she buried her face in the fragrant coolness,
+and with her hands drew the purple heads in circling splendor about her
+own.  And she was not ashamed.  She had wandered away amid the
+complexities and smirch and withering heats of the great world, and she
+had returned, simple, and clean, and wholesome.  And she was glad of
+it, as she lay there, slipping back to the old days, when the universe
+began and ended at the sky-line, and when she journeyed over the Pass
+to behold the Abyss.
+
+It was a primitive life, that of her childhood, with few conventions,
+but such as there were, stern ones.  And they might be epitomized, as
+she had read somewhere in her later years, as "the faith of food and
+blanket."  This faith had her father kept, she thought, remembering
+that his name sounded well on the lips of men.  And this was the faith
+she had learned,--the faith she had carried with her across the Abyss
+and into the world, where men had wandered away from the old truths and
+made themselves selfish dogmas and casuistries of the subtlest kinds;
+the faith she had brought back with her, still fresh, and young, and
+joyous.  And it was all so simple, she had contended; why should not
+their faith be as her faith--_the faith of food and blanket_?  The
+faith of trail and hunting camp?  The faith with which strong clean men
+faced the quick danger and sudden death by field and flood?  Why not?
+The faith of Jacob Welse?  Of Matt McCarthy?  Of the Indian boys she
+had played with?  Of the Indian girls she had led to Amazonian war?  Of
+the very wolf-dogs straining in the harnesses and running with her
+across the snow?  It was healthy, it was real, it was good, she
+thought, and she was glad.
+
+The rich notes of a robin saluted her from the birch wood, and opened
+her ears to the day.  A partridge boomed afar in the forest, and a
+tree-squirrel launched unerringly into space above her head, and went
+on, from limb to limb and tree to tree, scolding graciously the while.
+From the hidden river rose the shouts of the toiling adventurers,
+already parted from sleep and fighting their way towards the Pole.
+
+Frona arose, shook back her hair, and took instinctively the old path
+between the trees to the camp of Chief George and the Dyea tribesmen.
+She came upon a boy, breech-clouted and bare, like a copper god.  He
+was gathering wood, and looked at her keenly over his bronze shoulder.
+She bade him good-morning, blithely, in the Dyea tongue; but he shook
+his head, and laughed insultingly, and paused in his work to hurl
+shameful words after her.  She did not understand, for this was not the
+old way, and when she passed a great and glowering Sitkan buck she kept
+her tongue between her teeth.  At the fringe of the forest, the camp
+confronted her.  And she was startled.  It was not the old camp of a
+score or more of lodges clustering and huddling together in the open as
+though for company, but a mighty camp.  It began at the very forest,
+and flowed in and out among the scattered tree-clumps on the flat, and
+spilled over and down to the river bank where the long canoes were
+lined up ten and twelve deep.  It was a gathering of the tribes, like
+unto none in all the past, and a thousand miles of coast made up the
+tally.  They were all strange Indians, with wives and chattels and
+dogs.  She rubbed shoulders with Juneau and Wrangel men, and was
+jostled by wild-eyed Sticks from over the Passes, fierce Chilcats, and
+Queen Charlotte Islanders.  And the looks they cast upon her were black
+and frowning, save--and far worse--where the merrier souls leered
+patronizingly into her face and chuckled unmentionable things.
+
+She was not frightened by this insolence, but angered; for it hurt her,
+and embittered the pleasurable home-coming.  Yet she quickly grasped
+the significance of it: the old patriarchal status of her father's time
+had passed away, and civilization, in a scorching blast, had swept down
+upon this people in a day.  Glancing under the raised flaps of a tent,
+she saw haggard-faced bucks squatting in a circle on the floor.  By the
+door a heap of broken bottles advertised the vigils of the night.  A
+white man, low of visage and shrewd, was dealing cards about, and gold
+and silver coins leaped into heaping bets upon the blanket board.  A
+few steps farther on she heard the cluttering whirl of a wheel of
+fortune, and saw the Indians, men and women, chancing eagerly their
+sweat-earned wages for the gaudy prizes of the game.  And from tepee
+and lodge rose the cracked and crazy strains of cheap music-boxes.
+
+An old squaw, peeling a willow pole in the sunshine of an open doorway,
+raised her head and uttered a shrill cry.
+
+"Hee-Hee!  Tenas Hee-Hee!" she muttered as well and as excitedly as her
+toothless gums would permit.
+
+Frona thrilled at the cry.  Tenas Hee-Hee!  Little Laughter!  Her name
+of the long gone Indian past!  She turned and went over to the old
+woman.
+
+"And hast thou so soon forgotten, Tenas Hee-Hee?" she mumbled.  "And
+thine eyes so young and sharp!  Not so soon does Neepoosa forget."
+
+"It is thou, Neepoosa?" Frona cried, her tongue halting from the disuse
+of years.
+
+"Ay, it is Neepoosa," the old woman replied, drawing her inside the
+tent, and despatching a boy, hot-footed, on some errand.  They sat down
+together on the floor, and she patted Frona's hand lovingly, peering,
+meanwhile, blear-eyed and misty, into her face.  "Ay, it is Neepoosa,
+grown old quickly after the manner of our women.  Neepoosa, who dandled
+thee in her arms when thou wast a child.  Neepoosa, who gave thee thy
+name, Tenas Hee-Hee.  Who fought for thee with Death when thou wast
+ailing; and gathered growing things from the woods and grasses of the
+earth and made of them tea, and gave thee to drink.  But I mark little
+change, for I knew thee at once.  It was thy very shadow on the ground
+that made me lift my head.  A little change, mayhap.  Tall thou art,
+and like a slender willow in thy grace, and the sun has kissed thy
+cheeks more lightly of the years; but there is the old hair, flying
+wild and of the color of the brown seaweed floating on the tide, and
+the mouth, quick to laugh and loth to cry.  And the eyes are as clear
+and true as in the days when Neepoosa chid thee for wrong-doing, and
+thou wouldst not put false words upon thy tongue.  Ai!  Ai!  Not as
+thou art the other women who come now into the land!"
+
+"And why is a white woman without honor among you?" Frona demanded.
+"Your men say evil things to me in the camp, and as I came through the
+woods, even the boys.  Not in the old days, when I played with them,
+was this shame so."
+
+"Ai!  Ai!" Neepoosa made answer.  "It is so.  But do not blame them.
+Pour not thine anger upon their heads.  For it is true it is the fault
+of thy women who come into the land these days.  They can point to no
+man and say, 'That is my man.'  And it is not good that women should he
+thus.  And they look upon all men, bold-eyed and shameless, and their
+tongues are unclean, and their hearts bad.  Wherefore are thy women
+without honor among us.  As for the boys, they are but boys.  And the
+men; how should they know?"
+
+The tent-flaps were poked aside and an old man came in.  He grunted to
+Frona and sat down.  Only a certain eager alertness showed the delight
+he took in her presence.
+
+"So Tenas Hee-Hee has come back in these bad days," he vouchsafed in a
+shrill, quavering voice.
+
+"And why bad days, Muskim?" Frona asked.  "Do not the women wear
+brighter colors?  Are not the bellies fuller with flour and bacon and
+white man's grub?  Do not the young men contrive great wealth what of
+their pack-straps and paddles?  And art thou not remembered with the
+ancient offerings of meat and fish and blanket?  Why bad days, Muskim?"
+
+"True," he replied in his fine, priestly way, a reminiscent flash of
+the old fire lighting his eyes.  "It is very true.  The women wear
+brighter colors.  But they have found favor, in the eyes of thy white
+men, and they look no more upon the young men of their own blood.
+Wherefore the tribe does not increase, nor do the little children
+longer clutter the way of our feet.  It is so.  The bellies are fuller
+with the white man's grub; but also are they fuller with the white
+man's bad whiskey.  Nor could it be otherwise that the young men
+contrive great wealth; but they sit by night over the cards, and it
+passes from them, and they speak harsh words one to another, and in
+anger blows are struck, and there is bad blood between them.  As for
+old Muskim, there are few offerings of meat and fish and blanket.  For
+the young women have turned aside from the old paths, nor do the young
+men longer honor the old totems and the old gods.  So these are bad
+days, Tenas Hee-Hee, and they behold old Muskim go down in sorrow to
+the grave."
+
+"Ai!  Ai!  It is so!" wailed Neepoosa.
+
+"Because of the madness of thy people have my people become mad,"
+Muskim continued.  "They come over the salt sea like the waves of the
+sea, thy people, and they go--ah! who knoweth where?"
+
+"Ai!  Who knoweth where?" Neepoosa lamented, rocking slowly back and
+forth.
+
+"Ever they go towards the frost and cold; and ever do they come, more
+people, wave upon wave!"
+
+"Ai!  Ai!  Into the frost and cold!  It is a long way, and dark and
+cold!"  She shivered, then laid a sudden hand on Frona's arm.  "And
+thou goest?"
+
+Frona nodded.
+
+"And Tenas Hee-Hee goest!  Ai!  Ai!  Ai!"
+
+The tent-flap lifted, and Matt McCarthy peered in.  "It's yerself,
+Frona, is it?  With breakfast waitin' this half-hour on ye, an' old
+Andy fumin' an' frettin' like the old woman he is.  Good-mornin' to ye,
+Neepoosa," he addressed Frona's companions, "an' to ye, Muskim, though,
+belike ye've little mimory iv me face."
+
+The old couple grunted salutation and remained stolidly silent.
+
+"But hurry with ye, girl," turning back to Frona.  "Me steamer starts
+by mid-day, an' it's little I'll see iv ye at the best.  An' likewise
+there's Andy an' the breakfast pipin' hot, both iv them."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Frona waved her hand to Andy and swung out on the trail.  Fastened
+tightly to her back were her camera and a small travelling satchel.  In
+addition, she carried for alpenstock the willow pole of Neepoosa.  Her
+dress was of the mountaineering sort, short-skirted and scant, allowing
+the greatest play with the least material, and withal gray of color and
+modest.
+
+Her outfit, on the backs of a dozen Indians and in charge of Del
+Bishop, had got under way hours before.  The previous day, on her
+return with Matt McCarthy from the Siwash camp, she had found Del
+Bishop at the store waiting her.  His business was quickly transacted,
+for the proposition he made was terse and to the point.  She was going
+into the country.  He was intending to go in.  She would need somebody.
+If she had not picked any one yet, why he was just the man.  He had
+forgotten to tell her the day he took her ashore that he had been in
+the country years before and knew all about it.  True, he hated the
+water, and it was mainly a water journey; but he was not afraid of it.
+He was afraid of nothing.  Further, he would fight for her at the drop
+of the hat.  As for pay, when they got to Dawson, a good word from her
+to Jacob Welse, and a year's outfit would be his.  No, no; no
+grub-stake about it, no strings on him!  He would pay for the outfit
+later on when his sack was dusted.  What did she think about it,
+anyway?  And Frona did think about it, for ere she had finished
+breakfast he was out hustling the packers together.
+
+She found herself making better speed than the majority of her fellows,
+who were heavily laden and had to rest their packs every few hundred
+yards.  Yet she found herself hard put to keep the pace of a bunch of
+Scandinavians ahead of her.  They were huge strapping blond-haired
+giants, each striding along with a hundred pounds on his back, and all
+harnessed to a go-cart which carried fully six hundred more.  Their
+faces were as laughing suns, and the joy of life was in them.  The toil
+seemed child's play and slipped from them lightly.  They joked with one
+another, and with the passers-by, in a meaningless tongue, and their
+great chests rumbled with cavern-echoing laughs.  Men stood aside for
+them, and looked after them enviously; for they took the rises of the
+trail on the run, and rattled down the counter slopes, and ground the
+iron-rimmed wheels harshly over the rocks.  Plunging through a dark
+stretch of woods, they came out upon the river at the ford.  A drowned
+man lay on his back on the sand-bar, staring upward, unblinking, at the
+sun.  A man, in irritated tones, was questioning over and over,
+"Where's his pardner?  Ain't he got a pardner?"  Two more men had
+thrown off their packs and were coolly taking an inventory of the dead
+man's possessions.  One called aloud the various articles, while the
+other checked them off on a piece of dirty wrapping-paper.  Letters and
+receipts, wet and pulpy, strewed the sand.  A few gold coins were
+heaped carelessly on a white handkerchief.  Other men, crossing back
+and forth in canoes and skiffs, took no notice.
+
+The Scandinavians glanced at the sight, and their faces sobered for a
+moment.  "Where's his pardner?  Ain't he got a pardner?" the irritated
+man demanded of them.  They shook their heads.  They did not understand
+English.  They stepped into the water and splashed onward.  Some one
+called warningly from the opposite bank, whereat they stood still and
+conferred together.  Then they started on again.  The two men taking
+the inventory turned to watch.  The current rose nigh to their hips,
+but it was swift and they staggered, while now and again the cart
+slipped sideways with the stream.  The worst was over, and Frona found
+herself holding her breath.  The water had sunk to the knees of the two
+foremost men, when a strap snapped on one nearest the cart.  His pack
+swung suddenly to the side, overbalancing him.  At the same instant the
+man next to him slipped, and each jerked the other under.  The next two
+were whipped off their feet, while the cart, turning over, swept from
+the bottom of the ford into the deep water.  The two men who had almost
+emerged threw themselves backward on the pull-ropes.  The effort was
+heroic, but giants though they were, the task was too great and they
+were dragged, inch by inch, downward and under.
+
+Their packs held them to the bottom, save him whose strap had broken.
+This one struck out, not to the shore, but down the stream, striving to
+keep up with his comrades.  A couple of hundred feet below, the rapid
+dashed over a toothed-reef of rocks, and here, a minute later, they
+appeared.  The cart, still loaded, showed first, smashing a wheel and
+turning over and over into the next plunge.  The men followed in a
+miserable tangle.  They were beaten against the submerged rocks and
+swept on, all but one.  Frona, in a canoe (a dozen canoes were already
+in pursuit), saw him grip the rock with bleeding fingers.  She saw his
+white face and the agony of the effort; but his hold relaxed and he was
+jerked away, just as his free comrade, swimming mightily, was reaching
+for him.  Hidden from sight, they took the next plunge, showing for a
+second, still struggling, at the shallow foot of the rapid.
+
+A canoe picked up the swimming man, but the rest disappeared in a long
+stretch of swift, deep water.  For a quarter of an hour the canoes
+plied fruitlessly about, then found the dead men gently grounded in an
+eddy.  A tow-rope was requisitioned from an up-coming boat, and a pair
+of horses from a pack-train on the bank, and the ghastly jetsam hauled
+ashore.  Frona looked at the five young giants lying in the mud,
+broken-boned, limp, uncaring.  They were still harnessed to the cart,
+and the poor worthless packs still clung to their backs, The sixth sat
+in the midst, dry-eyed and stunned.  A dozen feet away the steady flood
+of life flowed by and Frona melted into it and went on.
+
+
+The dark spruce-shrouded mountains drew close together in the Dyea
+Canyon, and the feet of men churned the wet sunless earth into mire and
+bog-hole.  And when they had done this they sought new paths, till
+there were many paths.  And on such a path Frona came upon a man spread
+carelessly in the mud.  He lay on his side, legs apart and one arm
+buried beneath him, pinned down by a bulky pack.  His cheek was
+pillowed restfully in the ooze, and on his face there was an expression
+of content.  He brightened when he saw her, and his eyes twinkled
+cheerily.
+
+"'Bout time you hove along," he greeted her.  "Been waitin' an hour on
+you as it is."
+
+"That's it," as Frona bent over him.  "Just unbuckle that strap.  The
+pesky thing!  'Twas just out o' my reach all the time."
+
+"Are you hurt?" she asked.
+
+He slipped out of his straps, shook himself, and felt the twisted arm.
+"Nope.  Sound as a dollar, thank you.  And no kick to register,
+either."  He reached over and wiped his muddy hands on a low-bowed
+spruce.  "Just my luck; but I got a good rest, so what's the good of
+makin' a beef about it?  You see, I tripped on that little root there,
+and slip! slump! slam! and slush!--there I was, down and out, and the
+buckle just out o' reach.  And there I lay for a blasted hour,
+everybody hitting the lower path."
+
+"But why didn't you call out to them?"
+
+"And make 'em climb up the hill to me?  Them all tuckered out with
+their own work?  Not on your life!  Wasn't serious enough.  If any
+other man 'd make me climb up just because he'd slipped down, I'd take
+him out o' the mud all right, all right, and punch and punch him back
+into the mud again.  Besides, I knew somebody was bound to come along
+my way after a while."
+
+"Oh, you'll do!" she cried, appropriating Del Bishop's phrase.  "You'll
+do for this country!"
+
+"Yep," he called back, shouldering his pack and starting off at a
+lively clip.  "And, anyway, I got a good rest."
+
+The trail dipped through a precipitous morass to the river's brink.  A
+slender pine-tree spanned the screaming foam and bent midway to touch
+the water.  The surge beat upon the taper trunk and gave it a
+rhythmical swaying motion, while the feet of the packers had worn
+smooth its wave-washed surface.  Eighty feet it stretched in ticklish
+insecurity.  Frona stepped upon it, felt it move beneath her, heard the
+bellowing of the water, saw the mad rush--and shrank back.  She slipped
+the knot of her shoe-laces and pretended great care in the tying
+thereof as a bunch of Indians came out of the woods above and down
+through the mud.  Three or four bucks led the way, followed by many
+squaws, all bending in the head-straps to the heavy packs.  Behind came
+the children burdened according to their years, and in the rear half a
+dozen dogs, tongues lagging out and dragging forward painfully under
+their several loads.
+
+The men glanced at her sideways, and one of them said something in an
+undertone.   Frona could not hear, but the snicker which went down the
+line brought the flush of shame to her brow and told her more forcibly
+than could the words.  Her face was hot, for she sat disgraced in her
+own sight; but she gave no sign.  The leader stood aside, and one by
+one, and never more than one at a time, they made the perilous passage.
+At the bend in the middle their weight forced the tree under, and they
+felt for their footing, up to the ankles in the cold, driving torrent.
+Even the little children made it without hesitancy, and then the dogs
+whining and reluctant but urged on by the man.  When the last had
+crossed over, he turned to Frona.
+
+"Um horse trail," he said, pointing up the mountain side.  "Much better
+you take um horse trail.  More far; much better."
+
+But she shook her head and waited till he reached the farther bank; for
+she felt the call, not only upon her own pride, but upon the pride of
+her race; and it was a greater demand than her demand, just as the race
+was greater than she.  So she put foot upon the log, and, with the eyes
+of the alien people upon her, walked down into the foam-white swirl.
+
+
+She came upon a man weeping by the side of the trail.  His pack,
+clumsily strapped, sprawled on the ground.  He had taken off a shoe,
+and one naked foot showed swollen and blistered.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked, halting before him.
+
+He looked up at her, then down into the depths where the Dyea River cut
+the gloomy darkness with its living silver.  The tears still welled in
+his eyes, and he sniffled.
+
+"What is the matter?" she repeated.  "Can I be of any help?"
+
+"No," he replied.  "How can you help?  My feet are raw, and my back is
+nearly broken, and I am all tired out.  Can you help any of these
+things?"
+
+"Well," judiciously, "I am sure it might be worse.  Think of the men
+who have just landed on the beach.  It will take them ten days or two
+weeks to back-trip their outfits as far as you have already got yours."
+
+"But my partners have left me and gone on," he moaned, a sneaking
+appeal for pity in his voice.  "And I am all alone, and I don't feel
+able to move another step.  And then think of my wife and babies.  I
+left them down in the States.  Oh, if they could only see me now!  I
+can't go back to them, and I can't go on.  It's too much for me.  I
+can't stand it, this working like a horse.  I was not made to work like
+a horse.  I'll die, I know I will, if I do.  Oh, what shall I do?  What
+shall I do?"
+
+"Why did your comrades leave you?"
+
+"Because I was not so strong as they; because I could not pack as much
+or as long.  And they laughed at me and left me."
+
+"Have you ever roughed it?" Frona asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"You look well put up and strong.  Weigh probably one hundred and
+sixty-five?"
+
+"One hundred-and seventy," he corrected.
+
+"You don't look as though you had ever been troubled with sickness.
+Never an invalid?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"And your comrades?  They are miners?"
+
+"Never mining in their lives.  They worked in the same establishment
+with me.  That's what makes it so hard, don't you see!  We'd known one
+another for years!  And to go off and leave me just because I couldn't
+keep up!"
+
+"My friend," and Frona knew she was speaking for the race, "you are
+strong as they.  You can work just as hard as they; pack as much.  But
+you are weak of heart.  This is no place for the weak of heart.  You
+cannot work like a horse because you will not.  Therefore the country
+has no use for you.  The north wants strong men,--strong of soul, not
+body.  The body does not count.  So go back to the States.  We do not
+want you here.  If you come you will die, and what then of| your wife
+and babies?  So sell out your outfit and go back.  You will be home in
+three weeks.  Good-by."
+
+
+She passed through Sheep Camp.  Somewhere above, a mighty glacier,
+under the pent pressure of a subterranean reservoir, had burst asunder
+and hurled a hundred thousand tons of ice and water down the rocky
+gorge.  The trail was yet slippery with the slime of the flood, and men
+were rummaging disconsolately in the rubbish of overthrown tents and
+caches.  But here and there they worked with nervous haste, and the
+stark corpses by the trail-side attested dumbly to their labor.  A few
+hundred yards beyond, the work of the rush went on uninterrupted.  Men
+rested their packs on jutting stones, swapped escapes whilst they
+regained their breath, then stumbled on to their toil again.
+
+
+The mid-day sun beat down upon the stone "Scales."  The forest had
+given up the struggle, and the dizzying heat recoiled from the
+unclothed rock.  On either hand rose the ice-marred ribs of earth,
+naked and strenuous in their nakedness.  Above towered storm-beaten
+Chilcoot.  Up its gaunt and ragged front crawled a slender string of
+men.  But it was an endless string.  It came out of the last fringe of
+dwarfed shrub below, drew a black line across a dazzling stretch of
+ice, and filed past Frona where she ate her lunch by the way.  And it
+went on, up the pitch of the steep, growing fainter and smaller, till
+it squirmed and twisted like a column of ants and vanished over the
+crest of the pass.
+
+Even as she looked, Chilcoot was wrapped in rolling mist and whirling
+cloud, and a storm of sleet and wind roared down upon the toiling
+pigmies.  The light was swept out of the day, and a deep gloom
+prevailed; but Frona knew that somewhere up there, clinging and
+climbing and immortally striving, the long line of ants still twisted
+towards the sky.  And she thrilled at the thought, strong with man's
+ancient love of mastery, and stepped into the line which came out of
+the storm behind and disappeared into the storm before.
+
+She blew through the gap of the pass in a whirlwind of vapor, with hand
+and foot clambered down the volcanic ruin of Chilcoot's mighty father,
+and stood on the bleak edge of the lake which filled the pit of the
+crater.  The lake was angry and white-capped, and though a hundred
+caches were waiting ferriage, no boats were plying back and forth.  A
+rickety skeleton of sticks, in a shell of greased canvas, lay upon the
+rocks.  Frona sought out the owner, a bright-faced young fellow, with
+sharp black eyes and a salient jaw.  Yes, he was the ferryman, but he
+had quit work for the day.  Water too rough for freighting.  He charged
+twenty-five dollars for passengers, but he was not taking passengers
+to-day.  Had he not said it was too rough?  That was why.
+
+"But you will take me, surely?" she asked.
+
+He shook his head and gazed out over the lake.  "At the far end it's
+rougher than you see it here.  Even the big wooden boats won't tackle
+it.  The last that tried, with a gang of packers aboard, was blown over
+on the west shore.  We could see them plainly.  And as there's no trail
+around from there, they'll have to camp it out till the blow is over."
+
+"But they're better off than I am.  My camp outfit is at Happy Camp,
+and I can't very well stay here," Frona smiled winsomely, but there was
+no appeal in the smile; no feminine helplessness throwing itself on the
+strength and chivalry of the male.  "Do reconsider and take me across."
+
+"No."
+
+"I'll give you fifty."
+
+"No, I say."
+
+"But I'm not afraid, you know."
+
+The young fellow's eyes flashed angrily.  He turned upon her suddenly,
+but on second thought did not utter the words forming on his lips.  She
+realized the unintentional slur she had cast, and was about to explain.
+But on second thought she, too, remained silent; for she read him, and
+knew that it was perhaps the only way for her to gain her point.  They
+stood there, bodies inclined to the storm in the manner of seamen on
+sloped decks, unyieldingly looking into each other's eyes.  His hair
+was plastered in wet ringlets on his forehead, while hers, in longer
+wisps, beat furiously about her face.
+
+"Come on, then!"  He flung the boat into the water with an angry jerk,
+and tossed the oars aboard.  "Climb in!  I'll take you, but not for
+your fifty dollars.  You pay the regulation price, and that's all."
+
+A gust of the gale caught the light shell and swept it broadside for a
+score of feet.  The spray drove inboard in a continuous stinging
+shower, and Frona at once fell to work with the bailing-can.
+
+"I hope we're blown ashore," he shouted, stooping forward to the oars.
+"It would be embarrassing--for you." He looked up savagely into her
+face.
+
+"No," she modified; "but it would be very miserable for both of us,--a
+night without tent, blankets, or fire.  Besides, we're not going to
+blow ashore."
+
+
+She stepped out on the slippery rocks and helped him heave up the
+canvas craft and tilt the water out.  On either side uprose bare wet
+walls of rock.  A heavy sleet was falling steadily, through which a few
+streaming caches showed in the gathering darkness.
+
+"You'd better hurry up," he advised, thanking her for the assistance
+and relaunching the boat.  "Two miles of stiff trail from here to Happy
+Camp.  No wood until you get there, so you'd best hustle along.
+Good-by."
+
+Frona reached out and took his hand, and said, "You are a brave man."
+
+"Oh, I don't know."  He returned the grip with usury and looked his
+admiration.
+
+
+A dozen tents held grimly to their pegs on the extreme edge of the
+timber line at Happy Camp.  Frona, weary with the day, went from tent
+to tent.  Her wet skirts clung heavily to her tired limbs, while the
+wind buffeted her brutally about.  Once, through a canvas wall, she
+heard a man apostrophizing gorgeously, and felt sure that it was Del
+Bishop.  But a peep into the interior told a different tale; so she
+wandered fruitlessly on till she reached the last tent in the camp.
+She untied the flap and looked in.  A spluttering candle showed the one
+occupant, a man, down on his knees and blowing lustily into the
+fire-box of a smoky Yukon stove.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+She cast off the lower flap-fastenings and entered.  The man still blew
+into the stove, unaware of his company.  Frona coughed, and he raised a
+pair of smoke-reddened eyes to hers.
+
+"Certainly," he said, casually enough.  "Fasten the flaps and make
+yourself comfortable."  And thereat returned to his borean task.
+
+"Hospitable, to say the least," she commented to herself, obeying his
+command and coming up to the stove.
+
+A heap of dwarfed spruce, gnarled and wet and cut to proper
+stove-length, lay to one side.  Frona knew it well, creeping and
+crawling and twisting itself among the rocks of the shallow alluvial
+deposit, unlike its arboreal prototype, rarely lifting its head more
+than a foot from the earth.  She looked into the oven, found it empty,
+and filled it with the wet wood.  The man arose to his feet, coughing
+from the smoke which had been driven into his lungs, and nodding
+approval.
+
+When he had recovered his breath, "Sit down and dry your skirts.  I'll
+get supper."
+
+He put a coffee-pot on the front lid of the stove, emptied the bucket
+into it, and went out of the tent after more water.  As his back
+disappeared, Frona dived for her satchel, and when he returned a moment
+later he found her with a dry skirt on and wringing the wet one out.
+While he fished about in the grub-box for dishes and eating utensils,
+she stretched a spare bit of rope between the tent-poles and hung the
+skirt on it to dry.  The dishes were dirty, and, as he bent over and
+washed them, she turned her back and deftly changed her stockings.  Her
+childhood had taught her the value of well-cared feet for the trail.
+She put her wet shoes on a pile of wood at the back of the stove,
+substituting for them a pair of soft and dainty house-moccasins of
+Indian make.  The fire had now grown strong, and she was content to let
+her under-garments dry on her body.
+
+During all this time neither had spoken a word.  Not only had the man
+remained silent, but he went about his work in so preoccupied a way
+that it seemed to Frona that he turned a deaf ear to the words of
+explanation she would have liked to utter.  His whole bearing conveyed
+the impression that it was the most ordinary thing under the sun for a
+young woman to come in out of the storm and night and partake of his
+hospitality.  In one way, she liked this; but in so far as she did not
+comprehend it, she was troubled.  She had a perception of a something
+being taken for granted which she did not understand.  Once or twice
+she moistened her lips to speak, but he appeared so oblivious of her
+presence that she withheld.
+
+After opening a can of corned beef with the axe, he fried half a dozen
+thick slices of bacon, set the frying-pan back, and boiled the coffee.
+From the grub-box he resurrected the half of a cold heavy flapjack.  He
+looked at it dubiously, and shot a quick glance at her.  Then he threw
+the sodden thing out of doors and dumped the contents of a sea-biscuit
+bag upon a camp cloth.  The sea-biscuit had been crumbled into chips
+and fragments and generously soaked by the rain till it had become a
+mushy, pulpy mass of dirty white.
+
+"It's all I have in the way of bread," he muttered; "but sit down and
+we will make the best of it."
+
+"One moment--"  And before he could protest, Frona had poured the
+sea-biscuit into the frying-pan on top of the grease and bacon.  To
+this she added a couple of cups of water and stirred briskly over the
+fire.  When it had sobbed and sighed with the heat for some few
+minutes, she sliced up the corned beef and mixed it in with the rest.
+And by the time she had seasoned it heavily with salt and black pepper,
+a savory steam was rising from the concoction.
+
+"Must say it's pretty good stuff," he said, balancing his plate on his
+knee and sampling the mess avidiously.  "What do you happen to call it?"
+
+"Slumgullion," she responded curtly, and thereafter the meal went on in
+silence.
+
+Frona helped him to the coffee, studying him intently the while.  And
+not only was it not an unpleasant face, she decided, but it was strong.
+Strong, she amended, potentially rather than actually.  A student, she
+added, for she had seen many students' eyes and knew the lasting
+impress of the midnight oil long continued; and his eyes bore the
+impress.  Brown eyes, she concluded, and handsome as the male's should
+be handsome; but she noted with surprise, when she refilled his plate
+with slumgullion, that they were not at all brown in the ordinary
+sense, but hazel-brown.  In the daylight, she felt certain, and in
+times of best health, they would seem gray, and almost blue-gray.  She
+knew it well; her one girl chum and dearest friend had had such an eye.
+
+His hair was chestnut-brown, glinting in the candle-light to gold, and
+the hint of waviness in it explained the perceptible droop to his tawny
+moustache.  For the rest, his face was clean-shaven and cut on a good
+masculine pattern.  At first she found fault with the more than slight
+cheek-hollows under the cheek-bones, but when she measured his
+well-knit, slenderly muscular figure, with its deep chest and heavy
+shoulders, she discovered that she preferred the hollows; at least they
+did not imply lack of nutrition.  The body gave the lie to that; while
+they themselves denied the vice of over-feeding.  Height, five feet,
+nine, she summed up from out of her gymnasium experience; and age
+anywhere between twenty-five and thirty, though nearer the former most
+likely.
+
+"Haven't many blankets," he said abruptly, pausing to drain his cup and
+set it over on the grub-box.  "I don't expect my Indians back from Lake
+Linderman till morning, and the beggars have packed over everything
+except a few sacks of flour and the bare camp outfit.  However, I've a
+couple of heavy ulsters which will serve just as well."
+
+He turned his back, as though he did not expect a reply, and untied a
+rubber-covered roll of blankets.  Then he drew the two ulsters from a
+clothes-bag and threw them down on the bedding.
+
+"Vaudeville artist, I suppose?"
+
+He asked the question seemingly without interest, as though to keep the
+conversation going, and, in fact, as if he knew the stereotyped answer
+beforehand.  But to Frona the question was like a blow in the face.
+She remembered Neepoosa's philippic against the white women who were
+coming into the land, and realized the falseness of her position and
+the way in which he looked upon her.
+
+But he went on before she could speak.  "Last night I had two
+vaudeville queens, and three the night before.  Only there was more
+bedding then.  It's unfortunate, isn't it, the aptitude they display in
+getting lost from their outfits?  Yet somehow I have failed to find any
+lost outfits so far.  And they are all queens, it seems.  No
+under-studies or minor turns about them,--no, no.  And I presume you
+are a queen, too?"
+
+The too-ready blood sprayed her cheek, and this made her angrier than
+did he; for whereas she was sure of the steady grip she had on herself,
+her flushed face betokened a confusion which did not really possess her.
+
+"No," she answered, coolly; "I am not a vaudeville artist."
+
+He tossed several sacks of flour to one side of the stove, without
+replying, and made of them the foundation of a bed; and with the
+remaining sacks he duplicated the operation on the opposite side of the
+stove.
+
+"But you are some kind of an artist, then," he insisted when he had
+finished, with an open contempt on the "artist."
+
+"Unfortunately, I am not any kind of an artist at all."
+
+He dropped the blanket he was folding and straightened his back.
+Hitherto he had no more than glanced at her; but now he scrutinized her
+carefully, every inch of her, from head to heel and back again, the cut
+of her garments and the very way she did her hair.  And he took his
+time about it.
+
+"Oh!  I beg pardon," was his verdict, followed by another stare.  "Then
+you are a very foolish woman dreaming of fortune and shutting your eyes
+to the dangers of the pilgrimage.  It is only meet that two kinds of
+women come into this country.  Those who by virtue of wifehood and
+daughterhood are respectable, and those who are not respectable.
+Vaudeville stars and artists, they call themselves for the sake of
+decency; and out of courtesy we countenance it.  Yes, yes, I know.  But
+remember, the women who come over the trail must be one or the other.
+There is no middle course, and those who attempt it are bound to fail.
+So you are a very, very foolish girl, and you had better turn back
+while there is yet a chance.  If you will view it in the light of a
+loan from a stranger, I will advance your passage back to the States,
+and start an Indian over the trail with you to-morrow for Dyea."
+
+Once or twice Frona had attempted to interrupt him, but he had waved
+her imperatively to silence with his hand.
+
+"I thank you," she began; but he broke in,--
+
+"Oh, not at all, not at all."
+
+"I thank you," she repeated; but it happens that--a--that you are
+mistaken.  I have just come over the trail from Dyea and expect to meet
+my outfit already in camp here at Happy Camp.  They started hours ahead
+of me, and I can't understand how I passed them--yes I do, too!  A boat
+was blown over to the west shore of Crater Lake this afternoon, and
+they must have been in it.  That is where I missed them and came on.
+As for my turning back, I appreciate your motive for suggesting it, but
+my father is in Dawson, and I have not seen him for three years.  Also,
+I have come through from Dyea this day, and am tired, and I would like
+to get some rest.  So, if you still extend your hospitality, I'll go to
+bed."
+
+"Impossible!"  He kicked the blankets to one side, sat down on the
+flour sacks, and directed a blank look upon her.
+
+"Are--are there any women in the other tents?" she asked, hesitatingly.
+"I did not see any, but I may have overlooked."
+
+"A man and his wife were, but they pulled stakes this morning.  No;
+there are no other women except--except two or three in a tent,
+which--er--which will not do for you."
+
+"Do you think I am afraid of their hospitality?" she demanded, hotly.
+"As you said, they are women."
+
+"But I said it would not do," he answered, absently, staring at the
+straining canvas and listening to the roar of the storm.  "A man would
+die in the open on a night like this.
+
+"And the other tents are crowded to the walls," he mused.  "I happen to
+know.  They have stored all their caches inside because of the water,
+and they haven't room to turn around.  Besides, a dozen other strangers
+are storm-bound with them.  Two or three asked to spread their beds in
+here to-night if they couldn't pinch room elsewhere.  Evidently they
+have; but that does not argue that there is any surplus space left.
+And anyway--"
+
+He broke off helplessly.  The inevitableness of the situation was
+growing.
+
+"Can I make Deep Lake to-night?" Frona asked, forgetting herself to
+sympathize with him, then becoming conscious of what she was doing and
+bursting into laughter.
+
+"But you couldn't ford the river in the dark."  He frowned at her
+levity.  "And there are no camps between."
+
+"Are you afraid?" she asked with just the shadow of a sneer.
+
+"Not for myself."
+
+"Well, then, I think I'll go to bed."
+
+"I might sit up and keep the fire going," he suggested after a pause.
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" she cried.  "As though your foolish little code were
+saved in the least!  We are not in civilization.  This is the trail to
+the Pole.  Go to bed."
+
+He elevated his shoulders in token of surrender.  "Agreed.  What shall
+I do then?"
+
+"Help me make my bed, of course.  Sacks laid crosswise!  Thank you,
+sir, but I have bones and muscles that rebel.  Here--  Pull them
+around this way."
+
+Under her direction he laid the sacks lengthwise in a double row.  This
+left an uncomfortable hollow with lumpy sack-corners down the middle;
+but she smote them flat with the side of the axe, and in the same
+manner lessened the slope to the walls of the hollow.  Then she made a
+triple longitudinal fold in a blanket and spread it along the bottom of
+the long depression.
+
+"Hum!" he soliloquized.  "Now I see why I sleep so badly.  Here goes!"
+And he speedily flung his own sacks into shape.
+
+"It is plain you are unused to the trail," she informed him, spreading
+the topmost blanket and sitting down.
+
+"Perhaps so," he made answer.  "But what do you know about this trail
+life?" he growled a little later.
+
+"Enough to conform," she rejoined equivocally, pulling out the dried
+wood from the oven and replacing it with wet.
+
+"Listen to it!  How it storms!" he exclaimed.  "It's growing worse, if
+worse be possible."
+
+The tent reeled under the blows of the wind, the canvas booming
+hollowly at every shock, while the sleet and rain rattled overhead like
+skirmish-fire grown into a battle.  In the lulls they could hear the
+water streaming off at the side-walls with the noise of small
+cataracts.   He reached up curiously and touched the wet roof.  A burst
+of water followed instantly at the point of contact and coursed down
+upon the grub-box.
+
+"You mustn't do that!" Frona cried, springing to her feet.  She put her
+finger on the spot, and, pressing tightly against the canvas, ran it
+down to the side-wall.  The leak at once stopped.  "You mustn't do it,
+you know," she reproved.
+
+"Jove!" was his reply.  "And you came through from Dyea to-day!  Aren't
+you stiff?"
+
+"Quite a bit," she confessed, candidly, "and sleepy."
+
+"Good-night," she called to him several minutes later, stretching her
+body luxuriously in the warm blankets.  And a quarter of an hour after
+that, "Oh, I say!  Are you awake?"
+
+"Yes," his voice came muffled across the stove.  "What is it?"
+
+"Have you the shavings cut?"
+
+"Shavings?" he queried, sleepily.  "What shavings?"
+
+"For the fire in the morning, of course.  So get up and cut them."
+
+He obeyed without a word; but ere he was done she had ceased to hear
+him.
+
+The ubiquitous bacon was abroad on the air when she opened her eyes.
+Day had broken, and with it the storm.  The wet sun was shining
+cheerily over the drenched landscape and in at the wide-spread flaps.
+Already work had begun, and groups of men were filing past under their
+packs.  Frona turned over on her side.  Breakfast was cooked.  Her host
+had just put the bacon and fried potatoes in the oven, and was engaged
+in propping the door ajar with two sticks of firewood.
+
+"Good-morning," she greeted.
+
+"And good-morning to you," he responded, rising to his feet and picking
+up the water-bucket.  "I don't hope that you slept well, for I know you
+did."
+
+Frona laughed.
+
+"I'm going out after some water," he vouchsafed.  "And when I return I
+shall expect you ready for breakfast."
+
+After breakfast, basking herself in the sun, Frona descried a familiar
+bunch of men rounding the tail of the glacier in the direction of
+Crater Lake.  She clapped her hands.
+
+"There comes my outfit, and Del Bishop as shame-faced as can be, I'm
+sure, at his failure to connect."  Turning to the man, and at the same
+time slinging camera and satchel over her shoulder, "So I must say
+good-by, not forgetting to thank you for your kindness."
+
+"Oh, not at all, not at all.  Pray don't mention it.  I'd do the same
+for any--"
+
+"Vaudeville artist!"
+
+He looked his reproach, but went on.  "I don't know your name, nor do I
+wish to know it."
+
+"Well, I shall not be so harsh, for I do know your name, MISTER VANCE
+CORLISS!  I saw it on the shipping tags, of course," she explained.
+"And I want you to come and see me when you get to Dawson.  My name is
+Frona Welse.  Good-by."
+
+"Your father is not Jacob Welse?" he called after her as she ran
+lightly down towards the trail.
+
+She turned her head and nodded.
+
+But Del Bishop was not shamefaced, nor even worried.  "Trust a Welse to
+land on their feet on a soft spot," he had consoled himself as he
+dropped off to sleep the night before.  But he was angry--"madder 'n
+hops," in his own vernacular.
+
+"Good-mornin'," he saluted.  "And it's plain by your face you had a
+comfortable night of it, and no thanks to me."
+
+"You weren't worried, were you?" she asked.
+
+"Worried?  About a Welse?  Who?  Me?  Not on your life.  I was too busy
+tellin' Crater Lake what I thought of it.  I don't like the water.  I
+told you so.  And it's always playin' me scurvy--not that I'm afraid of
+it, though."
+
+"Hey, you Pete!" turning to the Indians.  "Hit 'er up!  Got to make
+Linderman by noon!"
+
+"Frona Welse?" Vance Corliss was repeating to himself.
+
+The whole thing seemed a dream, and he reassured himself by turning and
+looking after her retreating form.  Del Bishop and the Indians were
+already out of sight behind a wall of rock.  Frona was just rounding
+the base.  The sun was full upon her, and she stood out radiantly
+against the black shadow of the wall beyond.  She waved her alpenstock,
+and as he doffed his cap, rounded the brink and disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The position occupied by Jacob Welse was certainly an anomalous one.
+He was a giant trader in a country without commerce, a ripened product
+of the nineteenth century flourishing in a society as primitive as that
+of the Mediterranean vandals.  A captain of industry and a splendid
+monopolist, he dominated the most independent aggregate of men ever
+drawn together from the ends of the earth.  An economic missionary, a
+commercial St. Paul, he preached the doctrines of expediency and force.
+Believing in the natural rights of man, a child himself of democracy,
+he bent all men to his absolutism.  Government of Jacob Welse, for
+Jacob Welse and the people, by Jacob Welse, was his unwritten gospel.
+Single-handed he had carved out his dominion till he gripped the domain
+of a dozen Roman provinces.  At his ukase the population ebbed and
+flowed over a hundred thousand miles of territory, and cities sprang up
+or disappeared at his bidding.
+
+Yet he was a common man.  The air of the world first smote his lungs on
+the open prairie by the River Platte, the blue sky over head, and
+beneath, the green grass of the earth pressing against his tender
+nakedness.  On the horses his eyes first opened, still saddled and
+gazing in mild wonder on the miracle; for his trapper father had but
+turned aside from the trail that the wife might have quiet and the
+birth be accomplished.  An hour or so and the two, which were now
+three, were in the saddle and overhauling their trapper comrades.  The
+party had not been delayed; no time lost.  In the morning his mother
+cooked the breakfast over the camp-fire, and capped it with a
+fifty-mile ride into the next sun-down.
+
+The trapper father had come of the sturdy Welsh stock which trickled
+into early Ohio out of the jostling East, and the mother was a nomadic
+daughter of the Irish emigrant settlers of Ontario.  From both sides
+came the Wanderlust of the blood, the fever to be moving, to be pushing
+on to the edge of things.  In the first year of his life, ere he had
+learned the way of his legs, Jacob Welse had wandered a-horse through a
+thousand miles of wilderness, and wintered in a hunting-lodge on the
+head-waters of the Red River of the North.  His first foot-gear was
+moccasins, his first taffy the tallow from a moose.  His first
+generalizations were that the world was composed of great wastes and
+white vastnesses, and populated with Indians and white hunters like his
+father.  A town was a cluster of deer-skin lodges; a trading-post a
+seat of civilization; and a factor God Almighty Himself.  Rivers and
+lakes existed chiefly for man's use in travelling.  Viewed in this
+light, the mountains puzzled him; but he placed them away in his
+classification of the Inexplicable and did not worry.  Men died,
+sometimes.  But their meat was not good to eat, and their hides
+worthless,--perhaps because they did not grow fur.  Pelts were
+valuable, and with a few bales a man might purchase the earth.  Animals
+were made for men to catch and skin.  He did not know what men were
+made for, unless, perhaps, for the factor.
+
+As he grew older he modified these concepts, but the process was a
+continual source of naive apprehension and wonderment.  It was not
+until he became a man and had wandered through half the cities of the
+States that this expression of childish wonder passed out of his eyes
+and left them wholly keen and alert.  At his boy's first contact with
+the cities, while he revised his synthesis of things, he also
+generalized afresh.  People who lived in cities were effeminate.  They
+did not carry the points of the compass in their heads, and they got
+lost easily.  That was why they elected to stay in the cities.  Because
+they might catch cold and because they were afraid of the dark, they
+slept under shelter and locked their doors at night.  The women were
+soft and pretty, but they could not lift a snowshoe far in a day's
+journey.  Everybody talked too much.  That was why they lied and were
+unable to work greatly with their hands.  Finally, there was a new
+human force called "bluff."  A man who made a bluff must be dead sure
+of it, or else be prepared to back it up.  Bluff was a very good
+thing--when exercised with discretion.
+
+Later, though living his life mainly in the woods and mountains, he
+came to know that the cities were not all bad; that a man might live in
+a city and still be a man.  Accustomed to do battle with natural
+forces, he was attracted by the commercial battle with social forces.
+The masters of marts and exchanges dazzled but did not blind him, and
+he studied them, and strove to grasp the secrets of their strength.
+And further, in token that some good did come out of Nazareth, in the
+full tide of manhood he took to himself a city-bred woman.  But he
+still yearned for the edge of things, and the leaven in his blood
+worked till they went away, and above the Dyea Beach, on the rim of the
+forest, built the big log trading-post.  And here, in the mellow of
+time, he got a proper focus on things and unified the phenomena of
+society precisely as he had already unified the phenomena of nature.
+There was naught in one which could not be expressed in terms of the
+other.  The same principles underlaid both; the same truths were
+manifest of both.  Competition was the secret of creation.  Battle was
+the law and the way of progress.  The world was made for the strong,
+and only the strong inherited it, and through it all there ran an
+eternal equity.  To be honest was to be strong.  To sin was to weaken.
+To bluff an honest man was to be dishonest.  To bluff a bluffer was to
+smite with the steel of justice.  The primitive strength was in the
+arm; the modern strength in the brain.  Though it had shifted ground,
+the struggle was the same old struggle.  As of old time, men still
+fought for the mastery of the earth and the delights thereof.  But the
+sword had given way to the ledger; the mail-clad baron to the
+soft-garbed industrial lord, and the centre of imperial political power
+to the seat of commercial exchanges.  The modern will had destroyed the
+ancient brute.  The stubborn earth yielded only to force.  Brain was
+greater than body.  The man with the brain could best conquer things
+primitive.
+
+He did not have much education as education goes.  To the three R's his
+mother taught him by camp-fire and candle-light, he had added a
+somewhat miscellaneous book-knowledge; but he was not burdened with
+what he had gathered.  Yet he read the facts of life understandingly,
+and the sobriety which comes of the soil was his, and the clear
+earth-vision.
+
+And so it came about that Jacob Welse crossed over the Chilcoot in an
+early day, and disappeared into the vast unknown.  A year later he
+emerged at the Russian missions clustered about the mouth of the Yukon
+on Bering Sea.  He had journeyed down a river three thousand miles
+long, he had seen things, and dreamed a great dream.  But he held his
+tongue and went to work, and one day the defiant whistle of a crazy
+stern-wheel tub saluted the midnight sun on the dank river-stretch by
+Fort o' Yukon.  It was a magnificent adventure.  How he achieved it
+only Jacob Welse can tell; but with the impossible to begin with, plus
+the impossible, he added steamer to steamer and heaped enterprise upon
+enterprise.  Along many a thousand miles of river and tributary he
+built trading-posts and warehouses.  He forced the white man's axe into
+the hands of the aborigines, and in every village and between the
+villages rose the cords of four-foot firewood for his boilers.  On an
+island in Bering Sea, where the river and the ocean meet, he
+established a great distributing station, and on the North Pacific he
+put big ocean steamships; while in his offices in Seattle and San
+Francisco it took clerks by the score to keep the order and system of
+his business.
+
+Men drifted into the land.  Hitherto famine had driven them out, but
+Jacob Welse was there now, and his grub-stores; so they wintered in the
+frost and groped in the frozen muck for gold.  He encouraged them,
+grub-staked them, carried them on the books of the company.  His
+steamers dragged them up the Koyokuk in the old days of Arctic City.
+Wherever pay was struck he built a warehouse and a store.  The town
+followed.  He explored; he speculated; he developed.  Tireless,
+indomitable, with the steel-glitter in his dark eyes, he was everywhere
+at once, doing all things.  In the opening up of a new river he was in
+the van; and at the tail-end also, hurrying forward the grub.  On the
+Outside he fought trade-combinations; made alliances with the
+corporations of the earth, and forced discriminating tariffs from the
+great carriers.  On the Inside he sold flour, and blankets, and
+tobacco; built saw-mills, staked townsites, and sought properties in
+copper, iron, and coal; and that the miners should be well-equipped,
+ransacked the lands of the Arctic even as far as Siberia for
+native-made snow-shoes, muclucs, and parkas.
+
+He bore the country on his shoulders; saw to its needs; did its work.
+Every ounce of its dust passed through his hands; every post-card and
+letter of credit.  He did its banking and exchange; carried and
+distributed its mails.  He frowned upon competition; frightened out
+predatory capital; bluffed militant syndicates, and when they would
+not, backed his bluff and broke them.  And for all, yet found time and
+place to remember his motherless girl, and to love her, and to fit her
+for the position he had made.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+"So I think, captain, you will agree that we must exaggerate the
+seriousness of the situation."  Jacob Welse helped his visitor into his
+fur great-coat and went on.  "Not that it is not serious, but that it
+may not become more serious.  Both you and I have handled famines
+before.  We must frighten them, and frighten them now, before it is too
+late.  Take five thousand men out of Dawson and there will be grub to
+last.  Let those five thousand carry their tale of famine to Dyea and
+Skaguay, and they will prevent five thousand more coming in over the
+ice."
+
+"Quite right!  And you may count on the hearty co-operation of the
+police, Mr. Welse."  The speaker, a strong-faced, grizzled man,
+heavy-set and of military bearing, pulled up his collar and rested his
+hand on the door-knob.  "I see already, thanks to you, the newcomers
+are beginning to sell their outfits and buy dogs.  Lord! won't there be
+a stampede out over the ice as soon as the river closes down!  And each
+that sells a thousand pounds of grub and goes lessens the proposition
+by one empty stomach and fills another that remains.  When does the
+Laura start?"
+
+"This morning, with three hundred grubless men aboard.  Would that they
+were three thousand!"
+
+Amen to that!  And by the way, when does your daughter arrive?"
+
+"'Most any day, now."  Jacob Welse's eyes warmed.  "And I want you to
+dinner when she does, and bring along a bunch of your young bucks from
+the Barracks.  I don't know all their names, but just the same extend
+the invitation as though from me personally.  I haven't cultivated the
+social side much,--no time, but see to it that the girl enjoys herself.
+Fresh from the States and London, and she's liable to feel lonesome.
+You understand."
+
+Jacob Welse closed the door, tilted his chair back, and cocked his feet
+on the guard-rail of the stove.  For one half-minute a girlish vision
+wavered in the shimmering air above the stove, then merged into a woman
+of fair Saxon type.
+
+The door opened.  "Mr. Welse, Mr. Foster sent me to find out if he is
+to go on filling signed warehouse orders?"
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Smith.  But tell him to scale them down by half.  If a
+man holds an order for a thousand pounds, give him five hundred."
+
+He lighted a cigar and tilted back again in his chair.
+
+"Captain McGregor wants to see you, sir."
+
+"Send him in."
+
+Captain McGregor strode in and remained standing before his employer.
+The rough hand of the New World had been laid upon the Scotsman from
+his boyhood; but sterling honesty was written in every line of his
+bitter-seamed face, while a prognathous jaw proclaimed to the onlooker
+that honesty was the best policy,--for the onlooker at any rate, should
+he wish to do business with the owner of the jaw.  This warning was
+backed up by the nose, side-twisted and broken, and by a long scar
+which ran up the forehead and disappeared in the gray-grizzled hair.
+
+"We throw off the lines in an hour, sir; so I've come for the last
+word."
+
+"Good."  Jacob Welse whirled his chair about.  "Captain McGregor."
+
+"Ay."
+
+"I had other work cut out for you this winter; but I have changed my
+mind and chosen you to go down with the Laura.  Can you guess why?"
+
+Captain McGregor swayed his weight from one leg to the other, and a
+shrewd chuckle of a smile wrinkled the corners of his eyes.  "Going to
+be trouble," he grunted.
+
+"And I couldn't have picked a better man.  Mr. Bally will give you
+detailed instructions as you go aboard.  But let me say this: If we
+can't scare enough men out of the country, there'll be need for every
+pound of grub at Fort Yukon.  Understand?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"So no extravagance.  You are taking three hundred men down with you.
+The chances are that twice as many more will go down as soon as the
+river freezes.  You'll have a thousand to feed through the winter.  Put
+them on rations,--working rations,--and see that they work.  Cordwood,
+six dollars per cord, and piled on the bank where steamers can make a
+landing.  No work, no rations.  Understand?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"A thousand men can get ugly, if they are idle.  They can get ugly
+anyway.  Watch out they don't rush the caches.  If they do,--do your
+duty."
+
+The other nodded grimly.  His hands gripped unconsciously, while the
+scar on his forehead took on a livid hue.
+
+"There are five steamers in the ice.  Make them safe against the spring
+break-up.  But first transfer all their cargoes to one big cache.  You
+can defend it better, and make the cache impregnable.  Send a messenger
+down to Fort Burr, asking Mr. Carter for three of his men.  He doesn't
+need them.  Nothing much is doing at Circle City.  Stop in on the way
+down and take half of Mr. Burdwell's men.  You'll need them.  There'll
+be gun-fighters in plenty to deal with.  Be stiff.  Keep things in
+check from the start.  Remember, the man who shoots first comes off
+with the whole hide.  And keep a constant eye on the grub."
+
+"And on the forty-five-nineties," Captain McGregor rumbled back as he
+passed out the door.
+
+"John Melton--Mr. Melton, sir.  Can he see you?"
+
+"See here, Welse, what's this mean?"  John Melton followed wrathfully
+on the heels of the clerk, and he almost walked over him as he
+flourished a paper before the head of the company.  "Read that!  What's
+it stand for?"
+
+Jacob Welse glanced over it and looked up coolly.  "One thousand pounds
+of grub."
+
+"That's what I say, but that fellow you've got in the warehouse says
+no,--five hundred's all it's good for."
+
+"He spoke the truth."
+
+"But--"
+
+"It stands for one thousand pounds, but in the warehouse it is only
+good for five hundred."
+
+"That your signature?" thrusting the receipt again into the other's
+line of vision.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then what are you going to do about it?"
+
+"Give you five hundred.  What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"Refuse to take it."
+
+"Very good.  There is no further discussion."
+
+"Yes there is.  I propose to have no further dealings with you.  I'm
+rich enough to freight my own stuff in over the Passes, and I will next
+year.  Our business stops right now and for all time."
+
+"I cannot object to that.  You have three hundred thousand dollars in
+dust deposited with me.  Go to Mr. Atsheler and draw it at once."
+
+The man fumed impotently up and down.  "Can't I get that other five
+hundred?  Great God, man!  I've paid for it!  You don't intend me to
+starve?"
+
+"Look here, Melton."  Jacob Welse paused to knock the ash from his
+cigar.  "At this very moment what are you working for?  What are you
+trying to get?"
+
+"A thousand pounds of grub."
+
+"For your own stomach?"
+
+The Bonanzo king nodded his head.
+
+"Just so."  The lines showed more sharply on Jacob Welse's forehead.
+"You are working for your own stomach.  I am working for the stomachs
+of twenty thousand."
+
+"But you filled Tim McReady's thousand pounds yesterday all right."
+
+"The scale-down did not go into effect until to-day."
+
+"But why am I the one to get it in the neck hard?"
+
+"Why didn't you come yesterday, and Tim McReady to-day?"
+
+Melton's face went blank, and Jacob Welse answered his own question
+with shrugging shoulders.
+
+"That's the way it stands, Melton.  No favoritism.  If you hold me
+responsible for Tim McReady, I shall hold you responsible for not
+coming yesterday.  Better we both throw it upon Providence.  You went
+through the Forty Mile Famine. You are a white man.  A Bonanzo
+property, or a block of Bonanzo properties, does not entitle you to a
+pound more than the oldest penniless 'sour-dough' or the newest baby
+born.  Trust me.  As long as I have a pound of grub you shall not
+starve.  Stiffen up.  Shake hands.  Get a smile on your face and make
+the best of it."
+
+Still savage of spirit, though rapidly toning down, the king shook
+hands and flung out of the room.  Before the door could close on his
+heels, a loose-jointed Yankee shambled in, thrust a moccasined foot to
+the side and hooked a chair under him, and sat down.
+
+"Say," he opened up, confidentially, "people's gittin' scairt over the
+grub proposition, I guess some."
+
+"Hello, Dave.  That you?"
+
+"S'pose so.  But ez I was saying there'll be a lively stampede fer the
+Outside soon as the river freezes."
+
+"Think so?"
+
+"Unh huh."
+
+"Then I'm glad to hear it.  It's what the country needs.  Going to join
+them?"
+
+"Not in a thousand years."  Dave Harney threw his head back with smug
+complacency.  "Freighted my truck up to the mine yesterday.  Wa'n't a
+bit too soon about it, either.  But say . . .  Suthin' happened to the
+sugar.  Had it all on the last sled, an' jest where the trail turns off
+the Klondike into Bonanzo, what does that sled do but break through the
+ice!  I never seen the beat of it--the last sled of all, an' all the
+sugar!  So I jest thought I'd drop in to-day an' git a hundred pounds
+or so.  White or brown, I ain't pertickler."
+
+Jacob Welse shook his head and smiled, but Harney hitched his chair
+closer.
+
+"The clerk of yourn said he didn't know, an' ez there wa'n't no call to
+pester him, I said I'd jest drop round an' see you.  I don't care what
+it's wuth.  Make it a hundred even; that'll do me handy.
+
+"Say," he went on easily, noting the decidedly negative poise of the
+other's head.  "I've got a tolerable sweet tooth, I have.  Recollect
+the taffy I made over on Preacher Creek that time?  I declare! how time
+does fly!  That was all of six years ago if it's a day.  More'n that,
+surely.  Seven, by the Jimcracky!  But ez I was sayin', I'd ruther do
+without my plug of 'Star' than sugar.  An' about that sugar?  Got my
+dogs outside.  Better go round to the warehouse an' git it, eh?  Pretty
+good idea."
+
+But he saw the "No" shaping on Jacob Welse's lips, and hurried on
+before it could be uttered.
+
+"Now, I don't want to hog it.  Wouldn't do that fer the world.  So if
+yer short, I can put up with seventy-five--" (he studied the other's
+face), "an' I might do with fifty.  I 'preciate your position, an' I
+ain't low-down critter enough to pester--"
+
+"What's the good of spilling words, Dave?  We haven't a pound of sugar
+to spare--"
+
+"Ez I was sayin', I ain't no hog; an' seein' 's it's you, Welse, I'll
+make to scrimp along on twenty-five--"
+
+"Not an ounce!"
+
+"Not the least leetle mite?  Well, well, don't git het up.  We'll jest
+fergit I ast you fer any, an' I'll drop round some likelier time.  So
+long.  Say!"  He threw his jaw to one side and seemed to stiffen the
+muscles of his ear as he listened intently.  "That's the Laura's
+whistle.  She's startin' soon.  Goin' to see her off?  Come along."
+
+Jacob Welse pulled on his bearskin coat and mittens, and they passed
+through the outer offices into the main store.  So large was it, that
+the tenscore purchasers before the counters made no apparent crowd.
+Many were serious-faced, and more than one looked darkly at the head of
+the company as he passed.  The clerks were selling everything except
+grub, and it was grub that was in demand.  "Holding it for a rise.
+Famine prices," a red-whiskered miner sneered.  Jacob Welse heard it,
+but took no notice.  He expected to hear it many times and more
+unpleasantly ere the scare was over.
+
+On the sidewalk he stopped to glance over the public bulletins posted
+against the side of the building.  Dogs lost, found, and for sale
+occupied some space, but the rest was devoted to notices of sales of
+outfits.  The timid were already growing frightened.  Outfits of five
+hundred pounds were offering at a dollar a pound, without flour;
+others, with flour, at a dollar and a half.  Jacob Welse saw Melton
+talking with an anxious-faced newcomer, and the satisfaction displayed
+by the Bonanzo king told that he had succeeded in filling his winter's
+cache.
+
+"Why don't you smell out the sugar, Dave?" Jacob Welse asked, pointing
+to the bulletins.
+
+Dave Harney looked his reproach.  "Mebbe you think I ain't ben
+smellin'.  I've clean wore my dogs out chasin' round from Klondike City
+to the Hospital.  Can't git yer fingers on it fer love or money."
+
+They walked down the block-long sidewalk, past the warehouse doors and
+the long teams of waiting huskies curled up in wolfish comfort in the
+snow.  It was for this snow, the first permanent one of the fall, that
+the miners up-creek had waited to begin their freighting.
+
+"Curious, ain't it?" Dave hazarded suggestively, as they crossed the
+main street to the river bank.  "Mighty curious--me ownin' two
+five-hundred-foot Eldorado claims an' a fraction, wuth five millions if
+I'm wuth a cent, an' no sweetenin' fer my coffee or mush!  Why,
+gosh-dang-it! this country kin go to blazes!  I'll sell out!  I'll quit
+it cold!  I'll--I'll--go back to the States!"
+
+"Oh, no, you won't," Jacob Welse answered.  "I've heard you talk
+before.  You put in a year up Stuart River on straight meat, if I
+haven't forgotten.  And you ate salmon-belly and dogs up the Tanana, to
+say nothing of going through two famines; and you haven't turned your
+back on the country yet.  And you never will.  And you'll die here as
+sure as that's the Laura's spring being hauled aboard.  And I look
+forward confidently to the day when I shall ship you out in a
+lead-lined box and burden the San Francisco end with the trouble of
+winding up your estate.  You are a fixture, and you know it."
+
+As he talked he constantly acknowledged greetings from the passers-by.
+Those who knew him were mainly old-timers and he knew them all by name,
+though there was scarcely a newcomer to whom his face was not familiar.
+
+"I'll jest bet I'll be in Paris in 1900," the Eldorado king protested
+feebly.
+
+But Jacob Welse did not hear.  There was a jangling of gongs as
+McGregor saluted him from the pilot-house and the Laura slipped out
+from the bank.  The men on the shore filled the air with good-luck
+farewells and last advice, but the three hundred grubless ones, turning
+their backs on the golden dream, were moody and dispirited, and made
+small response.  The Laura backed out through a channel cut in the
+shore-ice, swung about in the current, and with a final blast put on
+full steam ahead.
+
+The crowd thinned away and went about its business, leaving Jacob Welse
+the centre of a group of a dozen or so.  The talk was of the famine,
+but it was the talk of men.  Even Dave Harney forgot to curse the
+country for its sugar shortage, and waxed facetious over the
+newcomers,--_chechaquos_, he called them, having recourse to the Siwash
+tongue.  In the midst of his remarks his quick eye lighted on a black
+speck floating down with the mush-ice of the river.  "Jest look at
+that!" he cried.  "A Peterborough canoe runnin' the ice!"
+
+Twisting and turning, now paddling, now shoving clear of the floating
+cakes, the two men in the canoe worked in to the rim-ice, along the
+edge of which they drifted, waiting for an opening.  Opposite the
+channel cut out by the steamer, they drove their paddles deep and
+darted into the calm dead water.  The waiting group received them with
+open arms, helping them up the bank and carrying their shell after them.
+
+In its bottom were two leather mail-pouches, a couple of blankets,
+coffee-pot and frying-pan, and a scant grub-sack.  As for the men, so
+frosted were they, and so numb with the cold, that they could hardly
+stand.  Dave Harney proposed whiskey, and was for haling them away at
+once; but one delayed long enough to shake stiff hands with Jacob Welse.
+
+"She's coming," he announced.  "Passed her boat an hour back.  It ought
+to be round the bend any minute.  I've got despatches for you, but I'll
+see you later.  Got to get something into me first."  Turning to go
+with Harney, he stopped suddenly and pointed up stream.  "There she is
+now.  Just coming out past the bluff."
+
+"Run along, boys, an' git yer whiskey," Harney admonished him and his
+mate.  "Tell 'm it's on me, double dose, an' jest excuse me not
+drinkin' with you, fer I'm goin' to stay."
+
+The Klondike was throwing a thick flow of ice, partly mush and partly
+solid, and swept the boat out towards the middle of the Yukon.  They
+could see the struggle plainly from the bank,--four men standing up and
+poling a way through the jarring cakes.  A Yukon stove aboard was
+sending up a trailing pillar of blue smoke, and, as the boat drew
+closer, they could see a woman in the stern working the long
+steering-sweep.  At sight of this there was a snap and sparkle in Jacob
+Welse's eyes.  It was the first omen, and it was good, he thought.  She
+was still a Welse; a struggler and a fighter.  The years of her culture
+had not weakened her.  Though tasting of the fruits of the first remove
+from the soil, she was not afraid of the soil; she could return to it
+gleefully and naturally.
+
+So he mused till the boat drove in, ice-rimed and battered, against the
+edge of the rim-ice.  The one white man aboard sprang: out, painter in
+hand, to slow it down and work into the channel.  But the rim-ice was
+formed of the night, and the front of it shelved off with him into the
+current.  The nose of the boat sheered out under the pressure of a
+heavy cake, so that he came up at the stern.  The woman's arm flashed
+over the side to his collar, and at the same instant, sharp and
+authoritative, her voice rang out to the Indian oarsmen to back water.
+Still holding the man's head above water, she threw her body against
+the sweep and guided the boat stern-foremost into the opening.  A few
+more strokes and it grounded at the foot of the bank.  She passed the
+collar of the chattering man to Dave Harney, who dragged him out and
+started him off on the trail of the mail-carriers.
+
+Frona stood up, her cheeks glowing from the quick work.  Jacob Welse
+hesitated.  Though he stood within reach of the gunwale, a gulf of
+three years was between.  The womanhood of twenty, added unto the girl
+of seventeen, made a sum more prodigious than he had imagined.  He did
+not know whether to bear-hug the radiant young creature or to take her
+hand and help her ashore.  But there was no apparent hitch, for she
+leaped beside him and was into his arms.  Those above looked away to a
+man till the two came up the bank hand in hand.
+
+"Gentlemen, my daughter."  There was a great pride in his face.
+
+Frona embraced them all with a comrade smile, and each man felt that
+for an instant her eyes had looked straight into his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+That Vance Corliss wanted to see more of the girl he had divided
+blankets with, goes with the saying.  He had not been wise enough to
+lug a camera into the country, but none the less, by a yet subtler
+process, a sun-picture had been recorded somewhere on his cerebral
+tissues.  In the flash of an instant it had been done.  A wave message
+of light and color, a molecular agitation and integration, a certain
+minute though definite corrugation in a brain recess,--and there it
+was, a picture complete!  The blazing sunlight on the beetling black; a
+slender gray form, radiant, starting forward to the vision from the
+marge where light and darkness met; a fresh young morning smile
+wreathed in a flame of burning gold.
+
+It was a picture he looked at often, and the more he looked the greater
+was his desire, to see Frona Welse again.  This event he anticipated
+with a thrill, with the exultancy over change which is common of all
+life.  She was something new, a fresh type, a woman unrelated to all
+women he had met.  Out of the fascinating unknown a pair of hazel eyes
+smiled into his, and a hand, soft of touch and strong of grip, beckoned
+him.  And there was an allurement about it which was as the allurement
+of sin.
+
+Not that Vance Corliss was anybody's fool, nor that his had been an
+anchorite's existence; but that his upbringing, rather, had given his
+life a certain puritanical bent.  Awakening intelligence and broader
+knowledge had weakened the early influence of an austere mother, but
+had not wholly eradicated it.  It was there, deep down, very shadowy,
+but still a part of him.  He could not get away from it.  It distorted,
+ever so slightly, his concepts of things.  It gave a squint to his
+perceptions, and very often, when the sex feminine was concerned,
+determined his classifications.  He prided himself on his largeness
+when he granted that there were three kinds of women.  His mother had
+only admitted two.  But he had outgrown her.  It was incontestable that
+there were three kinds,--the good, the bad, and the partly good and
+partly bad.  That the last usually went bad, he believed firmly.  In
+its very nature such a condition could not be permanent.  It was the
+intermediary stage, marking the passage from high to low, from best to
+worst.
+
+All of which might have been true, even as he saw it; but with
+definitions for premises, conclusions cannot fail to be dogmatic.  What
+was good and bad?  There it was.  That was where his mother whispered
+with dead lips to him.  Nor alone his mother, but divers conventional
+generations, even back to the sturdy ancestor who first uplifted from
+the soil and looked down.  For Vance Corliss was many times removed
+from the red earth, and, though he did not know it, there was a clamor
+within him for a return lest he perish.
+
+Not that he pigeon-holed Frona according to his inherited definitions.
+He refused to classify her at all.  He did not dare.  He preferred to
+pass judgment later, when he had gathered more data.  And there was the
+allurement, the gathering of the data; the great critical point where
+purity reaches dreamy hands towards pitch and refuses to call it
+pitch--till defiled.  No; Vance Corliss was not a cad.  And since
+purity is merely a relative term, he was not pure.  That there was no
+pitch under his nails was not because he had manicured diligently, but
+because it had not been his luck to run across any pitch.  He was not
+good because he chose to be, because evil was repellant; but because he
+had not had opportunity to become evil.  But from this, on the other
+hand, it is not to be argued that he would have gone bad had he had a
+chance.
+
+He was a product of the sheltered life.  All his days had been lived in
+a sanitary dwelling; the plumbing was excellent.  The air he had
+breathed had been mostly ozone artificially manufactured.  He had been
+sun-bathed in balmy weather, and brought in out of the wet when it
+rained.  And when he reached the age of choice he had been too fully
+occupied to deviate from the straight path, along which his mother had
+taught him to creep and toddle, and along which he now proceeded to
+walk upright, without thought of what lay on either side.
+
+Vitality cannot be used over again.  If it be expended on one thing,
+there is none left for the other thing.  And so with Vance Corliss.
+Scholarly lucubrations and healthy exercises during his college days
+had consumed all the energy his normal digestion extracted from a
+wholesome omnivorous diet.  When he did discover a bit of surplus
+energy, he worked it off in the society of his mother and of the
+conventional minds and prim teas she surrounded herself with.  Result:
+A very nice young man, of whom no maid's mother need ever be in
+trepidation; a very strong young man, whose substance had not been
+wasted in riotous living; a very learned young man, with a Freiberg
+mining engineer's diploma and a B.A. sheepskin from Yale; and, lastly,
+a very self-centred, self-possessed young man.
+
+Now his greatest virtue lay in this: he had not become hardened in the
+mould baked by his several forbears and into which he had been pressed
+by his mother's hands.  Some atavism had been at work in the making of
+him, and he had reverted to that ancestor who sturdily uplifted.  But
+so far this portion of his heritage had lain dormant.  He had simply
+remained adjusted to a stable environment.  There had been no call upon
+the adaptability which was his.  But whensoever the call came, being so
+constituted, it was manifest that he should adapt, should adjust
+himself to the unwonted pressure of new conditions.  The maxim of the
+rolling stone may be all true; but notwithstanding, in the scheme of
+life, the inability to become fixed is an excellence par excellence.
+Though he did not know it, this inability was Vance Corliss's most
+splendid possession.
+
+But to return.  He looked forward with great sober glee to meeting
+Frona Welse, and in the meanwhile consulted often the sun-picture he
+carried of her.  Though he went over the Pass and down the lakes and
+river with a push of money behind him (London syndicates are never
+niggardly in such matters).  Frona beat him into Dawson by a fortnight.
+While on his part money in the end overcame obstacles, on hers the name
+of Welse was a talisman greater than treasure.  After his arrival, a
+couple of weeks were consumed in buying a cabin, presenting his letters
+of introduction, and settling down.  But all things come in the fulness
+of time, and so, one night after the river closed, he pointed his
+moccasins in the direction of Jacob Welse's house.  Mrs. Schoville, the
+Gold Commissioner's wife, gave him the honor of her company.
+
+
+Corliss wanted to rub his eyes.  Steam-heating apparatus in the
+Klondike!  But the next instant he had passed out of the hall through
+the heavy portieres and stood inside the drawing-room.  And it was a
+drawing-room.  His moose-hide moccasins sank luxuriantly into the deep
+carpet, and his eyes were caught by a Turner sunrise on the opposite
+wall.  And there were other paintings and things in bronze.  Two Dutch
+fireplaces were roaring full with huge back-logs of spruce.  There was
+a piano; and somebody was singing.  Frona sprang from the stool and
+came forward, greeting him with both hands.  He had thought his
+sun-picture perfect, but this fire-picture, this young creature with
+the flush and warmth of ringing life, quite eclipsed it.  It was a
+whirling moment, as he held her two hands in his, one of those moments
+when an incomprehensible orgasm quickens the blood and dizzies the
+brain.  Though the first syllables came to him faintly, Mrs.
+Schoville's voice brought him back to himself.
+
+"Oh!" she cried.  "You know him!"
+
+And Frona answered, "Yes, we met on the Dyea Trail; and those who meet
+on the Dyea Trail can never forget."
+
+"How romantic!"
+
+The Gold Commissioner's wife clapped her hands.  Though fat and forty,
+and phlegmatic of temperament, between exclamations and hand-clappings
+her waking existence was mostly explosive.  Her husband secretly
+averred that did God Himself deign to meet her face to face, she would
+smite together her chubby hands and cry out, "How romantic!"
+
+"How did it happen?" she continued.  "He didn't rescue you over a
+cliff, or that sort of thing, did he?  Do say that he did!  And you
+never said a word about it, Mr. Corliss.  Do tell me.  I'm just dying
+to know!"
+
+"Oh, nothing like that," he hastened to answer.  "Nothing much.  I,
+that is we--"
+
+He felt a sinking as Frona interrupted.  There was no telling what this
+remarkable girl might say.
+
+"He gave me of his hospitality, that was all," she said.  "And I can
+vouch for his fried potatoes; while for his coffee, it is
+excellent--when one is very hungry."
+
+"Ingrate!" he managed to articulate, and thereby to gain a smile, ere
+he was introduced to a cleanly built lieutenant of the Mounted Police,
+who stood by the fireplace discussing the grub proposition with a
+dapper little man very much out of place in a white shirt and stiff
+collar.
+
+Thanks to the particular niche in society into which he happened to be
+born, Corliss drifted about easily from group to group, and was much
+envied therefore by Del Bishop, who sat stiffly in the first chair he
+had dropped into, and who was waiting patiently for the first person to
+take leave that he might know how to compass the manoeuvre.  In his
+mind's eye he had figured most of it out, knew just how many steps
+required to carry him to the door, was certain he would have to say
+good-by to Frona, but did not know whether or not he was supposed to
+shake hands all around.  He had just dropped in to see Frona and say
+"Howdee," as he expressed it, and had unwittingly found himself in
+company.
+
+Corliss, having terminated a buzz with a Miss Mortimer on the decadence
+of the French symbolists, encountered Del Bishop.  But the pocket-miner
+remembered him at once from the one glimpse he had caught of Corliss
+standing by his tent-door in Happy Camp.  Was almighty obliged to him
+for his night's hospitality to Miss Frona, seein' as he'd ben
+side-tracked down the line; that any kindness to her was a kindness to
+him; and that he'd remember it, by God, as long as he had a corner of a
+blanket to pull over him.  Hoped it hadn't put him out.  Miss Frona'd
+said that bedding was scarce, but it wasn't a cold night (more blowy
+than crisp), so he reckoned there couldn't 'a' ben much shiverin'.  All
+of which struck Corliss as perilous, and he broke away at the first
+opportunity, leaving the pocket-miner yearning for the door.
+
+But Dave Harney, who had not come by mistake, avoided gluing himself to
+the first chair.  Being an Eldorado king, he had felt it incumbent to
+assume the position in society to which his numerous millions entitled
+him; and though unused all his days to social amenities other than the
+out-hanging latch-string and the general pot, he had succeeded to his
+own satisfaction as a knight of the carpet.  Quick to take a cue, he
+circulated with an aplomb which his striking garments and long
+shambling gait only heightened, and talked choppy and disconnected
+fragments with whomsoever he ran up against.  The Miss Mortimer, who
+spoke Parisian French, took him aback with her symbolists; but he
+evened matters up with a goodly measure of the bastard lingo of the
+Canadian _voyageurs_, and left her gasping and meditating over a
+proposition to sell him twenty-five pounds of sugar, white or brown.
+But she was not unduly favored, for with everybody he adroitly turned
+the conversation to grub, and then led up to the eternal proposition.
+"Sugar or bust," he would conclude gayly each time and wander on to the
+next.
+
+But he put the capstone on his social success by asking Frona to sing
+the touching ditty, "I Left My Happy Home for You."  This was something
+beyond her, though she had him hum over the opening bars so that she
+could furnish the accompaniment.  His voice was more strenuous than
+sweet, and Del Bishop, discovering himself at last, joined in raucously
+on the choruses.  This made him feel so much better that he
+disconnected himself from the chair, and when he finally got home he
+kicked up his sleepy tent-mate to tell him about the high time he'd had
+over at the Welse's.  Mrs. Schoville tittered and thought it all so
+unique, and she thought it so unique several times more when the
+lieutenant of Mounted Police and a couple of compatriots roared "Rule
+Britannia" and "God Save the Queen," and the Americans responded with
+"My Country, 'Tis of Thee" and "John Brown."  Then big Alec Beaubien,
+the Circle City king, demanded the "Marseillaise," and the company
+broke up chanting "Die Wacht am Rhein" to the frosty night.
+
+"Don't come on these nights," Frona whispered to Corliss at parting.
+"We haven't spoken three words, and I know we shall be good friends.
+Did Dave Harney succeed in getting any sugar out of you?"
+
+They mingled their laughter, and Corliss went home under the aurora
+borealis, striving to reduce his impressions to some kind of order.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"And why should I not be proud of my race?"
+
+Frona's cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkling.  They had both been
+harking back to childhood, and she had been telling Corliss of her
+mother, whom she faintly remembered.  Fair and flaxen-haired, typically
+Saxon, was the likeness she had drawn, filled out largely with
+knowledge gained from her father and from old Andy of the Dyea Post.
+The discussion had then turned upon the race in general, and Frona had
+said things in the heat of enthusiasm which affected the more
+conservative mind of Corliss as dangerous and not solidly based on
+fact.  He deemed himself too large for race egotism and insular
+prejudice, and had seen fit to laugh at her immature convictions.
+
+"It's a common characteristic of all peoples," he proceeded, "to
+consider themselves superior races,--a naive, natural egoism, very
+healthy and very good, but none the less manifestly untrue.  The Jews
+conceived themselves to be God's chosen people, and they still so
+conceive themselves--"
+
+"And because of it they have left a deep mark down the page of
+history," she interrupted.
+
+"But time has not proved the stability of their conceptions.  And you
+must also view the other side.  A superior people must look upon all
+others as inferior peoples.  This comes home to you.  To be a Roman
+were greater than to be a king, and when the Romans rubbed against your
+savage ancestors in the German forests, they elevated their brows and
+said, 'An inferior people, barbarians.'"
+
+"But we are here, now.  We are, and the Romans are not.  The test is
+time.  So far we have stood the test; the signs are favorable that we
+shall continue to stand it.  We are the best fitted!"
+
+"Egotism."
+
+"But wait.  Put it to the test."
+
+As she spoke her hand flew out impulsively to his.  At the touch his
+heart pulsed upward, there was a rush Of blood and a tightening across
+the temples.  Ridiculous, but delightful, he thought.  At this rate he
+could argue with her the night through.
+
+"The test," she repeated, withdrawing her hand without embarrassment.
+"We are a race of doers and fighters, of globe-encirclers and
+zone-conquerors.  We toil and struggle, and stand by the toil and
+struggle no matter how hopeless it may be.  While we are persistent and
+resistant, we are so made that we fit ourselves to the most diverse
+conditions.  Will the Indian, the Negro, or the Mongol ever conquer the
+Teuton?  Surely not!  The Indian has persistence without variability;
+if he does not modify he dies, if he does try to modify he dies anyway.
+The Negro has adaptability, but he is servile and must be led.  As for
+the Chinese, they are permanent.  All that the other races are not, the
+Anglo-Saxon, or Teuton if you please, is.  All that the other races
+have not, the Teuton has.  What race is to rise up and overwhelm us?"
+
+"Ah, you forget the Slav," Corliss suggested slyly.
+
+"The Slav!"  Her face fell.  "True, the Slav!  The only stripling in
+this world of young men and gray-beards!  But he is still in the
+future, and in the future the decision rests.  In the mean time we
+prepare.  If may be we shall have such a start that we shall prevent
+him growing.  You know, because he was better skilled in chemistry,
+knew how to manufacture gunpowder, that the Spaniard destroyed the
+Aztec.  May not we, who are possessing ourselves of the world and its
+resources, and gathering to ourselves all its knowledge, may not we nip
+the Slav ere he grows a thatch to his lip?"
+
+Vance Corliss shook his head non-committally, and laughed.
+
+"Oh!  I know I become absurd and grow over-warm!" she exclaimed.  "But
+after all, one reason that we are the salt of the earth is because we
+have the courage to say so."
+
+"And I am sure your warmth spreads," he responded.  "See, I'm beginning
+to glow myself.  We are not God's, but Nature's chosen people, we
+Angles, and Saxons, and Normans, and Vikings, and the earth is our
+heritage.  Let us arise and go forth!"
+
+"Now you are laughing at me, and, besides, we have already gone forth.
+Why have you fared into the north, if not to lay hands on the race
+legacy?"
+
+
+She turned her head at the sound of approaching footsteps, and cried
+for greeting, "I appeal to you, Captain Alexander!  I summon you to
+bear witness!"
+
+The captain of police smiled in his sternly mirthful fashion as he
+shook hands with Frona and Corliss.  "Bear witness?" he questioned.
+"Ah, yes!
+
+  "'Bear witness, O my comrades, what a hard-bit gang were we,--
+  The servants of the sweep-head, but the masters of the sea!'"
+
+He quoted the verse with a savage solemnity exulting through his deep
+voice.  This, and the appositeness of it, quite carried Frona away, and
+she had both his hands in hers on the instant.  Corliss was aware of an
+inward wince at the action.  It was uncomfortable.  He did not like to
+see her so promiscuous with those warm, strong hands of hers.  Did she
+so favor all men who delighted her by word or deed?  He did not mind
+her fingers closing round his, but somehow it seemed wanton when shared
+with the next comer.  By the time he had thought thus far, Frona had
+explained the topic under discussion, and Captain Alexander was
+testifying.
+
+"I don't know much about your Slav and other kin, except that they are
+good workers and strong; but I do know that the white man is the
+greatest and best breed in the world.  Take the Indian, for instance.
+The white man comes along and beats him at all his games, outworks him,
+out-roughs him, out-fishes him, out-hunts him.  As far back as their
+myths go, the Alaskan Indians have packed on their backs.  But the
+gold-rushers, as soon as they had learned the tricks of the trade,
+packed greater loads and packed them farther than did the Indians.
+Why, last May, the Queen's birthday, we had sports on the river.  In
+the one, two, three, four, and five men canoe races we beat the Indians
+right and left.  Yet they had been born to the paddle, and most of us
+had never seen a canoe until man-grown."
+
+"But why is it?" Corliss queried.
+
+"I do not know why.  I only know that it is.  I simply bear witness.  I
+do know that we do what they cannot do, and what they can do, we do
+better."
+
+Frona nodded her head triumphantly at Corliss.  "Come, acknowledge your
+defeat, so that we may go in to dinner.  Defeat for the time being, at
+least.  The concrete facts of paddles and pack-straps quite overcome
+your dogmatics.  Ah, I thought so.  More time?  All the time in the
+world.  But let us go in.  We'll see what my father thinks of it,--and
+Mr. Kellar.  A symposium on Anglo-Saxon supremacy!"
+
+
+Frost and enervation are mutually repellant.  The Northland gives a
+keenness and zest to the blood which cannot be obtained in warmer
+climes.  Naturally so, then, the friendship which sprang up between
+Corliss and Frona was anything but languid.  They met often under her
+father's roof-tree, and went many places together.  Each found a
+pleasurable attraction in the other, and a satisfaction which the
+things they were not in accord with could not mar.  Frona liked the man
+because he was a man.  In her wildest flights she could never imagine
+linking herself with any man, no matter how exalted spiritually, who
+was not a man physically.  It was a delight to her and a joy to look
+upon the strong males of her kind, with bodies comely in the sight of
+God and muscles swelling with the promise of deeds and work.  Man, to
+her, was preeminently a fighter.  She believed in natural selection and
+in sexual selection, and was certain that if man had thereby become
+possessed of faculties and functions, they were for him to use and
+could but tend to his good.  And likewise with instincts.  If she felt
+drawn to any person or thing, it was good for her to be so drawn, good
+for herself.  If she felt impelled to joy in a well-built frame and
+well-shaped muscle, why should she restrain?  Why should she not love
+the body, and without shame?  The history of the race, and of all
+races, sealed her choice with approval.  Down all time, the weak and
+effeminate males had vanished from the world-stage.   Only the strong
+could inherit the earth.  She had been born of the strong, and she
+chose to cast her lot with the strong.
+
+Yet of all creatures, she was the last to be deaf and blind to the
+things of the spirit.  But the things of the spirit she demanded should
+be likewise strong.  No halting, no stuttered utterance, tremulous
+waiting, minor wailing!  The mind and the soul must be as quick and
+definite and certain as the body.  Nor was the spirit made alone for
+immortal dreaming.  Like the flesh, it must strive and toil.  It must
+be workaday as well as idle day.  She could understand a weakling
+singing sweetly and even greatly, and in so far she could love him for
+his sweetness and greatness; but her love would have fuller measure
+were he strong of body as well.  She believed she was just.  She gave
+the flesh its due and the spirit its due; but she had, over and above,
+her own choice, her own individual ideal.  She liked to see the two go
+hand in hand.  Prophecy and dyspepsia did not affect her as a
+felicitous admixture.  A splendid savage and a weak-kneed poet!  She
+could admire the one for his brawn and the other for his song; but she
+would prefer that they had been made one in the beginning.
+
+As to Vance Corliss.  First, and most necessary of all, there was that
+physiological affinity between them that made the touch of his hand a
+pleasure to her.  Though souls may rush together, if body cannot endure
+body, happiness is reared on sand and the structure will be ever
+unstable and tottery.  Next, Corliss had the physical potency of the
+hero without the grossness of the brute.  His muscular development was
+more qualitative than quantitative, and it is the qualitative
+development which gives rise to beauty of form.  A giant need not be
+proportioned in the mould; nor a thew be symmetrical to be massive.
+
+And finally,--none the less necessary but still finally,--Vance Corliss
+was neither spiritually dead nor decadent.  He affected her as fresh
+and wholesome and strong, as reared above the soil but not scorning the
+soil.  Of course, none of this she reasoned out otherwise than by
+subconscious processes.  Her conclusions were feelings, not thoughts.
+
+Though they quarrelled and disagreed on innumerable things, deep down,
+underlying all, there was a permanent unity.  She liked him for a
+certain stern soberness that was his, and for his saving grace of
+humor.  Seriousness and banter were not incompatible.  She liked him
+for his gallantry, made to work with and not for display.  She liked
+the spirit of his offer at Happy Camp, when he proposed giving her an
+Indian guide and passage-money back to the United States.  He could
+_do_ as well as talk.  She liked him for his outlook, for his innate
+liberality, which she felt to be there, somehow, no matter that often
+he was narrow of expression.  She liked him for his mind.  Though
+somewhat academic, somewhat tainted with latter-day scholasticism, it
+was still a mind which permitted him to be classed with the
+"Intellectuals."  He was capable of divorcing sentiment and emotion
+from reason.  Granted that he included all the factors, he could not go
+wrong.  And here was where she found chief fault with him,--his
+narrowness which precluded all the factors; his narrowness which gave
+the lie to the breadth she knew was really his.  But she was aware that
+it was not an irremediable defect, and that the new life he was leading
+was very apt to rectify it.  He was filled with culture; what he needed
+was a few more of life's facts.
+
+And she liked him for himself, which is quite different from liking the
+parts which went to compose him.  For it is no miracle for two things,
+added together, to produce not only the sum of themselves, but a third
+thing which is not to be found in either of them.  So with him.  She
+liked him for himself, for that something which refused to stand out as
+a part, or a sum of parts; for that something which is the corner-stone
+of Faith and which has ever baffled Philosophy and Science.  And
+further, to like, with Frona Welse, did not mean to love.
+
+First, and above all, Vance Corliss was drawn to Frona Welse because of
+the clamor within him for a return to the soil.  In him the elements
+were so mixed that it was impossible for women many times removed to
+find favor in his eyes.  Such he had met constantly, but not one had
+ever drawn from him a superfluous heart-beat.  Though there had been in
+him a growing instinctive knowledge of lack of unity,--the lack of
+unity which must precede, always, the love of man and woman,--not one
+of the daughters of Eve he had met had flashed irresistibly in to fill
+the void.  Elective affinity, sexual affinity, or whatsoever the
+intangible essence known as love is, had never been manifest.  When he
+met Frona it had at once sprung, full-fledged, into existence.  But he
+quite misunderstood it, took it for a mere attraction towards the new
+and unaccustomed.
+
+Many men, possessed of birth and breeding, have yielded to this clamor
+for return.  And giving the apparent lie to their own sanity and moral
+stability, many such men have married peasant girls or barmaids,  And
+those to whom evil apportioned itself have been prone to distrust the
+impulse they obeyed, forgetting that nature makes or mars the
+individual for the sake, always, of the type.  For in every such case
+of return, the impulse was sound,--only that time and space interfered,
+and propinquity determined whether the object of choice should be
+bar-maid or peasant girl.
+
+
+Happily for Vance Corliss, time and space were propitious, and in Frona
+he found the culture he could not do without, and the clean sharp tang
+of the earth he needed.  In so far as her education and culture went,
+she was an astonishment.  He had met the scientifically smattered young
+woman before, but Frona had something more than smattering.  Further,
+she gave new life to old facts, and her interpretations of common
+things were coherent and vigorous and new.  Though his acquired
+conservatism was alarmed and cried danger, he could not remain cold to
+the charm of her philosophizing, while her scholarly attainments were
+fully redeemed by her enthusiasm.  Though he could not agree with much
+that she passionately held, he yet recognized that the passion of
+sincerity and enthusiasm was good.
+
+But her chief fault, in his eyes, was her unconventionality.  Woman was
+something so inexpressibly sacred to him, that he could not bear to see
+any good woman venturing where the footing was precarious.  Whatever
+good woman thus ventured, overstepping the metes and bounds of sex and
+status, he deemed did so of wantonness.  And wantonness of such order
+was akin to--well, he could not say it when thinking of Frona, though
+she hurt him often by her unwise acts.  However, he only felt such
+hurts when away from her.  When with her, looking into her eyes which
+always looked back, or at greeting and parting pressing her hand which
+always pressed honestly, it seemed certain that there was in her
+nothing but goodness and truth.
+
+And then he liked her in many different ways for many different things.
+For her impulses, and for her passions which were always elevated.  And
+already, from breathing the Northland air, he had come to like her for
+that comradeship which at first had shocked him.  There were other
+acquired likings, her lack of prudishness, for instance, which he awoke
+one day to find that he had previously confounded with lack of modesty.
+And it was only the day before that day that he drifted, before he
+thought, into a discussion with her of "Camille."  She had seen
+Bernhardt, and dwelt lovingly on the recollection.  He went home
+afterwards, a dull pain gnawing at his heart, striving to reconcile
+Frona with the ideal impressed upon him by his mother that innocence
+was another term for ignorance.  Notwithstanding, by the following day
+he had worked it out and loosened another finger of the maternal grip.
+
+He liked the flame of her hair in the sunshine, the glint of its gold
+by the firelight, and the waywardness of it and the glory.  He liked
+her neat-shod feet and the gray-gaitered calves,--alas, now hidden in
+long-skirted Dawson.  He liked her for the strength of her slenderness;
+and to walk with her, swinging her step and stride to his, or to merely
+watch her come across a room or down the street, was a delight.  Life
+and the joy of life romped through her blood, abstemiously filling out
+and rounding off each shapely muscle and soft curve.  And he liked it
+all.  Especially he liked the swell of her forearm, which rose firm and
+strong and tantalizing and sought shelter all too quickly under the
+loose-flowing sleeve.
+
+The co-ordination of physical with spiritual beauty is very strong in
+normal men, and so it was with Vance Corliss.  That he liked the one
+was no reason that he failed to appreciate the other.  He liked Frona
+for both, and for herself as well.  And to like, with him, though he
+did not know it, was to love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Vance Corliss proceeded at a fair rate to adapt himself to the
+Northland life, and he found that many adjustments came easy.  While
+his own tongue was alien to the brimstone of the Lord, he became quite
+used to strong language on the part of other men, even in the most
+genial conversation.  Carthey, a little Texan who went to work for him
+for a while, opened or closed every second sentence, on an average,
+with the mild expletive, "By damn!"  It was also his invariable way of
+expressing surprise, disappointment, consternation, or all the rest of
+the tribe of sudden emotions.  By pitch and stress and intonation, the
+protean oath was made to perform every function of ordinary speech.  At
+first it was a constant source of irritation and disgust to Corliss,
+but erelong he grew not only to tolerate it, but to like it, and to
+wait for it eagerly.  Once, Carthey's wheel-dog lost an ear in a hasty
+contention with a dog of the Hudson Bay, and when the young fellow bent
+over the animal and discovered the loss, the blended endearment and
+pathos of the "by damn" which fell from his lips was a relation to
+Corliss.  All was not evil out of Nazareth, he concluded sagely, and,
+like Jacob Welse of old, revised his philosophy of life accordingly.
+
+Again, there were two sides to the social life of Dawson.  Up at the
+Barracks, at the Welse's, and a few other places, all men of standing
+were welcomed and made comfortable by the womenkind of like standing.
+There were teas, and dinners, and dances, and socials for charity, and
+the usual run of things; all of which, however, failed to wholly
+satisfy the men.  Down in the town there was a totally different though
+equally popular other side.  As the country was too young for
+club-life, the masculine portion of the community expressed its
+masculinity by herding together in the saloons,--the ministers and
+missionaries being the only exceptions to this mode of expression.
+Business appointments and deals were made and consummated in the
+saloons, enterprises projected, shop talked, the latest news discussed,
+and a general good fellowship maintained.  There all life rubbed
+shoulders, and kings and dog-drivers, old-timers and chechaquos, met on
+a common level.  And it so happened, probably because saw-mills and
+house-space were scarce, that the saloons accommodated the gambling
+tables and the polished dance-house floors.  And here, because he needs
+must bend to custom, Corliss's adaptation went on rapidly.  And as
+Carthey, who appreciated him, soliloquized, "The best of it is he likes
+it damn well, by damn!"
+
+But any adjustment must have its painful periods, and while Corliss's
+general change went on smoothly, in the particular case of Frona it was
+different.  She had a code of her own, quite unlike that of the
+community, and perhaps believed woman might do things at which even the
+saloon-inhabiting males would be shocked.  And because of this, she and
+Corliss had their first disagreeable disagreement.
+
+Frona loved to run with the dogs through the biting frost, cheeks
+tingling, blood bounding, body thrust forward, and limbs rising and
+falling ceaselessly to the pace.  And one November day, with the first
+cold snap on and the spirit thermometer frigidly marking sixty-five
+below, she got out the sled, harnessed her team of huskies, and flew
+down the river trail.  As soon as she cleared the town she was off and
+running.  And in such manner, running and riding by turns, she swept
+through the Indian village below the bluff's, made an eight-mile circle
+up Moosehide Creek and back, crossed the river on the ice, and several
+hours later came flying up the west bank of the Yukon opposite the
+town.  She was aiming to tap and return by the trail for the wood-sleds
+which crossed thereabout, but a mile away from it she ran into the soft
+snow and brought the winded dogs to a walk.
+
+Along the rim of the river and under the frown of the overhanging
+cliffs, she directed the path she was breaking.  Here and there she
+made detours to avoid the out-jutting talus, and at other times
+followed the ice in against the precipitous walls and hugged them
+closely around the abrupt bends.  And so, at the head of her huskies,
+she came suddenly upon a woman sitting in the snow and gazing across
+the river at smoke-canopied Dawson.  She had been crying, and this was
+sufficient to prevent Frona's scrutiny from wandering farther.  A tear,
+turned to a globule of ice, rested on her cheek, and her eyes were dim
+and moist; there was an-expression of hopeless, fathomless woe.
+
+"Oh!" Frona cried, stopping the dogs and coming up to her.  "You are
+hurt?  Can I help you?" she queried, though the stranger shook her
+head.  "But you mustn't sit there.  It is nearly seventy below, and
+you'll freeze in a few minutes.  Your cheeks are bitten already."  She
+rubbed the afflicted parts vigorously with a mitten of snow, and then
+looked down on the warm returning glow.
+
+"I beg pardon."  The woman rose somewhat stiffly to her feet.  "And I
+thank you, but I am perfectly warm, you see" (settling the fur cape
+more closely about her with a snuggling movement), "and I had just sat
+down for the moment."
+
+Frona noted that she was very beautiful, and her woman's eye roved over
+and took in the splendid furs, the make of the gown, and the bead-work
+of the moccasins which peeped from beneath.  And in view of all this,
+and of the fact that the face was unfamiliar, she felt an instinctive
+desire to shrink back.
+
+"And I haven't hurt myself," the woman went on.  "Just a mood, that was
+all, looking out over the dreary endless white."
+
+"Yes," Frona replied, mastering herself; "I can understand.  There must
+be much of sadness in such a landscape, only it never comes that way to
+me.  The sombreness and the sternness of it appeal to me, but not the
+sadness."
+
+"And that is because the lines of our lives have been laid in different
+places," the other ventured, reflectively.  "It is not what the
+landscape is, but what we are.  If we were not, the landscape would
+remain, but without human significance.  That is what we invest it with.
+
+  "'Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
+  From outward things, whate'er you may believe.'"
+
+Frona's eyes brightened, and she went on to complete the passage:
+
+  "'There is an inmost centre in us all,
+  Where truth abides in fulness; and around.'
+
+"And--and--how does it go?  I have forgotten."
+
+  "'Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in--'"
+
+The woman ceased abruptly, her voice trilling off into silvery laughter
+with a certain bitter reckless ring to it which made Frona inwardly
+shiver.  She moved as though to go back to her dogs, but the woman's
+hand went out in a familiar gesture,--twin to Frona's own,--which went
+at once to Frona's heart.
+
+"Stay a moment," she said, with an undertone of pleading in the words,
+"and talk with me.  It is long since I have met a woman"--she paused
+while her tongue wandered for the word--"who could quote 'Paracelsus.'
+You are,--I know you, you see,--you are Jacob Welse's daughter, Frona
+Welse, I believe."
+
+Frona nodded her identity, hesitated, and looked at the woman with
+secret intentness.  She was conscious of a great and pardonable
+curiosity, of a frank out-reaching for fuller knowledge.  This
+creature, so like, so different; old as the oldest race, and young as
+the last rose-tinted babe; flung far as the farthermost fires of men,
+and eternal as humanity itself--where were they unlike, this woman and
+she?  Her five senses told her not; by every law of life they were no;
+only, only by the fast-drawn lines of social caste and social wisdom
+were they not the same.  So she thought, even as for one searching
+moment she studied the other's face.  And in the situation she found an
+uplifting awfulness, such as comes when the veil is thrust aside and
+one gazes on the mysteriousness of Deity.  She remembered: "Her feet
+take hold of hell; her house is the way to the grave, going down to the
+chamber of death," and in the same instant strong upon her was the
+vision of the familiar gesture with which the woman's hand had gone out
+in mute appeal, and she looked aside, out over the dreary endless
+white, and for her, too, the day became filled with sadness.
+
+She gave an involuntary, half-nervous shiver, though she said,
+naturally enough, "Come, let us walk on and get the blood moving again.
+I had no idea it was so cold till I stood still."  She turned to the
+dogs: "Mush-on!  King!  You Sandy!  Mush!"  And back again to the
+woman, "I am quite chilled, and as for you, you must be--"
+
+"Quite warm, of course.  You have been running and your clothes are wet
+against you, while I have kept up the needful circulation and no more.
+I saw you when you leaped off the sled below the hospital and vanished
+down the river like a Diana of the snows.  How I envied you!  You must
+enjoy it."
+
+"Oh, I do," Frona answered, simply.  "I was raised with the dogs."
+
+"It savors of the Greek."
+
+Frona did not reply, and they walked on in silence.  Yet Frona wished,
+though she dared not dare, that she could give her tongue free rein,
+and from out of the other's bitter knowledge, for her own soul's sake
+and sanity, draw the pregnant human generalizations which she must
+possess.  And over her welled a wave of pity and distress; and she felt
+a discomfort, for she knew not what to say or how to voice her heart.
+And when the other's speech broke forth, she hailed it with a great
+relief.
+
+"Tell me," the woman demanded, half-eagerly, half-masterly, "tell me
+about yourself.  You are new to the Inside.  Where were you before you
+came in?  Tell me."
+
+So the difficulty was solved, in a way, and Frona talked on about
+herself, with a successfully feigned girlhood innocence, as though she
+did not appreciate the other or understand her ill-concealed yearning
+for that which she might not have, but which was Frona's.
+
+"There is the trail you are trying to connect with."  They had rounded
+the last of the cliffs, and Frona's companion pointed ahead to where
+the walls receded and wrinkled to a gorge, out of which the sleds drew
+the firewood across the river to town.  "I shall leave you there," she
+concluded.
+
+"But are you not going back to Dawson?" Frona queried.  "It is growing
+late, and you had better not linger."
+
+"No . . .  I . . ."
+
+Her painful hesitancy brought Frona to a realization of her own
+thoughtlessness.  But she had made the step, and she knew she could not
+retrace it.
+
+"We will go back together," she said, bravely.  And in candid
+all-knowledge of the other, "I do not mind."
+
+Then it was that the blood surged into the woman's cold face, and her
+hand went out to the girl in the old, old way.
+
+"No, no, I beg of you," she stammered.  "I beg of you . . .  I . . .  I
+prefer to continue my walk a little farther.  See!  Some one is coming
+now!"
+
+By this time they had reached the wood-trail, and Frona's face was
+flaming as the other's had flamed.  A light sled, dogs a-lope and
+swinging down out of the gorge, was just upon them.  A man was running
+with the team, and he waved his hand to the two women.
+
+"Vance!" Frona exclaimed, as he threw his lead-dogs in the snow and
+brought the sled to a halt.  "What are you doing over here?  Is the
+syndicate bent upon cornering the firewood also?"
+
+"No.  We're not so bad as that."  His face was full of smiling
+happiness at the meeting as he shook hands with her.  "But Carthey is
+leaving me,--going prospecting somewhere around the North Pole, I
+believe,--and I came across to look up Del Bishop, if he'll serve."
+
+He turned his head to glance expectantly at her companion, and she saw
+the smile go out of his face and anger come in.  Frona was helplessly
+aware that she had no grip over the situation, and, though a rebellion
+at the cruelty and injustice of it was smouldering somewhere deep down,
+she could only watch the swift culmination of the little tragedy.  The
+woman met his gaze with a half-shrinking, as from an impending blow,
+and with a softness of expression which entreated pity.  But he
+regarded her long and coldly, then deliberately turned his back.  As he
+did this, Frona noted her face go tired and gray, and the hardness and
+recklessness of her laughter were there painted in harsh tones, and a
+bitter devil rose up and lurked in her eyes.  It was evident that the
+same bitter devil rushed hotly to her tongue.  But it chanced just then
+that she glanced at Frona, and all expression was brushed from her face
+save the infinite tiredness.  She smiled wistfully at the girl, and
+without a word turned and went down the trail.
+
+And without a word Frona sprang upon her sled and was off.  The way was
+wide, and Corliss swung in his dogs abreast of hers.  The smouldering
+rebellion flared up, and she seemed to gather to herself some of the
+woman's recklessness.
+
+"You brute!"
+
+The words left her mouth, sharp, clear-cut, breaking the silence like
+the lash of a whip.  The unexpectedness of it, and the savagery, took
+Corliss aback.  He did not know what to do or say.
+
+"Oh, you coward!  You coward!"
+
+"Frona!  Listen to me--"
+
+But she cut him off.  "No.  Do not speak.  You can have nothing to say.
+You have behaved abominably.  I am disappointed in you.  It is
+horrible! horrible!"
+
+"Yes, it was horrible,--horrible that she should walk with you, have
+speech with you, be seen with you."
+
+"'Not until the sun excludes you, do I exclude you,'" she flung back at
+him.
+
+"But there is a fitness of things--"
+
+"Fitness!" She turned upon him and loosed her wrath.  "If she is unfit,
+are you fit?  May you cast the first stone with that smugly
+sanctimonious air of yours?"
+
+"You shall not talk to me in this fashion.  I'll not have it."
+
+He clutched at her sled, and even in the midst of her anger she noticed
+it with a little thrill of pleasure.
+
+"Shall not?  You coward!"
+
+He reached out as though to lay hands upon her, and she raised her
+coiled whip to strike.  But to his credit he never flinched; his white
+face calmly waited to receive the blow.  Then she deflected the stroke,
+and the long lash hissed out and fell among the dogs.  Swinging the
+whip briskly, she rose to her knees on the sled and called frantically
+to the animals.  Hers was the better team, and she shot rapidly away
+from Corliss.  She wished to get away, not so much from him as from
+herself, and she encouraged the huskies into wilder and wilder speed.
+She took the steep river-bank in full career and dashed like a
+whirlwind through the town and home.  Never in her life had she been in
+such a condition; never had she experienced such terrible anger.  And
+not only was she already ashamed, but she was frightened and afraid of
+herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The next morning Corliss was knocked out of a late bed by Bash, one of
+Jacob Welse's Indians.  He was the bearer of a brief little note from
+Frona, which contained a request for the mining engineer to come and
+see her at his first opportunity.  That was all that was said, and he
+pondered over it deeply.  What did she wish to say to him?  She was
+still such an unknown quantity,--and never so much as now in the light
+of the day before,--that he could not guess.  Did she desire to give
+him his dismissal on a definite, well-understood basis?  To take
+advantage of her sex and further humiliate him?  To tell him what she
+thought of him in coolly considered, cold-measured terms?  Or was she
+penitently striving to make amends for the unmerited harshness she had
+dealt him?  There was neither contrition nor anger in the note, no
+clew, nothing save a formally worded desire to see him.
+
+So it was in a rather unsettled and curious frame of mind that he
+walked in upon her as the last hour of the morning drew to a close.  He
+was neither on his dignity nor off, his attitude being strictly
+non-committal against the moment she should disclose hers.  But without
+beating about the bush, in that way of hers which he had come already
+to admire, she at once showed her colors and came frankly forward to
+him.  The first glimpse of her face told him, the first feel of her
+hand, before she had said a word, told him that all was well.
+
+"I am glad you have come," she began.  "I could not be at peace with
+myself until I had seen you and told you how sorry I am for yesterday,
+and how deeply ashamed I--"
+
+"There, there.  It's not so bad as all that."  They were still
+standing, and he took a step nearer to her.  "I assure you I can
+appreciate your side of it; and though, looking at it theoretically, it
+was the highest conduct, demanding the fullest meed of praise, still,
+in all frankness, there is much to--to--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Much to deplore in it from the social stand-point.  And unhappily, we
+cannot leave the social stand-point out of our reckoning.  But so far
+as I may speak for myself, you have done nothing to feel sorry for or
+be ashamed of."
+
+"It is kind of you," she cried, graciously.  "Only it is not true, and
+you know it is not true.  You know that you acted for the best; you
+know that I hurt you, insulted you; you know that I behaved like a
+fish-wife, and you do know that I disgusted you--"
+
+"No, no!"  He raised his hand as though to ward from her the blows she
+dealt herself.
+
+"But yes, yes.  And I have all reason in the world to be ashamed.  I
+can only say this in defence: the woman had affected me deeply--so
+deeply that I was close to weeping.  Then you came on the scene,--you
+know what you did,--and the sorrow for her bred an indignation against
+you, and--well, I worked myself into a nervous condition such as I had
+never experienced in my life.  It was hysteria, I suppose.  Anyway, I
+was not myself."
+
+"We were neither of us ourselves."
+
+"Now you are untrue.  I did wrong, but you were yourself, as much so
+then as now.  But do be seated.  Here we stand as though you were ready
+to run away at first sign of another outbreak."
+
+"Surely you are not so terrible!" he laughed, adroitly pulling his
+chair into position so that the light fell upon her face.
+
+"Rather, you are not such a coward.  I must have been terrible
+yesterday.  I--I almost struck you.  And you were certainly brave when
+the whip hung over you.  Why, you did not even attempt to raise a hand
+and shield yourself."
+
+"I notice the dogs your whip falls among come nevertheless to lick your
+hand and to be petted."
+
+"Ergo?" she queried, audaciously.
+
+"Ergo, it all depends," he equivocated.
+
+"And, notwithstanding, I am forgiven?"
+
+"As I hope to be forgiven."
+
+"Then I am glad--only, you have done nothing to be forgiven for.  You
+acted according to your light, and I to mine, though it must be
+acknowledged that mine casts the broader flare.  Ah!  I have it,"
+clapping her hands in delight, "I was not angry with you yesterday; nor
+did I behave rudely to you, or even threaten you.  It was utterly
+impersonal, the whole of it.  You simply stood for society, for the
+type which aroused my indignation and anger; and, as its
+representative, you bore the brunt of it.  Don't you see?"
+
+"I see, and cleverly put; only, while you escape the charge of
+maltreating me yesterday; you throw yourself open to it to-day.  You
+make me out all that is narrow-minded and mean and despicable, which is
+very unjust.  Only a few minutes past I said that your way of looking
+at it, theoretically considered, was irreproachable.  But not so when
+we include society."
+
+"But you misunderstand me, Vance.  Listen."  Her hand went out to his,
+and he was content to listen.  "I have always upheld that what is is
+well.  I grant the wisdom of the prevailing social judgment in this
+matter.  Though I deplore it, I grant it; for the human is so made.
+But I grant it socially only.  I, as an individual, choose to regard
+such things differently.  And as between individuals so minded, why
+should it not be so regarded?  Don't you see?  Now I find you guilty.
+As between you and me, yesterday, on the river, you did not so regard
+it.  You behaved as narrow-mindedly as would have the society you
+represent."
+
+"Then you would preach two doctrines?" he retaliated.  "One for the
+elect and one for the herd?  You would be a democrat in theory and an
+aristocrat in practice?  In fact, the whole stand you are making is
+nothing more or less than Jesuitical."
+
+"I suppose with the next breath you will be contending that all men are
+born free and equal, with a bundle of natural rights thrown in?  You
+are going to have Del Bishop work for you; by what equal free-born
+right will he work for you, or you suffer him to work?"
+
+"No," he denied.  "I should have to modify somewhat the questions of
+equality and rights."
+
+"And if you modify, you are lost!" she exulted.  "For you can only
+modify in the direction of my position, which is neither so Jesuitical
+nor so harsh as you have defined it.  But don't let us get lost in
+dialectics.  I want to see what I can see, so tell me about this woman."
+
+"Not a very tasteful topic," Corliss objected.
+
+"But I seek knowledge."
+
+"Nor can it be wholesome knowledge."
+
+Frona tapped her foot impatiently, and studied him.
+
+"She is beautiful, very beautiful," she suggested.  "Do you not think
+so?"
+
+"As beautiful as hell."
+
+"But still beautiful," she insisted.
+
+"Yes, if you will have it so.  And she is as cruel, and hard, and
+hopeless as she is beautiful."
+
+"Yet I came upon her, alone, by the trail, her face softened, and tears
+in her eyes.  And I believe, with a woman's ken, that I saw a side of
+her to which you are blind.  And so strongly did I see it, that when
+you appeared my mind was blank to all save the solitary wail, _Oh, the
+pity of it_!  _The pity of it_!  And she is a woman, even as I, and I
+doubt not that we are very much alike.  Why, she even quoted
+Browning--"
+
+"And last week," he cut her short, "in a single sitting, she gambled
+away thirty thousand of Jack Dorsey's dust,--Dorsey, with two mortgages
+already on his dump!  They found him in the snow next morning, with one
+chamber empty in his revolver."
+
+Frona made no reply, but, walking over to the candle, deliberately
+thrust her finger into the flame.  Then she held it up to Corliss that
+he might see the outraged skin, red and angry.
+
+"And so I point the parable.  The fire is very good, but I misuse it,
+and I am punished."
+
+"You forget," he objected.  "The fire works in blind obedience to
+natural law.  Lucile is a free agent.  That which she has chosen to do,
+that she has done."
+
+"Nay, it is you who forget, for just as surely Dorsey was a free agent.
+But you said Lucile.  Is that her name?  I wish I knew her better."
+
+Corliss winced.  "Don't!  You hurt me when you say such things."
+
+"And why, pray?"
+
+"Because--because--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Because I honor woman highly.  Frona, you have always made a stand for
+frankness, and I can now advantage by it.  It hurts me because of the
+honor in which I hold you, because I cannot bear to see taint approach
+you.  Why, when I saw you and that woman together on the trail, I--you
+cannot understand what I suffered."
+
+"Taint?"  There was a tightening about her lips which he did not
+notice, and a just perceptible lustre of victory lighted her eyes.
+
+"Yes, taint,--contamination," he reiterated.  "There are some things
+which it were not well for a good woman to understand.  One cannot
+dabble with mud and remain spotless."
+
+"That opens the field wide."  She clasped and unclasped her hands
+gleefully.  "You have said that her name was Lucile; you display a
+knowledge of her; you have given me facts about her; you doubtless
+retain many which you dare not give; in short, if one cannot dabble and
+remain spotless, how about you?"
+
+"But I am--"
+
+"A man, of course.  Very good.  Because you are a man, you may court
+contamination.  Because I am a woman, I may not.  Contamination
+contaminates, does it not?  Then you, what do you here with me?  Out
+upon you!"
+
+Corliss threw up his hands laughingly.  "I give in.  You are too much
+for me with your formal logic.  I can only fall back on the higher
+logic, which you will not recognize."
+
+"Which is--"
+
+"Strength.  What man wills for woman, that will he have."
+
+"I take you, then, on your own ground," she rushed on.  "What of
+Lucile?  What man has willed that he has had.  So you, and all men,
+have willed since the beginning of time.  So poor Dorsey willed.  You
+cannot answer, so let me speak something that occurs to me concerning
+that higher logic you call strength.  I have met it before.  I
+recognized it in you, yesterday, on the sleds."
+
+"In me?"
+
+"In you, when you reached out and clutched at me.  You could not down
+the primitive passion, and, for that matter, you did not know it was
+uppermost.  But the expression on your face, I imagine, was very like
+that of a woman-stealing cave-man.  Another instant, and I am sure you
+would have laid violent hands upon me."
+
+"Then I ask your pardon.  I did not dream--"
+
+"There you go, spoiling it all!  I--I quite liked you for it.  Don't
+you remember, I, too, was a cave-woman, brandishing the whip over your
+head?
+
+"But I am not done with you yet, Sir Doubleface, even if you have
+dropped out of the battle."  Her eyes were sparkling mischievously, and
+the wee laughter-creases were forming on her cheek.  "I purpose to
+unmask you."
+
+"As clay in the hands of the potter," he responded, meekly.
+
+"Then you must remember several things.  At first, when I was very
+humble and apologetic, you made it easier for me by saying that you
+could only condemn my conduct on the ground of being socially unwise.
+Remember?"
+
+Corliss nodded.
+
+"Then, just after you branded me as Jesuitical, I turned the
+conversation to Lucile, saying that I wished to see what I could see."
+
+Again he nodded.
+
+"And just as I expected, I saw.  For in only a few minutes you began to
+talk about taint, and contamination, and dabbling in mud,--and all in
+relation to me.  There are your two propositions, sir.  You may only
+stand on one, and I feel sure that you stand on the last one.  Yes, I
+am right.  You do.  And you were insincere, confess, when you found my
+conduct unwise only from the social point of view.  I like sincerity."
+
+"Yes," he began, "I was unwittingly insincere.  But I did not know it
+until further analysis, with your help, put me straight.  Say what you
+will, Frona, my conception of woman is such that she should not court
+defilement."
+
+"But cannot we be as gods, knowing good and evil?"
+
+"But we are not gods," he shook his head, sadly.
+
+"Only the men are?"
+
+"That is new-womanish talk," he frowned.  "Equal rights, the ballot,
+and all that."
+
+"Oh!  Don't!" she protested.  "You won't understand me; you can't.  I
+am no woman's rights' creature; and I stand, not for the new woman, but
+for the new womanhood.  Because I am sincere; because I desire to be
+natural, and honest, and true; and because I am consistent with myself,
+you choose to misunderstand it all and to lay wrong strictures upon me.
+I do try to be consistent, and I think I fairly succeed; but you can
+see neither rhyme nor reason in my consistency.  Perhaps it is because
+you are unused to consistent, natural women; because, more likely, you
+are only familiar with the hot-house breeds,--pretty, helpless,
+well-rounded, stall-fatted little things, blissfully innocent and
+criminally ignorant.  They are not natural or strong; nor can they
+mother the natural and strong."
+
+She stopped abruptly.  They heard somebody enter the hall, and a heavy,
+soft-moccasined tread approaching.
+
+"We are friends," she added hurriedly, and Corliss answered with his
+eyes.
+
+"Ain't intrudin', am I?"  Dave Harney grinned broad insinuation and
+looked about ponderously before coming up to shake hands.
+
+"Not at all," Corliss answered.    "We've bored each other till we were
+pining for some one to come along.  If you hadn't, we would soon have
+been quarrelling, wouldn't we, Miss Welse?"
+
+"I don't think he states the situation fairly," she smiled back.  "In
+fact, we had already begun to quarrel."
+
+"You do look a mite flustered," Harney criticised, dropping his
+loose-jointed frame all over the pillows of the lounging couch.
+
+"How's the famine?" Corliss asked.  "Any public relief started yet?"
+
+"Won't need any public relief.  Miss Frona's old man was too forehanded
+fer 'em.  Scairt the daylights out of the critters, I do b'lieve.
+Three thousand went out over the ice hittin' the high places, an' half
+ez many again went down to the caches, and the market's loosened some
+considerable.  Jest what Welse figgered on, everybody speculated on a
+rise and held all the grub they could lay hand to.  That helped scare
+the shorts, and away they stampeded fer Salt Water, the whole caboodle,
+a-takin' all the dogs with 'em.  Say!" he sat up solemnly, "corner
+dogs!  They'll rise suthin' unheard on in the spring when freightin'
+gits brisk.  I've corralled a hundred a'ready, an' I figger to clear a
+hundred dollars clean on every hide of 'em."
+
+"Think so?"
+
+"Think so!  I guess yes.  Between we three, confidential, I'm startin'
+a couple of lads down into the Lower Country next week to buy up five
+hundred of the best huskies they kin spot.  Think so!  I've limbered my
+jints too long in the land to git caught nappin'."
+
+Frona burst out laughing.  "But you got pinched on the sugar, Dave."
+
+"Oh, I dunno," he responded, complacently.  "Which reminds me.   I've
+got a noospaper, an' only four weeks' old, the _Seattle
+Post-Intelligencer_."
+
+"Has the United States and Spain--"
+
+"Not so fast, not so fast!"  The long Yankee waved his arms for
+silence, cutting off Frona's question which was following fast on that
+of Corliss.
+
+"But have you read it?" they both demanded.
+
+"Unh huh, every line, advertisements an' all."
+
+"Then do tell me," Frona began.  "Has--"
+
+"Now you keep quiet, Miss Frona, till I tell you about it reg'lar.
+That noospaper cost me fifty dollars--caught the man comin' in round
+the bend above Klondike City, an' bought it on the spot.  The dummy
+could a-got a hundred fer it, easy, if he'd held on till he made
+town--"
+
+"But what does it say?  Has--"
+
+"Ez I was sayin', that noospaper cost me fifty dollars.  It's the only
+one that come in.  Everybody's jest dyin' to hear the noos.  So I
+invited a select number of 'em to come here to yer parlors to-night,
+Miss Frona, ez the only likely place, an' they kin read it out loud, by
+shifts, ez long ez they want or till they're tired--that is, if you'll
+let 'em have the use of the place."
+
+"Why, of course, they are welcome.  And you are very kind to--"
+
+He waved her praise away.  "Jest ez I kalkilated.  Now it so happens,
+ez you said, that I was pinched on sugar.  So every mother's son and
+daughter that gits a squint at that paper to-night got to pony up five
+cups of sugar.  Savve?  Five cups,--big cups, white, or brown, or
+cube,--an' I'll take their IOU's, an' send a boy round to their shacks
+the day followin' to collect."
+
+Frona's face went blank at the telling, then the laughter came back
+into it.  "Won't it be jolly?  I'll do it if it raises a scandal.
+To-night, Dave?  Sure to-night?"
+
+"Sure.  An' you git a complimentary, you know, fer the loan of yer
+parlor."
+
+"But papa must pay his five cups.  You must insist upon it, Dave."
+
+Dave's eyes twinkled appreciatively.  "I'll git it back on him, you
+bet!"
+
+"And I'll make him come," she promised, "at the tail of Dave Harney's
+chariot."
+
+"Sugar cart," Dave suggested.  "An' to-morrow night I'll take the paper
+down to the Opery House.  Won't be fresh, then, so they kin git in
+cheap; a cup'll be about the right thing, I reckon."  He sat up and
+cracked his huge knuckles boastfully.  "I ain't ben a-burnin' daylight
+sence navigation closed; an' if they set up all night they won't be up
+early enough in the mornin' to git ahead of Dave Harney--even on a
+sugar proposition."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Over in the corner Vance Corliss leaned against the piano, deep in
+conversation with Colonel Trethaway.  The latter, keen and sharp and
+wiry, for all his white hair and sixty-odd years, was as young in
+appearance as a man of thirty.   A veteran mining engineer, with a
+record which put him at the head of his profession, he represented as
+large American interests as Corliss did British.  Not only had a
+cordial friendship sprung up between them, but in a business way they
+had already been of large assistance to each other.  And it was well
+that they should stand together,--a pair who held in grip and could
+direct at will the potent capital which two nations had contributed to
+the development of the land under the Pole.
+
+The crowded room was thick with tobacco smoke.  A hundred men or so,
+garbed in furs and warm-colored wools, lined the walls and looked on.
+But the mumble of their general conversation destroyed the spectacular
+feature of the scene and gave to it the geniality of common
+comradeship.  For all its _bizarre_ appearance, it was very like the
+living-room of the home when the members of the household come together
+after the work of the day.  Kerosene lamps and tallow candles glimmered
+feebly in the murky atmosphere, while large stoves roared their red-hot
+and white-hot cheer.
+
+On the floor a score of couples pulsed rhythmically to the swinging
+waltz-time music.  Starched shirts and frock coats were not.  The men
+wore their wolf- and beaver-skin caps, with the gay-tasselled ear-flaps
+flying free, while on their feet were the moose-skin moccasins and
+walrus-hide muclucs of the north.  Here and there a woman was in
+moccasins, though the majority danced in frail ball-room slippers of
+silk and satin.  At one end of the hall a great open doorway gave
+glimpse of another large room where the crowd was even denser.  From
+this room, in the lulls in the music, came the pop of corks and the
+clink of glasses, and as an undertone the steady click and clatter of
+chips and roulette balls.
+
+The small door at the rear opened, and a woman, befurred and muffled,
+came in on a wave of frost.  The cold rushed in with her to the warmth,
+taking form in a misty cloud which hung close to the floor, hiding the
+feet of the dancers, and writhing and twisting until vanquished by the
+heat.
+
+"A veritable frost queen, my Lucile," Colonel Trethaway addressed her.
+
+She tossed her head and laughed, and, as she removed her capes and
+street-moccasins, chatted with him gayly.  But of Corliss, though he
+stood within a yard of her, she took no notice.  Half a dozen dancing
+men were waiting patiently at a little distance till she should have
+done with the colonel.  The piano and violin played the opening bars of
+a schottische, and she turned to go; but a sudden impulse made Corliss
+step up to her.  It was wholly unpremeditated; he had not dreamed of
+doing it.
+
+"I am very sorry," he said.
+
+Her eyes flashed angrily as she turned upon him.
+
+"I mean it," he repeated, holding out his hand.  "I am very sorry.  I
+was a brute and a coward.  Will you forgive me?"
+
+She hesitated, and, with the wisdom bought of experience, searched him
+for the ulterior motive.  Then, her face softened, and she took his
+hand.  A warm mist dimmed her eyes.
+
+"Thank you," she said.
+
+But the waiting men had grown impatient, and she was whirled away in
+the arms of a handsome young fellow, conspicuous in a cap of yellow
+Siberian wolf-skin.  Corliss came back to his companion, feeling
+unaccountably good and marvelling at what he had done.
+
+"It's a damned shame."  The colonel's eye still followed Lucile, and
+Vance understood.   "Corliss, I've lived my threescore, and lived them
+well, and do you know, woman is a greater mystery than ever.  Look at
+them, look at them all!"  He embraced the whole scene with his eyes.
+"Butterflies, bits of light and song and laughter, dancing, dancing
+down the last tail-reach of hell.  Not only Lucile, but the rest of
+them.  Look at May, there, with the brow of a Madonna and the tongue of
+a gutter-devil.  And Myrtle--for all the world one of Gainsborough's
+old English beauties stepped down from the canvas to riot out the
+century in Dawson's dance-halls.  And Laura, there, wouldn't she make a
+mother?  Can't you see the child in the curve of her arm against her
+breast!  They're the best of the boiling, I know,--a new country always
+gathers the best,--but there's something wrong, Corliss, something
+wrong.  The heats of life have passed with me, and my vision is truer,
+surer.  It seems a new Christ must arise and preach a new
+salvation--economic or sociologic--in these latter days, it matters
+not, so long as it is preached.  The world has need of it."
+
+The room was wont to be swept by sudden tides, and notably between the
+dances, when the revellers ebbed through the great doorway to where
+corks popped and glasses tinkled.  Colonel Trethaway and Corliss
+followed out on the next ebb to the bar, where fifty men and women were
+lined up.  They found themselves next to Lucile and the fellow in the
+yellow wolf-skin cap.  He was undeniably handsome, and his looks were
+enhanced by a warm overplus of blood in the cheeks and a certain mellow
+fire in the eyes.  He was not technically drunk, for he had himself in
+perfect physical control; but his was the soul-exhilaration which comes
+of the juice of the grape.  His voice was raised the least bit and
+joyous, and his tongue made quick and witty--just in the unstable
+condition when vices and virtues are prone to extravagant expression.
+
+As he raised his glass, the man next to him accidentally jostled his
+arm.  He shook the wine from his sleeve and spoke his mind.  It was not
+a nice word, but one customarily calculated to rouse the fighting
+blood.  And the other man's blood roused, for his fist landed under the
+wolf-skin cap with force sufficient to drive its owner back against
+Corliss.  The insulted man followed up his attack swiftly.   The women
+slipped away, leaving a free field for the men, some of whom were for
+crowding in, and some for giving room and fair play.
+
+The wolf-skin cap did not put up a fight or try to meet the wrath he
+had invoked, but, with his hands shielding his face, strove to retreat.
+The crowd called upon him to stand up and fight.  He nerved himself to
+the attempt, but weakened as the man closed in on him, and dodged away.
+
+"Let him alone.  He deserves it," the colonel called to Vance as he
+showed signs of interfering.  "He won't fight.  If he did, I think I
+could almost forgive him."
+
+"But I can't see him pummelled," Vance objected.  "If he would only
+stand up, it wouldn't seem so brutal."
+
+The blood was streaming from his nose and from a slight cut over one
+eye, when Corliss sprang between.  He attempted to hold the two men
+apart, but pressing too hard against the truculent individual,
+overbalanced him and threw him to the floor.  Every man has friends in
+a bar-room fight, and before Vance knew what was taking place he was
+staggered by a blow from a chum of the man he had downed.  Del Bishop,
+who had edged in, let drive promptly at the man who had attacked his
+employer, and the fight became general.  The crowd took sides on the
+moment and went at it.
+
+Colonel Trethaway forgot that the heats of life had passed, and
+swinging a three-legged stool, danced nimbly into the fray.  A couple
+of mounted police, on liberty, joined him, and with half a dozen others
+safeguarded the man with the wolf-skin cap.
+
+Fierce though it was, and noisy, it was purely a local disturbance.  At
+the far end of the bar the barkeepers still dispensed drinks, and in
+the next room the music was on and the dancers afoot.  The gamblers
+continued their play, and at only the near tables did they evince any
+interest in the affair.
+
+"Knock'm down an' drag'm out!" Del Bishop grinned, as he fought for a
+brief space shoulder to shoulder with Corliss.
+
+Corliss grinned back, met the rush of a stalwart dog-driver with a
+clinch, and came down on top of him among the stamping feet.  He was
+drawn close, and felt the fellow's teeth sinking into his ear.  Like a
+flash, he surveyed his whole future and saw himself going one-eared
+through life, and in the same dash, as though inspired, his thumbs flew
+to the man's eyes and pressed heavily on the balls.  Men fell over him
+and trampled upon him, but it all seemed very dim and far away.  He
+only knew, as he pressed with his thumbs, that the man's teeth wavered
+reluctantly.  He added a little pressure (a little more, and the man
+would have been eyeless), and the teeth slackened and slipped their
+grip.
+
+After that, as he crawled out of the fringe of the melee and came to
+his feet by the side of the bar, all distaste for fighting left him.
+He had found that he was very much like other men after all, and the
+imminent loss of part of his anatomy had scraped off twenty years of
+culture.  Gambling without stakes is an insipid amusement, and Corliss
+discovered, likewise, that the warm blood which rises from hygienic
+gymnasium work is something quite different from that which pounds
+hotly along when thew matches thew and flesh impacts on flesh and the
+stake is life and limb.  As he dragged himself to his feet by means of
+the bar-rail, he saw a man in a squirrel-skin parka lift a beer-mug to
+hurl at Trethaway, a couple of paces off.  And the fingers, which were
+more used to test-tubes and water colors, doubled into a hard fist
+which smote the mug-thrower cleanly on the point of the jaw.  The man
+merely dropped the glass and himself on the floor.  Vance was dazed for
+the moment, then he realized that he had knocked the man
+unconscious,--the first in his life,--and a pang of delight thrilled
+through him.
+
+Colonel Trethaway thanked him with a look, and shouted, "Get on the
+outside!  Work to the door, Corliss!  Work to the door!"
+
+Quite a struggle took place before the storm-doors could be thrown
+open; but the colonel, still attached to the three-legged stool,
+effectually dissipated the opposition, and the Opera House disgorged
+its turbulent contents into the street.  This accomplished, hostilities
+ceased, after the manner of such fights, and the crowd scattered.  The
+two policemen went back to keep order, accompanied by the rest of the
+allies, while Corliss and the colonel, followed by the Wolf-Skin Cap
+and Del Bishop, proceeded up the street.
+
+"Blood and sweat!  Blood and sweat!" Colonel Trethaway exulted.  "Talk
+about putting the vim into one!  Why, I'm twenty years younger if I'm a
+day!  Corliss, your hand.  I congratulate you, I do, I heartily do.
+Candidly, I didn't think it was in you.  You're a surprise, sir, a
+surprise!"
+
+"And a surprise to myself," Corliss answered.  The reaction had set in,
+and he was feeling sick and faint.  "And you, also, are a surprise.
+The way you handled that stool--"
+
+"Yes, now!  I flatter myself I did fairly well with it.  Did you
+see--well, look at that!"  He held up the weapon in question, still
+tightly clutched, and joined in the laugh against himself.
+
+"Whom have I to thank, gentlemen?"
+
+They had come to a pause at the corner, and the man they had rescued
+was holding out his hand.
+
+"My name is St. Vincent," he went on, "and--"
+
+"What name?" Del Bishop queried with sudden interest.
+
+"St. Vincent, Gregory St. Vincent--"
+
+Bishop's fist shot out, and Gregory St. Vincent pitched heavily into
+the snow.  The colonel instinctively raised the stool, then helped
+Corliss to hold the pocket-miner back.
+
+"Are you crazy, man?" Vance demanded.
+
+"The skunk!  I wish I'd hit 'm harder!" was the response.  Then, "Oh,
+that's all right.  Let go o' me.  I won't hit 'm again.  Let go o' me,
+I'm goin' home.  Good-night."
+
+As they helped St. Vincent to his feet, Vance could have sworn he heard
+the colonel giggling.  And he confessed to it later, as he explained,
+"It was so curious and unexpected."  But he made amends by taking it
+upon himself to see St. Vincent home.
+
+"But why did you hit him?" Corliss asked, unavailingly, for the fourth
+time after he had got into his cabin.
+
+"The mean, crawlin' skunk!" the pocket-miner gritted in his blankets.
+"What'd you stop me for, anyway?  I wish I'd hit 'm twice as hard!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"Mr. Harney, pleased to meet you.  Dave, I believe, Dave Harney?"  Dave
+Harney nodded, and Gregory St. Vincent turned to Frona.  "You see, Miss
+Welse, the world is none so large.  Mr. Harney and I are not strangers
+after all."
+
+The Eldorado king studied the other's face until a glimmering
+intelligence came to him.  "Hold on!" he cried, as St. Vincent started
+to speak, "I got my finger on you.  You were smooth-faced then.  Let's
+see,--'86, fall of '87, summer of '88,--yep, that's when.  Summer of
+'88 I come floatin' a raft out of Stewart River, loaded down with
+quarters of moose an' strainin' to make the Lower Country 'fore they
+went bad.  Yep, an' down the Yukon you come, in a Linderman boat.  An'
+I was holdin' strong, ez it was Wednesday, an' my pardner ez it was
+Friday, an' you put us straight--Sunday, I b'lieve it was.  Yep,
+Sunday.  I declare!  Nine years ago!  And we swapped moose-steaks fer
+flour an' bakin' soda, an'--an'--an' sugar!  By the Jimcracky!  I'm
+glad to see you!"
+
+He shoved out his hand and they shook again.
+
+"Come an' see me," he invited, as he moved away.  "I've a right tidy
+little shack up on the hill, and another on Eldorado.  Latch-string's
+always out.  Come an' see me, an' stay ez long ez you've a mind to.
+Sorry to quit you cold, but I got to traipse down to the Opery House
+and collect my taxes,--sugar.  Miss Frona'll tell you."
+
+"You are a surprise, Mr. St. Vincent."  Frona switched back to the
+point of interest, after briefly relating Harney's saccharine
+difficulties.  "The country must indeed have been a wilderness nine
+years ago, and to think that you went through it at that early day!  Do
+tell me about it."
+
+Gregory St. Vincent shrugged his shoulders, "There is very little to
+tell.  It was an ugly failure, filled with many things that are not
+nice, and containing nothing of which to be proud."
+
+"But do tell me, I enjoy such things.  They seem closer and truer to
+life than the ordinary every-day happenings.  A failure, as you call
+it, implies something attempted.  What did you attempt?"
+
+He noted her frank interest with satisfaction.  "Well, if you will, I
+can tell you in few words all there is to tell.  I took the mad idea
+into my head of breaking a new path around the world, and in the
+interest of science and journalism, particularly journalism, I proposed
+going through Alaska, crossing the Bering Straits on the ice, and
+journeying to Europe by way of Northern Siberia.  It was a splendid
+undertaking, most of it being virgin ground, only I failed.  I crossed
+the Straits in good order, but came to grief in Eastern Siberia--all
+because of Tamerlane is the excuse I have grown accustomed to making."
+
+"A Ulysses!"  Mrs. Schoville clapped her hands and joined them.  "A
+modern Ulysses!  How romantic!"
+
+"But not an Othello," Frona replied.  "His tongue is a sluggard.  He
+leaves one at the most interesting point with an enigmatical reference
+to a man of a bygone age.  You take an unfair advantage of us, Mr. St.
+Vincent, and we shall be unhappy until you show how Tamerlane brought
+your journey to an untimely end."
+
+He laughed, and with an effort put aside his reluctance to speak of his
+travels.  "When Tamerlane swept with fire and sword over Eastern Asia,
+states were disrupted, cities overthrown, and tribes scattered like
+star-dust.  In fact, a vast people was hurled broadcast over the land.
+Fleeing before the mad lust of the conquerors, these refugees swung far
+into Siberia, circling to the north and east and fringing the rim of
+the polar basin with a spray of Mongol tribes--am I not tiring you?"
+
+"No, no!" Mrs. Schoville exclaimed.  "It is fascinating!  Your method
+of narration is so vivid!  It reminds me of--of--"
+
+"Of Macaulay," St. Vincent laughed, good-naturedly.  "You know I am a
+journalist, and he has strongly influenced my style.  But I promise you
+I shall tone down.  However, to return, had it not been for these
+Mongol tribes, I should not have been halted in my travels.  Instead of
+being forced to marry a greasy princess, and to become proficient in
+interclannish warfare and reindeer-stealing, I should have travelled
+easily and peaceably to St. Petersburg."
+
+"Oh, these heroes!  Are they not exasperating, Frona?  But what about
+the reindeer-stealing and the greasy princesses?"
+
+The Gold Commissioner's wife beamed upon him, and glancing for
+permission to Frona, he went on.
+
+"The coast people were Esquimo stock, merry-natured and happy, and
+inoffensive.  They called themselves the Oukilion, or the Sea Men.  I
+bought dogs and food from them, and they treated me splendidly.  But
+they were subject to the Chow Chuen, or interior people, who were known
+as the Deer Men.  The Chow Chuen were a savage, indomitable breed, with
+all the fierceness of the untamed Mongol, plus double his viciousness.
+As soon as I left the coast they fell upon me, confiscated my goods,
+and made me a slave."
+
+"But were there no Russians?" Mrs. Schoville asked.
+
+"Russians?  Among the Chow Chuen?"  He laughed his amusement.
+"Geographically, they are within the White Tsar's domain; but
+politically, no.  I doubt if they ever heard of him.  Remember, the
+interior of North-Eastern Siberia is hidden in the polar gloom, a terra
+incognita, where few men have gone and none has returned."
+
+"But you--"
+
+"I chance to be the exception.  Why I was spared, I do not know.  It
+just so happened.  At first I was vilely treated, beaten by the women
+and children, clothed in vermin-infested mangy furs, and fed on refuse.
+They were utterly heartless.  How I managed to survive is beyond me;
+but I know that often and often, at first, I meditated suicide.  The
+only thing that saved me during that period from taking my own life was
+the fact that I quickly became too stupefied and bestial, what of my
+suffering and degradation.  Half-frozen, half-starved, undergoing
+untold misery and hardship, beaten many and many a time into
+insensibility, I became the sheerest animal.
+
+"On looking back much of it seems a dream.  There are gaps which my
+memory cannot fill.  I have vague recollections of being lashed to a
+sled and dragged from camp to camp and tribe to tribe.  Carted about
+for exhibition purposes, I suppose, much as we do lions and elephants
+and wild men.  How far I so journeyed up and down that bleak region I
+cannot guess, though it must have been several thousand miles.  I do
+know that when consciousness returned to me and I really became myself
+again, I was fully a thousand miles to the west of the point where I
+was captured.
+
+"It was springtime, and from out of a forgotten past it seemed I
+suddenly opened my eyes.  A reindeer thong was about my waist and made
+fast to the tail-end of a sled.  This thong I clutched with both hands,
+like an organ-grinder's monkey; for the flesh of my body was raw and in
+great sores from where the thong had cut in.
+
+"A low cunning came to me, and I made myself agreeable and servile.
+That night I danced and sang, and did my best to amuse them, for I was
+resolved to incur no more of the maltreatment which had plunged me into
+darkness.  Now the Deer Men traded with the Sea Men, and the Sea Men
+with the whites, especially the whalers.  So later I discovered a deck
+of cards in the possession of one of the women, and I proceeded to
+mystify the Chow Chuen with a few commonplace tricks.  Likewise, with
+fitting solemnity, I perpetrated upon them the little I knew of parlor
+legerdemain.  Result: I was appreciated at once, and was better fed and
+better clothed.
+
+"To make a long story short, I gradually became a man of importance.
+First the old people and the women came to me for advice, and later the
+chiefs.  My slight but rough and ready knowledge of medicine and
+surgery stood me in good stead, and I became indispensable.  From a
+slave, I worked myself to a seat among the head men, and in war and
+peace, so soon as I had learned their ways, was an unchallenged
+authority.  Reindeer was their medium of exchange, their unit of value
+as it were, and we were almost constantly engaged in cattle forays
+among the adjacent clans, or in protecting our own herds from their
+inroads.  I improved upon their methods, taught them better strategy
+and tactics, and put a snap and go into their operations which no
+neighbor tribe could withstand.
+
+"But still, though I became a power, I was no nearer my freedom.  It
+was laughable, for I had over-reached myself and made myself too
+valuable.  They cherished me with exceeding kindness, but they were
+jealously careful.  I could go and come and command without restraint,
+but when the trading parties went down to the coast I was not permitted
+to accompany them.  That was the one restriction placed upon my
+movements.
+
+"Also, it is very tottery in the high places, and when I began altering
+their political structures I came to grief again.  In the process of
+binding together twenty or more of the neighboring tribes in order to
+settle rival claims, I was given the over-lordship of the federation.
+But Old Pi-Une was the greatest of the under-chiefs,--a king in a
+way,--and in relinquishing his claim to the supreme leadership he
+refused to forego all the honors.  The least that could be done to
+appease him was for me to marry his daughter Ilswunga.  Nay, he
+demanded it.  I offered to abandon the federation, but he would not
+hear of it.  And--"
+
+"And?" Mrs. Schoville murmured ecstatically.
+
+"And I married Ilswunga, which is the Chow Chuen name for Wild Deer.
+Poor Ilswunga!  Like Swinburne's Iseult of Brittany, and I Tristram!
+The last I saw of her she was playing solitaire in the Mission of
+Irkutsky and stubbornly refusing to take a bath."
+
+"Oh, mercy!  It's ten o'clock!" Mrs. Schoville suddenly cried, her
+husband having at last caught her eye from across the room.  "I'm so
+sorry I can't hear the rest, Mr. St. Vincent, how you escaped and all
+that.  But you must come and see me.  I am just dying to hear!"
+
+"And I took you for a tenderfoot, a _chechaquo_," Frona said meekly, as
+St. Vincent tied his ear-flaps and turned up his collar preparatory to
+leaving.
+
+"I dislike posing," he answered, matching her meekness.  "It smacks of
+insincerity; it really is untrue.  And it is so easy to slip into it.
+Look at the old-timers,--'sour-doughs' as they proudly call themselves.
+Just because they have been in the country a few years, they let
+themselves grow wild and woolly and glorify in it.  They may not know
+it, but it is a pose.  In so far as they cultivate salient
+peculiarities, they cultivate falseness to themselves and live lies."
+
+"I hardly think you are wholly just," Frona said, in defence of her
+chosen heroes.  "I do like what you say about the matter in general,
+and I detest posing, but the majority of the old-timers would be
+peculiar in any country, under any circumstances.  That peculiarity is
+their own; it is their mode of expression.  And it is, I am sure, just
+what makes them go into new countries.  The normal man, of course,
+stays at home."
+
+"Oh, I quite agree with you, Miss Welse," he temporized easily.  "I did
+not intend it so sweepingly.  I meant to brand that sprinkling among
+them who are _poseurs_.  In the main, as you say, they are honest, and
+sincere, and natural."
+
+"Then we have no quarrel.  But Mr. St. Vincent, before you go, would
+you care to come to-morrow evening?  We are getting up theatricals for
+Christmas.  I know you can help us greatly, and I think it will not be
+altogether unenjoyable to you.  All the younger people are
+interested,--the officials, officers of police, mining engineers,
+gentlemen rovers, and so forth, to say nothing of the nice women.  You
+are bound to like them."
+
+"I am sure I shall," as he took her hand.  "Tomorrow, did you say?"
+
+"To-morrow evening.  Good-night."
+
+A brave man, she told herself as she went bade from the door, and a
+splendid type of the race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Gregory St. Vincent swiftly became an important factor in the social
+life of Dawson.  As a representative of the Amalgamated Press
+Association, he had brought with him the best credentials a powerful
+influence could obtain, and over and beyond, he was well qualified
+socially by his letters of introduction.  It developed in a quiet way
+that he was a wanderer and explorer of no small parts, and that he had
+seen life and strife pretty well all over the earth's crust.  And
+withal, he was so mild and modest about it, that nobody, not even among
+the men, was irritated by his achievements.  Incidentally, he ran
+across numerous old acquaintances.  Jacob Welse he had met at St.
+Michael's in the fall of '88, just prior to his crossing Bering Straits
+on the ice.  A month or so later, Father Barnum (who had come up from
+the Lower River to take charge of the hospital) had met him a couple of
+hundred miles on his way north of St. Michael's.  Captain Alexander, of
+the Police, had rubbed shoulders with him in the British Legation at
+Peking.  And Bettles, another old-timer of standing, had met him at
+Fort o' Yukon nine years before.
+
+So Dawson, ever prone to look askance at the casual comer, received him
+with open arms.  Especially was he a favorite with the women.  As a
+promoter of pleasures and an organizer of amusements he took the lead,
+and it quickly came to pass that no function was complete without him.
+Not only did he come to help in the theatricals, but insensibly, and as
+a matter of course, he took charge.  Frona, as her friends charged, was
+suffering from a stroke of Ibsen, so they hit upon the "Doll's House,"
+and she was cast for Nora.  Corliss, who was responsible, by the way,
+for the theatricals, having first suggested them, was to take Torvald's
+part; but his interest seemed to have died out, or at any rate he
+begged off on the plea of business rush.  So St. Vincent, without
+friction, took Torvald's lines.  Corliss did manage to attend one
+rehearsal.  It might have been that he had come tired from forty miles
+with the dogs, and it might have been that Torvald was obliged to put
+his arm about Nora at divers times and to toy playfully with her ear;
+but, one way or the other, Corliss never attended again.
+
+Busy he certainly was, and when not away on trail he was closeted
+almost continually with Jacob Welse and Colonel Trethaway.  That it was
+a deal of magnitude was evidenced by the fact that Welse's mining
+interests involved alone mounted to several millions.  Corliss was
+primarily a worker and doer, and on discovering that his thorough
+theoretical knowledge lacked practical experience, he felt put upon his
+mettle and worked the harder.  He even marvelled at the silliness of
+the men who had burdened him with such responsibilities, simply because
+of his pull, and he told Trethaway as much.  But the colonel, while
+recognizing his shortcomings, liked him for his candor, and admired him
+for his effort and for the quickness with which he came to grasp things
+actual.
+
+Del Bishop, who had refused to play any hand but his own, had gone to
+work for Corliss because by so doing he was enabled to play his own
+hand better.  He was practically unfettered, while the opportunities to
+further himself were greatly increased.  Equipped with the best of
+outfits and a magnificent dog-team, his task was mainly to run the
+various creeks and keep his eyes and ears open.  A pocket-miner, first,
+last, and always, he was privately on the constant lookout for pockets,
+which occupation did not interfere in the least with the duty he owed
+his employer.  And as the days went by he stored his mind with
+miscellaneous data concerning the nature of the various placer deposits
+and the lay of the land, against the summer when the thawed surface and
+the running water would permit him to follow a trace from creek-bed to
+side-slope and source.
+
+Corliss was a good employer, paid well, and considered it his right to
+work men as he worked himself.  Those who took service with him either
+strengthened their own manhood and remained, or quit and said harsh
+things about him.  Jacob Welse noted this trait with appreciation, and
+he sounded the mining engineer's praises continually.  Frona heard and
+was gratified, for she liked the things her father liked; and she was
+more gratified because the man was Corliss.  But in his rush of
+business she saw less of him than formerly, while St. Vincent came to
+occupy a greater and growing portion of her time.  His healthful,
+optimistic spirit pleased her, while he corresponded well to her
+idealized natural man and favorite racial type.  Her first doubt--that
+if what he said was true--had passed away.  All the evidence had gone
+counter.  Men who at first questioned the truth of his wonderful
+adventures gave in after hearing him talk.  Those to any extent
+conversant with the parts of the world he made mention of, could not
+but acknowledge that he knew what he talked about.  Young Soley,
+representing Bannock's News Syndicate, and Holmes of the Fairweather,
+recollected his return to the world in '91, and the sensation created
+thereby.  And Sid Winslow, Pacific Coast journalist, had made his
+acquaintance at the Wanderers' Club shortly after he landed from the
+United States revenue cutter which had brought him down from the north.
+Further, as Frona well saw, he bore the ear-marks of his experiences;
+they showed their handiwork in his whole outlook on life.  Then the
+primitive was strong in him, and his was a passionate race pride which
+fully matched hers.  In the absence of Corliss they were much together,
+went out frequently with the dogs, and grew to know each other
+thoroughly.
+
+All of which was not pleasant to Corliss, especially when the brief
+intervals he could devote to her were usually intruded upon by the
+correspondent.  Naturally, Corliss was not drawn to him, and other men,
+who knew or had heard of the Opera House occurrence, only accepted him
+after a tentative fashion.  Trethaway had the indiscretion, once or
+twice, to speak slightingly of him, but so fiercely was he defended by
+his admirers that the colonel developed the good taste to thenceforward
+keep his tongue between his teeth.  Once, Corliss, listening to an
+extravagant panegyric bursting from the lips of Mrs. Schoville,
+permitted himself the luxury of an incredulous smile; but the quick
+wave of color in Frona's face, and the gathering of the brows, warned
+him.
+
+At another time he was unwise enough and angry enough to refer to the
+Opera House broil.  He was carried away, and what he might have said of
+that night's happening would have redounded neither to St. Vincent's
+credit nor to his own, had not Frona innocently put a seal upon his
+lips ere he had properly begun.
+
+"Yes," she said.  "Mr. St. Vincent told me about it.  He met you for
+the first time that night, I believe.  You all fought royally on his
+side,--you and Colonel Trethaway.  He spoke his admiration unreservedly
+and, to tell the truth, with enthusiasm."
+
+Corliss made a gesture of depreciation.
+
+"No! no!  From what he said you must have behaved splendidly.  And I
+was most pleased to hear.  It must be great to give the brute the rein
+now and again, and healthy, too.  Great for us who have wandered from
+the natural and softened to sickly ripeness.  Just to shake off
+artificiality and rage up and down! and yet, the inmost mentor, serene
+and passionless, viewing all and saying: 'This is my other self.
+Behold!  I, who am now powerless, am the power behind and ruleth still!
+This other self, mine ancient, violent, elder self, rages blindly as
+the beast, but 'tis I, sitting apart, who discern the merit of the
+cause and bid him rage or bid him cease!'  Oh, to be a man!"
+
+Corliss could not help a humoring smile, which put Frona upon defence
+at once.
+
+"Tell me, Vance, how did it feel?  Have I not described it rightly?
+Were the symptoms yours?  Did you not hold aloof and watch yourself
+play the brute?"
+
+He remembered the momentary daze which came when he stunned the man
+with his fist, and nodded.
+
+"And pride?" she demanded, inexorably.  "Or shame?"
+
+"A--a little of both, and more of the first than the second," he
+confessed.  "At the time I suppose I was madly exultant; then
+afterwards came the shame, and I tossed awake half the night."
+
+"And finally?"
+
+"Pride, I guess.  I couldn't help it, couldn't down it.  I awoke in the
+morning feeling as though I had won my spurs.  In a subconscious way I
+was inordinately proud of myself, and time and again, mentally, I
+caught myself throwing chests.  Then came the shame again, and I tried
+to reason back my self-respect.  And last of all, pride.  The fight was
+fair and open.  It was none of my seeking.  I was forced into it by the
+best of motives.  I am not sorry, and I would repeat it if necessary."
+
+"And rightly so." Frona's eyes were sparkling.  "And how did Mr. St.
+Vincent acquit himself?"
+
+"He? . . . .  Oh, I suppose all right, creditably.  I was too busy
+watching my other self to take notice."
+
+"But he saw you."
+
+"Most likely so.  I acknowledge my negligence.  I should have done
+better, the chances are, had I thought it would have been of interest
+to you--pardon me.  Just my bungling wit.  The truth is, I was too much
+of a greenhorn to hold my own and spare glances on my neighbors."
+
+So Corliss went away, glad that he had not spoken, and keenly
+appreciating St. Vincent's craft whereby he had so adroitly forestalled
+adverse comment by telling the story in his own modest, self-effacing
+way.
+
+
+Two men and a woman!  The most potent trinity of factors in the
+creating of human pathos and tragedy!  As ever in the history of man,
+since the first father dropped down from his arboreal home and walked
+upright, so at Dawson.  Necessarily, there were minor factors, not
+least among which was Del Bishop, who, in his aggressive way, stepped
+in and accelerated things.  This came about in a trail-camp on the way
+to Miller Creek, where Corliss was bent on gathering in a large number
+of low-grade claims which could only be worked profitably on a large
+scale.
+
+"I'll not be wastin' candles when I make a strike, savve!" the
+pocket-miner remarked savagely to the coffee, which he was settling
+with a chunk of ice.  "Not on your life, I guess rather not!"
+
+"Kerosene?" Corliss queried, running a piece of bacon-rind round the
+frying-pan and pouring in the batter.
+
+"Kerosene, hell!  You won't see my trail for smoke when I get a gait on
+for God's country, my wad in my poke and the sunshine in my eyes.  Say!
+How'd a good juicy tenderloin strike you just now, green onions, fried
+potatoes, and fixin's on the side?  S'help me, that's the first
+proposition I'll hump myself up against.  Then a general whoop-la! for
+a week--Seattle or 'Frisco, I don't care a rap which, and then--"
+
+"Out of money and after a job."
+
+"Not on your family tree!" Bishop roared.  "Cache my sack before I go
+on the tear, sure pop, and then, afterwards, Southern California.
+Many's the day I've had my eye on a peach of a fruit farm down
+there--forty thousand'll buy it.  No more workin' for grub-stakes and
+the like.  Figured it out long; ago,--hired men to work the ranch, a
+manager to run it, and me ownin' the game and livin' off the
+percentage.  A stable with always a couple of bronchos handy; handy to
+slap the packs and saddles on and be off and away whenever the fever
+for chasin' pockets came over me.  Great pocket country down there, to
+the east and along the desert."
+
+"And no house on the ranch?"
+
+"Cert!  With sweet peas growin' up the sides, and in back a patch for
+vegetables--string-beans and spinach and radishes, cucumbers and
+'sparagrass, turnips, carrots, cabbage, and such.  And a woman inside
+to draw me back when I get to runnin' loco after the pockets.  Say, you
+know all about minin'.  Did you ever go snoozin' round after pockets?
+No?  Then just steer clear.  They're worse than whiskey, horses, or
+cards.  Women, when they come afterwards, ain't in it.  Whenever you
+get a hankerin' after pockets, go right off and get married.  It's the
+only thing'll save you; and even then, mebbe, it won't.  I ought 'a'
+done it years ago.  I might 'a' made something of myself if I had.
+Jerusalem! the jobs I've jumped and the good things chucked in my time,
+just because of pockets!  Say, Corliss, you want to get married, you
+do, and right off.  I'm tellin' you straight.  Take warnin' from me and
+don't stay single any longer than God'll let you, sure!"
+
+Corliss laughed.
+
+"Sure, I mean it.  I'm older'n you, and know what I'm talkin'.  Now
+there's a bit of a thing down in Dawson I'd like to see you get your
+hands on.  You was made for each other, both of you."
+
+Corliss was past the stage when he would have treated Bishop's meddling
+as an impertinence.  The trail, which turns men into the same blankets
+and makes them brothers, was the great leveller of distinctions, as he
+had come to learn.  So he flopped a flapjack and held his tongue.
+
+"Why don't you waltz in and win?" Del demanded, insistently.  "Don't
+you cotton to her?  I know you do, or you wouldn't come back to cabin,
+after bein' with her, a-walkin'-like on air.  Better waltz in while you
+got a chance.  Why, there was Emmy, a tidy bit of flesh as women go,
+and we took to each other on the jump.  But I kept a-chasin' pockets
+and chasin' pockets, and delayin'.  And then a big black lumberman, a
+Kanuck, began sidlin' up to her, and I made up my mind to speak--only I
+went off after one more pocket, just one more, and when I got back she
+was Mrs. Somebody Else.
+
+"So take warnin'.  There's that writer-guy, that skunk I poked outside
+the Opera House.  He's walkin' right in and gettin' thick; and here's
+you, just like me, a-racin' round all creation and lettin' matrimony
+slide.  Mark my words, Corliss!  Some fine frost you'll come slippin'
+into camp and find 'em housekeepin'.  Sure!  With nothin' left for you
+in life but pocketing!"
+
+The picture was so unpleasant that Corliss turned surly and ordered him
+to shut up.
+
+"Who?  Me?" Del asked so aggrievedly that Corliss laughed.
+
+"What would you do, then?" he asked.
+
+"Me?  In all kindness I'll tell you.  As soon as you get back you go
+and see her.  Make dates with her ahead till you got to put 'em on
+paper to remember 'em all.  Get a cinch on her spare time ahead so as
+to shut the other fellow out.  Don't get down in the dirt to
+her,--she's not that kind,--but don't be too high and mighty, neither.
+Just so-so--savve?  And then, some time when you see she's feelin'
+good, and smilin' at you in that way of hers, why up and call her hand.
+Of course I can't say what the showdown'll be.  That's for you to find
+out.  But don't hold off too long about it.  Better married early than
+never.  And if that writer-guy shoves in, poke him in the
+breadbasket--hard!  That'll settle him plenty.  Better still, take him
+off to one side and talk to him.  Tell'm you're a bad man, and that you
+staked that claim before he was dry behind the ears, and that if he
+comes nosin' around tryin' to file on it you'll beat his head off."
+
+Bishop got up, stretched, and went outside to feed the dogs.  "Don't
+forget to beat his head off," he called back.  "And if you're squeamish
+about it, just call on me.  I won't keep 'm waitin' long."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"Ah, the salt water, Miss Welse, the strong salt water and the big waves
+and the heavy boats for smooth or rough--that I know.  But the fresh
+water, and the little canoes, egg-shells, fairy bubbles; a big breath, a
+sigh, a heart-pulse too much, and pouf! over you go; not so, that I do
+not know."  Baron Courbertin smiled self-commiseratingly and went on.
+"But it is delightful, magnificent.  I have watched and envied.  Some day
+I shall learn."
+
+"It is not so difficult," St. Vincent interposed.  "Is it, Miss Welse?
+Just a sure and delicate poise of mind and body--"
+
+"Like the tight-rope dancer?"
+
+"Oh, you are incorrigible," Frona laughed.  "I feel certain that you know
+as much about canoes as we."
+
+"And you know?--a woman?"  Cosmopolitan as the Frenchman was, the
+independence and ability for doing of the Yankee women were a perpetual
+wonder to him.  "How?"
+
+"When I was a very little girl, at Dyea, among the Indians.  But next
+spring, after the river breaks, we'll give you your first lessons, Mr.
+St. Vincent and I.  So you see, you will return to civilization with
+accomplishments.  And you will surely love it."
+
+"Under such charming tutorship," he murmured, gallantly.  "But you, Mr.
+St. Vincent, do you think I shall be so successful that I may come to
+love it?  Do you love it?--you, who stand always in the background,
+sparing of speech, inscrutable, as though able but unwilling to speak
+from out the eternal wisdom of a vast experience."  The baron turned
+quickly to Frona.  "We are old friends, did I not tell you?  So I may,
+what you Americans call, _josh_ with him.  Is it not so, Mr. St.
+Vincent?"
+
+Gregory nodded, and Frona said, "I am sure you met at the ends of the
+earth somewhere."
+
+"Yokohama," St. Vincent cut in shortly; "eleven years ago, in
+cherry-blossom time.  But Baron Courbertin does me an injustice, which
+stings, unhappily, because it is not true.  I am afraid, when I get
+started, that I talk too much about myself."
+
+"A martyr to your friends," Frona conciliated.  "And such a teller of
+good tales that your friends cannot forbear imposing upon you."
+
+"Then tell us a canoe story," the baron begged.  "A good one!  A--what
+you Yankees call--a _hair-raiser_!"
+
+They drew up to Mrs. Schoville's fat wood-burning stove, and St.  Vincent
+told of the great whirlpool in the Box Canyon, of the terrible corkscrew
+in the mane of the White Horse Rapids, and of his cowardly comrade, who,
+walking around, had left him to go through alone--nine years before when
+the Yukon was virgin.
+
+Half an hour later Mrs. Schoville bustled in, with Corliss in her wake.
+
+"That hill!  The last of my breath!" she gasped, pulling off her mittens.
+"Never saw such luck!" she declared none the less vehemently the next
+moment.
+
+"This play will never come off!  I never shall be Mrs. Linden!  How can
+I?  Krogstad's gone on a stampede to Indian River, and no one knows when
+he'll be back!  Krogstad" (to Corliss) "is Mr. Maybrick, you know.  And
+Mrs. Alexander has the neuralgia and can't stir out.  So there's no
+rehearsal to-day, that's flat!"  She attitudinized dramatically: "'_Yes,
+in my first terror!  But a day has passed, and in that day I have seen
+incredible things in this house!  Helmer must know everything!  There
+must be an end to this unhappy secret!  O Krogstad, you need me, and I--I
+need you_,' and you are over on the Indian River making sour-dough bread,
+and I shall never see you more!"
+
+They clapped their applause.
+
+"My only reward for venturing out and keeping you all waiting was my
+meeting with this ridiculous fellow."  She shoved Corliss forward.  "Oh!
+you have not met!  Baron Courbertin, Mr. Corliss.  If you strike it rich,
+baron, I advise you to sell to Mr. Corliss.  He has the money-bags of
+Croesus, and will buy anything so long as the title is good.  And if you
+don't strike, sell anyway.  He's a professional philanthropist, you know.
+
+"But would you believe it!" (addressing the general group) "this
+ridiculous fellow kindly offered to see me up the hill and gossip along
+the way--gossip! though he refused point-blank to come in and watch the
+rehearsal.  But when he found there wasn't to be any, he changed about
+like a weather-vane.  So here he is, claiming to have been away to Miller
+Creek; but between ourselves there is no telling what dark deeds--"
+
+"Dark deeds!  Look!" Frona broke in, pointing to the tip of an amber
+mouth-piece which projected from Vance's outside breast-pocket.  "A pipe!
+My congratulations."
+
+She held out her hand and he shook good-humoredly.
+
+"All Del's fault," he laughed.  "When I go before the great white throne,
+it is he who shall stand forth and be responsible for that particular
+sin."
+
+"An improvement, nevertheless," she argued.  "All that is wanting is a
+good round swear-word now and again."
+
+"Oh, I assure you I am not unlearned," he retorted.  "No man can drive
+dogs else.  I can swear from hell to breakfast, by damn, and back again,
+if you will permit me, to the last link of perdition.  By the bones of
+Pharaoh and the blood of Judas, for instance, are fairly efficacious with
+a string of huskies; but the best of my dog-driving nomenclature, more's
+the pity, women cannot stand.  I promise you, however, in spite of hell
+and high water--"
+
+"Oh!  Oh!" Mrs. Schoville screamed, thrusting her fingers into her ears.
+
+"Madame," Baron Courbertin spoke up gravely, "it is a fact, a lamentable
+fact, that the dogs of the north are responsible for more men's souls
+than all other causes put together.  Is it not so?  I leave it to the
+gentlemen."
+
+Both Corliss and St. Vincent solemnly agreed, and proceeded to detonate
+the lady by swapping heart-rending and apposite dog tales.
+
+St. Vincent and the baron remained behind to take lunch with the Gold
+Commissioner's wife, leaving Frona and Corliss to go down the hill
+together.  Silently consenting, as though to prolong the descent, they
+swerved to the right, cutting transversely the myriad foot-paths and sled
+roads which led down into the town.  It was a mid-December day, clear and
+cold; and the hesitant high-noon sun, having laboriously dragged its pale
+orb up from behind the southern land-rim, balked at the great climb to
+the zenith, and began its shamefaced slide back beneath the earth.  Its
+oblique rays refracted from the floating frost particles till the air was
+filled with glittering jewel-dust--resplendent, blazing, flashing light
+and fire, but cold as outer space.
+
+They passed down through the scintillant, magical sheen, their moccasins
+rhythmically crunching the snow and their breaths wreathing mysteriously
+from their lips in sprayed opalescence.  Neither spoke, nor cared to
+speak, so wonderful was it all.  At their feet, under the great vault of
+heaven, a speck in the midst of the white vastness, huddled the golden
+city--puny and sordid, feebly protesting against immensity, man's
+challenge to the infinite!
+
+Calls of men and cries of encouragement came sharply to them from close
+at hand, and they halted.  There was an eager yelping, a scratching of
+feet, and a string of ice-rimed wolf-dogs, with hot-lolling tongues and
+dripping jaws, pulled up the slope and turned into the path ahead of
+them.  On the sled, a long and narrow box of rough-sawed spruce told the
+nature of the freight.  Two dog-drivers, a woman walking blindly, and a
+black-robed priest, made up the funeral cortege.  A few paces farther on
+the dogs were again put against the steep, and with whine and shout and
+clatter the unheeding clay was hauled on and upward to its ice-hewn
+hillside chamber.
+
+"A zone-conqueror," Frona broke voice.
+
+Corliss found his thought following hers, and answered, "These battlers
+of frost and fighters of hunger!  I can understand how the dominant races
+have come down out of the north to empire.  Strong to venture, strong to
+endure, with infinite faith and infinite patience, is it to be wondered
+at?"
+
+Frona glanced at him in eloquent silence.
+
+"'_We smote with our swords_,'" he chanted; "'_to me it was a joy like
+having my bright bride by me on the couch.'  'I have marched with my
+bloody sword, and the raven has followed me.  Furiously we fought; the
+fire passed over the dwellings of men; we slept in the blood of those who
+kept the gates_.'"
+
+"But do you feel it, Vance?" she cried, her hand flashing out and resting
+on his arm.
+
+"I begin to feel, I think.  The north has taught me, is teaching me.  The
+old thing's come back with new significance.  Yet I do not know.  It
+seems a tremendous egotism, a magnificent dream."
+
+"But you are not a negro or a Mongol, nor are you descended from the
+negro or Mongol."
+
+"Yes," he considered, "I am my father's son, and the line goes back to
+the sea-kings who never slept under the smoky rafters of a roof or
+drained the ale-horn by inhabited hearth.  There must be a reason for the
+dead-status of the black, a reason for the Teuton spreading over the
+earth as no other race has ever spread.  There must be something in race
+heredity, else I would not leap at the summons."
+
+"A great race, Vance.  Half of the earth its heritage, and all of the
+sea!  And in threescore generations it has achieved it all--think of it!
+threescore generations!--and to-day it reaches out wider-armed than ever.
+The smiter and the destroyer among nations! the builder and the
+law-giver!  Oh, Vance, my love is passionate, but God will forgive, for
+it is good.  A great race, greatly conceived; and if to perish, greatly
+to perish!  Don't you remember:
+
+"'_Trembles Yggdrasil's ash yet standing; groans that ancient tree, and
+the Jotun Loki is loosed.  The shadows groan on the ways of Hel, until
+the fire of Surt has consumed the tree.  Hrym steers from the east, the
+waters rise, the mundane snake is coiled in jotun-rage.  The worm heats
+the water, and the eagle screams; the pale of beak tears carcases; the
+ship Naglfar is loosed.  Surt from the south comes with flickering flame;
+shines from his sword the Val-god's sun_.'"
+
+Swaying there like a furred Valkyrie above the final carnage of men and
+gods, she touched his imagination, and the blood surged exultingly along
+unknown channels, thrilling and uplifting.
+
+"'_The stony hills are dashed together, the giantesses totter; men tread
+the path of Hel, and heaven is cloven.  The sun darkens, earth in ocean
+sinks, fall from heaven the bright stars, fire's breath assails the
+all-nourishing tree, towering fire plays against heaven itself_.'"
+
+Outlined against the blazing air, her brows and lashes white with frost,
+the jewel-dust striking and washing against hair and face, and the
+south-sun lighting her with a great redness, the man saw her as the
+genius of the race.  The traditions of the blood laid hold of him, and he
+felt strangely at one with the white-skinned, yellow-haired giants of the
+younger world.  And as he looked upon her the mighty past rose before
+him, and the caverns of his being resounded with the shock and tumult of
+forgotten battles.  With bellowing of storm-winds and crash of smoking
+North Sea waves, he saw the sharp-beaked fighting galleys, and the
+sea-flung Northmen, great-muscled, deep-chested, sprung from the
+elements, men of sword and sweep, marauders and scourgers of the warm
+south-lands!  The din of twenty centuries of battle was roaring in his
+ear, and the clamor for return to type strong upon him.  He seized her
+hands passionately.
+
+"Be the bright bride by me, Frona!  Be the bright bride by me on the
+couch!"
+
+She started and looked down at him, questioningly.  Then the import of it
+reached her and she involuntarily drew back.  The sun shot a last failing
+flicker across the earth and vanished.  The fire went out of the air, and
+the day darkened.  Far above, the hearse-dogs howled mournfully.
+
+"No," he interrupted, as words formed on her lips.  "Do not speak.  I
+know my answer, your answer . . .  now . . .  I was a fool . . .  Come,
+let us go down."
+
+It was not until they had left the mountain behind them, crossed the
+flat, and come out on the river by the saw-mill, that the bustle and
+skurry of human life made it seem possible for them to speak.  Corliss
+had walked with his eyes moodily bent to the ground; and Frona, with head
+erect and looking everywhere, stealing an occasional glance to his face.
+Where the road rose over the log run-way of the mill the footing was
+slippery, and catching at her to save her from falling, their eyes met.
+
+"I--I am grieved," she hesitated.  And then, in unconscious self-defence,
+"It was so . . .  I had not expected it--just then."
+
+"Else you would have prevented?" he asked, bitterly.
+
+"Yes.  I think I should have.  I did not wish to give you pain--"
+
+"Then you expected it, some time?"
+
+"And feared it.  But I had hoped . . .  I . . .  Vance, I did not come
+into the Klondike to get married.  I liked you at the beginning, and I
+have liked you more and more,--never so much as to-day,--but--"
+
+"But you had never looked upon me in the light of a possible
+husband--that is what you are trying to say."
+
+As he spoke, he looked at her side-wise, and sharply; and when her eyes
+met his with the same old frankness, the thought of losing her maddened
+him.
+
+"But I have," she answered at once.  "I have looked upon you in that
+light, but somehow it was not convincing.  Why, I do not know.  There was
+so much I found to like in you, so much--"
+
+He tried to stop her with a dissenting gesture, but she went on.
+
+"So much to admire.  There was all the warmth of friendship, and closer
+friendship,--a growing _camaraderie_, in fact; but nothing more.  Though
+I did not wish more, I should have welcomed it had it come."
+
+"As one welcomes the unwelcome guest."
+
+"Why won't you help me, Vance, instead of making it harder?  It is hard
+on you, surely, but do you imagine that I am enjoying it?  I feel because
+of your pain, and, further, I know when I refuse a dear friend for a
+lover the dear friend goes from me.  I do not part with friends lightly."
+
+"I see; doubly bankrupt; friend and lover both.  But they are easily
+replaced.  I fancy I was half lost before I spoke.  Had I remained
+silent, it would have been the same anyway.  Time softens; new
+associations, new thoughts and faces; men with marvellous adventures--"
+
+She stopped him abruptly.
+
+"It is useless, Vance, no matter what you may say.  I shall not quarrel
+with you.  I can understand how you feel--"
+
+"If I am quarrelsome, then I had better leave you."  He halted suddenly,
+and she stood beside him.  "Here comes Dave Harney.  He will see you
+home.  It's only a step."
+
+"You are doing neither yourself nor me kindness."  She spoke with final
+firmness.  "I decline to consider this the end.  We are too close to it
+to understand it fairly.  You must come and see me when we are both
+calmer.  I refuse to be treated in this fashion.  It is childish of you."
+She shot a hasty glance at the approaching Eldorado king.  "I do not
+think I deserve it at your hands.  I refuse to lose you as a friend.  And
+I insist that you come and see me, that things remain on the old footing."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Hello!" Dave Harney touched his cap and slowed down loose-jointedly.
+"Sorry you didn't take my tip?  Dogs gone up a dollar a pound since
+yesterday, and still a-whoopin'.  Good-afternoon, Miss Frona, and Mr.
+Corliss.  Goin' my way?"
+
+"Miss Welse is."  Corliss touched the visor of his cap and half-turned on
+his heel.
+
+"Where're you off to?" Dave demanded.
+
+"Got an appointment," he lied.
+
+"Remember," Frona called to him, "you must come and see me."
+
+"Too busy, I'm afraid, just now.  Good-by.  So long, Dave."
+
+"Jemimy!" Dave remarked, staring after him; "but he's a hustler.  Always
+busy--with big things, too.  Wonder why he didn't go in for dogs?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+But Corliss did go back to see her, and before the day was out.  A
+little bitter self-communion had not taken long to show him his
+childishness.  The sting of loss was hard enough, but the thought, now
+they could be nothing to each other, that her last impressions of him
+should be bad, hurt almost as much, and in a way, even more.  And
+further, putting all to the side, he was really ashamed.  He had
+thought that he could have taken such a disappointment more manfully,
+especially since in advance he had not been at all sure of his footing.
+
+So he called upon her, walked with her up to the Barracks, and on the
+way, with her help, managed to soften the awkwardness which the morning
+had left between them.  He talked reasonably and meekly, which she
+countenanced, and would have apologized roundly had she not prevented
+him.
+
+"Not the slightest bit of blame attaches to you," she said.  "Had I
+been in your place, I should probably have done the same and behaved
+much more outrageously.  For you were outrageous, you know."
+
+"But had you been in my place, and I in yours," he answered, with a
+weak attempt at humor, "there would have been no need."
+
+She smiled, glad that he was feeling less strongly about it.
+
+"But, unhappily, our social wisdom does not permit such a reversal," he
+added, more with a desire to be saying something.
+
+"Ah!" she laughed.  "There's where my Jesuitism comes in.  I can rise
+above our social wisdom."
+
+"You don't mean to say,--that--?"
+
+"There, shocked as usual!  No, I could not be so crude as to speak
+outright, but I might _finesse_, as you whist-players say.  Accomplish
+the same end, only with greater delicacy.  After all, a distinction
+without a difference."
+
+"Could you?" he asked.
+
+"I know I could,--if the occasion demanded.  I am not one to let what I
+might deem life-happiness slip from me without a struggle.  That"
+(judicially) "occurs only in books and among sentimentalists.  As my
+father always says, I belong to the strugglers and fighters.  That
+which appeared to me great and sacred, that would I battle for, though
+I brought heaven tumbling about my ears."
+
+"You have made me very happy, Vance," she said at parting by the
+Barracks gates.  "And things shall go along in the same old way.  And
+mind, not a bit less of you than formerly; but, rather, much more."
+
+
+But Corliss, after several perfunctory visits, forgot the way which led
+to Jacob Welse's home, and applied himself savagely to his work.  He
+even had the hypocrisy, at times, to felicitate himself upon his
+escape, and to draw bleak fireside pictures of the dismal future which
+would have been had he and Frona incompatibly mated.  But this was only
+at times.  As a rule, the thought of her made him hungry, in a way akin
+to physical hunger; and the one thing he found to overcome it was hard
+work and plenty of it.  But even then, what of trail and creek, and
+camp and survey, he could only get away from her in his waking hours.
+In his sleep he was ignobly conquered, and Del Bishop, who was with him
+much, studied his restlessness and gave a ready ear to his mumbled
+words.
+
+The pocket-miner put two and two together, and made a correct induction
+from the different little things which came under his notice.  But this
+did not require any great astuteness.  The simple fact that he no
+longer called on Frona was sufficient evidence of an unprospering suit.
+But Del went a step farther, and drew the corollary that St. Vincent
+was the cause of it all.  Several times he had seen the correspondent
+with Frona, going one place and another, and was duly incensed thereat.
+
+"I'll fix 'm yet!" he muttered in camp one evening, over on Gold Bottom.
+
+"Whom?" Corliss queried.
+
+"Who?  That newspaper man, that's who!"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Aw--general principles.  Why'n't you let me paste 'm that night at the
+Opera House?"
+
+Corliss laughed at the recollection.  "Why did you strike him, Del?"
+
+"General principles," Del snapped back and shut up.
+
+But Del Bishop, for all his punitive spirit, did not neglect the main
+chance, and on the return trip, when they came to the forks of Eldorado
+and Bonanza, he called a halt.
+
+"Say, Corliss," he began at once, "d'you know what a hunch is?"  His
+employer nodded his comprehension.  "Well, I've got one.  I ain't never
+asked favors of you before, but this once I want you to lay over here
+till to-morrow.  Seems to me my fruit ranch is 'most in sight.  I can
+damn near smell the oranges a-ripenin'."
+
+"Certainly," Corliss agreed.  "But better still, I'll run on down to
+Dawson, and you can come in when you've finished hunching."
+
+"Say!" Del objected.  "I said it was a hunch; and I want to ring you in
+on it, savve?  You're all right, and you've learned a hell of a lot out
+of books.  You're a regular high-roller when it comes to the
+laboratory, and all that; but it takes yours truly to get down and read
+the face of nature without spectacles.  Now I've got a theory--"
+
+Corliss threw up his hands in affected dismay, and the pocket-miner
+began to grow angry.
+
+"That's right!  Laugh!  But it's built right up on your own pet theory
+of erosion and changed riverbeds.  And I didn't pocket among the
+Mexicans two years for nothin'.  Where d'you s'pose this Eldorado gold
+came from?--rough, and no signs of washin'?  Eh?  There's where you
+need your spectacles.  Books have made you short-sighted.  But never
+mind how.  'Tisn't exactly pockets, neither, but I know what I'm
+spelling about.  I ain't been keepin' tab on traces for my health.  I
+can tell you mining sharps more about the lay of Eldorado Creek in one
+minute than you could figure out in a month of Sundays.  But never
+mind, no offence.  You lay over with me till to-morrow, and you can buy
+a ranch 'longside of mine, sure." "Well, all right.  I can rest up and
+look over my notes while you're hunting your ancient river-bed."
+
+"Didn't I tell you it was a hunch?" Del reproachfully demanded.
+
+"And haven't I agreed to stop over?  What more do you want?"
+
+"To give you a fruit ranch, that's what!  Just to go with me and nose
+round a bit, that's all."
+
+"I do not want any of your impossible fruit ranches.  I'm tired and
+worried; can't you leave me alone?  I think I am more than fair when I
+humor you to the extent of stopping over.  You may waste your time
+nosing around, but I shall stay in camp.  Understand?"
+
+"Burn my body, but you're grateful!  By the Jumpin' Methuselah, I'll
+quit my job in two minutes if you don't fire me.  Me a-layin' 'wake
+nights and workin' up my theory, and calculatin' on lettin' you in, and
+you a-snorin' and Frona-this and Frona-that--"
+
+"That'll do!  Stop it!"
+
+"The hell it will!  If I didn't know more about gold-mining than you do
+about courtin'--"
+
+Corliss sprang at him, but Del dodged to one side and put up his fists.
+Then he ducked a wild right and left swing and side-stepped his way
+into firmer footing on the hard trail.
+
+"Hold on a moment," he cried, as Corliss made to come at him again.
+"Just a second.  If I lick you, will you come up the hillside with me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And if I don't, you can fire me.  That's fair.  Come on."
+
+Vance had no show whatever, as Del well knew, who played with him,
+feinting, attacking, retreating, dazzling, and disappearing every now
+and again out of his field of vision in a most exasperating way.  As
+Vance speedily discovered, he possessed very little correlation between
+mind and body, and the next thing he discovered was that he was lying
+in the snow and slowly coming back to his senses.
+
+"How--how did you do it?" he stammered to the pocket-miner, who had his
+head on his knee and was rubbing his forehead with snow.
+
+"Oh, you'll do!" Del laughed, helping him limply to his feet.  "You're
+the right stuff.  I'll show you some time.  You've got lots to learn
+yet what you won't find in books.  But not now.  We've got to wade in
+and make camp, then you're comin' up the hill with me."
+
+"Hee! hee!" he chuckled later, as they fitted the pipe of the Yukon
+stove.  "Slow sighted and short.  Couldn't follow me, eh?  But I'll
+show you some time, oh, I'll show you all right, all right!"
+
+"Grab an axe an' come on," he commanded when the camp was completed.
+
+He led the way up Eldorado, borrowed a pick, shovel, and pan at a
+cabin, and headed up among the benches near the mouth of French Creek.
+Vance, though feeling somewhat sore, was laughing at himself by this
+time and enjoying the situation.  He exaggerated the humility with
+which he walked at the heel of his conqueror, while the extravagant
+servility which marked his obedience to his hired man made that
+individual grin.
+
+"You'll do.  You've got the makin's in you!"  Del threw down the tools
+and scanned the run of the snow-surface carefully.  "Here, take the
+axe, shinny up the hill, and lug me down some _skookum_ dry wood."
+
+By the time Corliss returned with the last load of wood, the
+pocket-miner had cleared away the snow and moss in divers spots, and
+formed, in general design, a rude cross.
+
+"Cuttin' her both ways," he explained.  "Mebbe I'll hit her here, or
+over there, or up above; but if there's anything in the hunch, this is
+the place.  Bedrock dips in above, and it's deep there and most likely
+richer, but too much work.  This is the rim of the bench.  Can't be
+more'n a couple of feet down.  All we want is indications; afterwards
+we can tap in from the side."
+
+As he talked, he started fires here and there on the uncovered spaces.
+"But look here, Corliss, I want you to mind this ain't pocketin'.  This
+is just plain ordinary 'prentice work; but pocketin'"--he straightened
+up his back and spoke reverently--"but pocketin' is the deepest science
+and the finest art.  Delicate to a hair's-breadth, hand and eye true
+and steady as steel.  When you've got to burn your pan blue-black twice
+a day, and out of a shovelful of gravel wash down to the one wee speck
+of flour gold,--why, that's washin', that's what it is.  Tell you what,
+I'd sooner follow a pocket than eat."
+
+"And you would sooner fight than do either."  Bishop stopped to
+consider.   He weighed himself with care equal to that of retaining the
+one wee speck of flour gold.  "No, I wouldn't, neither.  I'd take
+pocketin' in mine every time.  It's as bad as dope; Corliss, sure.  If
+it once gets a-hold of you, you're a goner.  You'll never shake it.
+Look at me!  And talk about pipe-dreams; they can't burn a candle
+'longside of it."
+
+He walked over and kicked one of the fires apart.  Then he lifted the
+pick, and the steel point drove in and stopped with a metallic clang,
+as though brought up by solid cement.
+
+"Ain't thawed two inches," he muttered, stooping down and groping with
+his fingers in the wet muck.  The blades of last year's grass had been
+burned away, but he managed to gather up and tear away a handful of the
+roots.
+
+"Hell!"
+
+"What's the matter?" Corliss asked.
+
+"Hell!" he repeated in a passionless way, knocking the dirt-covered
+roots against the pan.
+
+Corliss went over and stooped to closer inspection.  "Hold on!" he
+cried, picking up two or three grimy bits of dirt and rubbing them with
+his fingers.  A bright yellow flashed forth.
+
+"Hell!" the pocket-miner reiterated tonelessly.  "First rattle out the
+box.  Begins at the grass roots and goes all the way down."
+
+Head turned to the side and up, eyes closed, nostrils distended and
+quivering, he rose suddenly to his feet and sniffed the air.  Corliss
+looked up wonderingly.
+
+"Huh!" the pocket-miner grunted.  Then he drew a deep breath.  "Can't
+you smell them oranges?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+The stampede to French Hill was on by the beginning of Christmas week.
+Corliss and Bishop had been in no hurry to record for they looked the
+ground over carefully before blazing their stakes, and let a few close
+friends into the secret,--Harney, Welse, Trethaway, a Dutch _chechaquo_
+who had forfeited both feet to the frost, a couple of the mounted
+police, an old pal with whom Del had prospected through the Black Hills
+Country, the washerwoman at the Forks, and last, and notably, Lucile.
+Corliss was responsible for her getting in on the lay, and he drove and
+marked her stakes himself, though it fell to the colonel to deliver the
+invitation to her to come and be rich.
+
+In accordance with the custom of the country, those thus benefited
+offered to sign over half-interests to the two discoverers.  Corliss
+would not tolerate the proposition.  Del was similarly minded, though
+swayed by no ethical reasons.  He had enough as it stood.  "Got my
+fruit ranch paid for, double the size I was calculatin' on," he
+explained; "and if I had any more, I wouldn't know what to do with it,
+sure."
+
+After the strike, Corliss took it upon himself as a matter of course to
+look about for another man; but when he brought a keen-eyed Californian
+into camp, Del was duly wroth.
+
+"Not on your life," he stormed.
+
+"But you are rich now," Vance answered, "and have no need to work."
+
+"Rich, hell!" the pocket-miner rejoined.  "Accordin' to covenant, you
+can't fire me; and I'm goin' to hold the job down as long as my sweet
+will'll let me.  Savve?"
+
+On Friday morning, early, all interested parties appeared before the
+Gold Commissioner to record their claims.  The news went abroad
+immediately.  In five minutes the first stampeders were hitting the
+trail.  At the end of half an hour the town was afoot.  To prevent
+mistakes on their property,--jumping, moving of stakes, and mutilation
+of notices,--Vance and Del, after promptly recording, started to
+return.  But with the government seal attached to their holdings, they
+took it leisurely, the stampeders sliding past them in a steady stream.
+Midway, Del chanced to look behind.  St. Vincent was in sight, footing
+it at a lively pace, the regulation stampeding pack on his shoulders.
+The trail made a sharp bend at that place, and with the exception of
+the three of them no one was in sight.
+
+"Don't speak to me.  Don't recognize me," Del cautioned sharply, as he
+spoke, buttoning his nose-strap across his face, which served to quite
+hide his identity.  "There's a water-hole over there.  Get down on your
+belly and make a blind at gettin' a drink.  Then go on by your lonely
+to the claims; I've business of my own to handle.  And for the love of
+your bother don't say a word to me or to the skunk.  Don't let 'm see
+your face."
+
+Corliss obeyed wonderingly, stepping aside from the beaten path, lying
+down in the snow, and dipping into the water-hole with an empty
+condensed milk-can.  Bishop bent on one knee and stooped as though
+fastening his moccasin.  Just as St. Vincent came up with him he
+finished tying the knot, and started forward with the feverish haste of
+a man trying to make up for lost time.
+
+"I say, hold on, my man," the correspondent called out to him.
+
+Bishop shot a hurried glance at him and pressed on.  St. Vincent broke
+into a run till they were side by side again.
+
+"Is this the way--"
+
+"To the benches of French Hill?" Del snapped him short.  "Betcher your
+life.  That's the way I'm headin'.  So long."
+
+He ploughed forward at a tremendous rate, and the correspondent,
+half-running, swung in behind with the evident intention of taking the
+pace.  Corliss, still in the dark, lifted his head and watched them go;
+but when he saw the pocket-miner swerve abruptly to the right and take
+the trail up Adams Creek, the light dawned upon him and he laughed
+softly to himself.
+
+Late that night Del arrived in camp on Eldorado exhausted but jubilant.
+
+"Didn't do a thing to him," he cried before he was half inside the
+tent-flaps.  "Gimme a bite to eat" (grabbing at the teapot and running
+a hot flood down his throat),--"cookin'-fat, slush, old moccasins,
+candle-ends, anything!"
+
+Then he collapsed upon the blankets and fell to rubbing his stiff
+leg-muscles while Corliss fried bacon and dished up the beans.
+
+"What about 'm?" he exulted between mouthfuls.  "Well, you can stack
+your chips that he didn't get in on the French Hill benches.  _How far
+is it, my man_?" (in the well-mimicked, patronizing tones of St.
+Vincent).  "_How far is it_?" with the patronage left out.  "_How far
+to French Hill_?" weakly.  "_How far do you think it is_?" very weakly,
+with a tremolo which hinted of repressed tears.  "_How far_--"
+
+The pocket-miner burst into roars of laughter, which were choked by a
+misdirected flood of tea, and which left him coughing and speechless.
+
+"Where'd I leave 'm?" when he had recovered.  "Over on the divide to
+Indian River, winded, plum-beaten, done for.  Just about able to crawl
+into the nearest camp, and that's about all.  I've covered fifty stiff
+miles myself, so here's for bed.  Good-night.  Don't call me in the
+mornin'."
+
+He turned into the blankets all-standing, and as he dozed off Vance
+could hear him muttering, "_How far is it, my man_?  _I say, how far is
+it_?"
+
+
+Regarding Lucile, Corliss was disappointed.  "I confess I cannot
+understand her," he said to Colonel Trethaway.  "I thought her bench
+claim would make her independent of the Opera House."
+
+"You can't get a dump out in a day," the colonel interposed.
+
+"But you can mortgage the dirt in the ground when it prospects as hers
+does.  Yet I took that into consideration, and offered to advance her a
+few thousand, non-interest bearing, and she declined.  Said she didn't
+need it,--in fact, was really grateful; thanked me, and said that any
+time I was short to come and see her."
+
+Trethaway smiled and played with his watch-chain.  "What would you?
+Life, even here, certainly means more to you and me than a bit of grub,
+a piece of blanket, and a Yukon stove.  She is as gregarious as the
+rest of us, and probably a little more so.  Suppose you cut her off
+from the Opera House,--what then?  May she go up to the Barracks and
+consort with the captain's lady, make social calls on Mrs. Schoville,
+or chum with Frona?  Don't you see?  Will you escort her, in daylight,
+down the public street?"
+
+"Will you?" Vance demanded.
+
+"Ay," the colonel replied, unhesitatingly, "and with pleasure."
+
+"And so will I; but--"  He paused and gazed gloomily into the fire.
+"But see how she is going on with St. Vincent.  As thick as thieves
+they are, and always together."
+
+"Puzzles me," Trethaway admitted.  "I can grasp St. Vincent's side of
+it.  Many irons in the fire, and Lucile owns a bench claim on the
+second tier of French Hill.  Mark me, Corliss, we can tell infallibly
+the day that Frona consents to go to his bed and board,--if she ever
+does consent."
+
+"And that will be?"
+
+"The day St. Vincent breaks with Lucile."
+
+Corliss pondered, and the colonel went on.
+
+"But I can't grasp Lucile's side of it.  What she can see in St.
+Vincent--"
+
+"Her taste is no worse than--than that of the rest of the women," Vance
+broke in hotly.  "I am sure that--"
+
+"Frona could not display poor taste, eh?"  Corliss turned on his heel
+and walked out, and left Colonel Trethaway smiling grimly.
+
+Vance Corliss never knew how many people, directly and indirectly, had
+his cause at heart that Christmas week.  Two men strove in particular,
+one for him and one for the sake of Frona.  Pete Whipple, an old-timer
+in the land, possessed an Eldorado claim directly beneath French Hill,
+also a woman of the country for a wife,--a swarthy _breed_, not over
+pretty, whose Indian mother had mated with a Russian fur-trader some
+thirty years before at Kutlik on the Great Delta.  Bishop went down one
+Sunday morning to yarn away an hour or so with Whipple, but found the
+wife alone in the cabin.  She talked a bastard English gibberish which
+was an anguish to hear, so the pocket-miner resolved to smoke a pipe
+and depart without rudeness.  But he got her tongue wagging, and to
+such an extent that he stopped and smoked many pipes, and whenever she
+lagged, urged her on again.  He grunted and chuckled and swore in
+undertones while he listened, punctuating her narrative regularly with
+_hells_! which adequately expressed the many shades of interest he felt.
+
+In the midst of it, the woman fished an ancient leather-bound volume,
+all scarred and marred, from the bottom of a dilapidated chest, and
+thereafter it lay on the table between them.  Though it remained
+unopened, she constantly referred to it by look and gesture, and each
+time she did so a greedy light blazed in Bishop's eyes.  At the end,
+when she could say no more and had repeated herself from two to half a
+dozen times, he pulled out his sack.  Mrs. Whipple set up the gold
+scales and placed the weights, which he counterbalanced with a hundred
+dollars' worth of dust.  Then he departed up the hill to the tent,
+hugging the purchase closely, and broke in on Corliss, who sat in the
+blankets mending moccasins.
+
+"I'll fix 'm yet," Del remarked casually, at the same time patting the
+book and throwing it down on the bed.
+
+Corliss looked up inquiringly and opened it.  The paper was yellow with
+age and rotten from the weather-wear of trail, while the text was
+printed in Russian.  "I didn't know you were a Russian scholar, Del,"
+he quizzed.  "But I can't read a line of it."
+
+"Neither can I, more's the pity; nor does Whipple's woman savve the
+lingo.  I got it from her.  But her old man--he was full Russian, you
+know--he used to read it aloud to her.  But she knows what she knows
+and what her old man knew, and so do I."
+
+"And what do the three of you know?"
+
+"Oh, that's tellin'," Bishop answered, coyly.  "But you wait and watch
+my smoke, and when you see it risin', you'll know, too."
+
+
+Matt McCarthy came in over the ice Christmas week, summed up the
+situation so far as Frona and St. Vincent were concerned, and did not
+like it.  Dave Harney furnished him with full information, to which he
+added that obtained from Lucile, with whom he was on good terms.
+Perhaps it was because he received the full benefit of the sum of their
+prejudice; but no matter how, he at any rate answered roll-call with
+those who looked upon the correspondent with disfavor.  It was
+impossible for them to tell why they did not approve of the man, but
+somehow St. Vincent was never much of a success with men.  This, in
+turn, might have been due to the fact that he shone so resplendently
+with women as to cast his fellows in eclipse; for otherwise, in his
+intercourse with men, he was all that a man could wish.  There was
+nothing domineering or over-riding about him, while he manifested a
+good fellowship at least equal to their own.
+
+Yet, having withheld his judgment after listening to Lucile and Harney,
+Matt McCarthy speedily reached a verdict upon spending an hour with St.
+Vincent at Jacob Welse's,--and this in face of the fact that what
+Lucile had said had been invalidated by Matt's learning of her intimacy
+with the man in question.  Strong of friendship, quick of heart and
+hand, Matt did not let the grass grow under his feet.  "'Tis I'll be
+takin' a social fling meself, as befits a mimber iv the noble Eldorado
+Dynasty," he explained, and went up the hill to a whist party in Dave
+Harney's cabin.  To himself he added, "An' belike, if Satan takes his
+eye off his own, I'll put it to that young cub iv his."
+
+But more than once during the evening he discovered himself challenging
+his own judgment.  Probe as he would with his innocent wit, Matt found
+himself baffled.  St. Vincent certainly rang true.  Simple,
+light-hearted, unaffected, joking and being joked in all good-nature,
+thoroughly democratic.  Matt failed to catch the faintest echo of
+insincerity.
+
+"May the dogs walk on me grave," he communed with himself while
+studying a hand which suffered from a plethora of trumps.  "Is it the
+years are tellin', puttin' the frost in me veins and chillin' the
+blood?  A likely lad, an' is it for me to misjudge because his is
+a-takin' way with the ladies?  Just because the swate creatures smile
+on the lad an' flutter warm at the sight iv him?  Bright eyes and brave
+men!  'Tis the way they have iv lovin' valor.  They're shuddered an'
+shocked at the cruel an' bloody dades iv war, yet who so quick do they
+lose their hearts to as the brave butcher-bye iv a sodger?  Why not?
+The lad's done brave things, and the girls give him the warm soft
+smile.  Small reason, that, for me to be callin' him the devil's own
+cub.  Out upon ye, Matt McCarthy, for a crusty old sour-dough, with
+vitals frozen an' summer gone from yer heart!  'Tis an ossification
+ye've become!  But bide a wee, Matt, bide a wee," he supplemented.
+"Wait till ye've felt the fale iv his flesh."
+
+
+The opportunity came shortly, when St. Vincent, with Frona opposite,
+swept in the full thirteen tricks.
+
+"A rampse!" Matt cried.  "Vincent, me lad, a rampse!  Yer hand on it,
+me brave!"
+
+It was a stout grip, neither warm nor clammy, but Matt shook his head
+dubiously.  "What's the good iv botherin'?" he muttered to himself as
+he shuffled the cards for the next deal.  "Ye old fool!  Find out first
+how Frona darlin' stands, an' if it's pat she is, thin 'tis time for
+doin'."
+
+"Oh, McCarthy's all hunky," Dave Harney assured them later on, coming
+to the rescue of St. Vincent, who was getting the rough side of the
+Irishman's wit.  The evening was over and the company was putting on
+its wraps and mittens.  "Didn't tell you 'bout his visit to the
+cathedral, did he, when he was on the Outside?  Well, it was suthin'
+like this, ez he was explainin' it to me.  He went to the cathedral
+durin' service, an' took in the priests and choir-boys in their
+surplices,--_parkas_, he called 'em,--an' watched the burnin' of the
+holy incense.  'An' do ye know, Dave, he sez to me, 'they got in an'
+made a smudge, and there wa'n't a darned mosquito in sight.'"
+
+"True, ivery word iv it."  Matt unblushingly fathered Harney's yarn.
+"An' did ye niver hear tell iv the time Dave an' me got drunk on
+condensed milk?"
+
+"Oh!  Horrors!" cried Mrs. Schoville.  "But how?  Do tell us."
+
+"'Twas durin' the time iv the candle famine at Forty Mile.  Cold snap
+on, an' Dave slides into me shack to pass the time o' day, and glues
+his eyes on me case iv condensed milk.  'How'd ye like a sip iv Moran's
+good whiskey?' he sez, eyin' the case iv milk the while.  I confiss me
+mouth went wet at the naked thought iv it.  'But what's the use iv
+likin'?' sez I, with me sack bulgin' with emptiness.'  'Candles worth
+tin dollars the dozen,' sez he, 'a dollar apiece.  Will ye give six
+cans iv milk for a bottle iv the old stuff?'  'How'll ye do it?' sez I.
+'Trust me,' sez he.  'Give me the cans.  'Tis cold out iv doors, an'
+I've a pair iv candle-moulds.'
+
+"An' it's the sacred truth I'm tellin' ye all, an' if ye run across
+Bill Moran he'll back me word; for what does Dave Harney do but lug off
+me six cans, freeze the milk into his candle-moulds, an' trade them in
+to bill Moran for a bottle iv tanglefoot!"
+
+As soon as he could be heard through the laughter, Harney raised his
+voice.  "It's true, as McCarthy tells, but he's only told you the half.
+Can't you guess the rest, Matt?"
+
+Matt shook his head.
+
+"Bein' short on milk myself, an' not over much sugar, I doctored three
+of your cans with water, which went to make the candles.  An' by the
+bye, I had milk in my coffee for a month to come."
+
+"It's on me, Dave," McCarthy admitted.  "'Tis only that yer me host, or
+I'd be shockin' the ladies with yer nortorious disgraces.  But I'll
+lave ye live this time, Dave.  Come, spade the partin' guests; we must
+be movin'."
+
+"No ye don't, ye young laddy-buck," he interposed, as St. Vincent
+started to take Frona down the hill, "'Tis her foster-daddy sees her
+home this night."
+
+McCarthy laughed in his silent way and offered his arm to Frona, while
+St. Vincent joined in the laugh against himself, dropped back, and
+joined Miss Mortimer and Baron Courbertin.
+
+"What's this I'm hearin' about you an' Vincent?" Matt bluntly asked as
+soon as they had drawn apart from the others.
+
+He looked at her with his keen gray eyes, but she returned the look
+quite as keenly.
+
+"How should I know what you have been hearing?" she countered.
+
+"Whin the talk goes round iv a maid an' a man, the one pretty an' the
+other not unhandsome, both young an' neither married, does it 'token
+aught but the one thing?"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"An' the one thing the greatest thing in all the world."
+
+"Well?" Frona was the least bit angry, and did not feel inclined to
+help him.
+
+"Marriage, iv course," he blurted out.  "'Tis said it looks that way
+with the pair of ye."
+
+"But is it said that it _is_ that way?"
+
+"Isn't the looks iv it enough ?" he demanded.
+
+"No; and you are old enough to know better.  Mr. St. Vincent and I--we
+enjoy each other as friends, that is all.  But suppose it is as you
+say, what of it?"
+
+"Well," McCarthy deliberated, "there's other talk goes round,  'Tis
+said Vincent is over-thick with a jade down in the town--Lucile, they
+speak iv her."
+
+"All of which signifies?"
+
+She waited, and McCarthy watched her dumbly.
+
+"I know Lucile, and I like her," Frona continued, filling the gap of
+his silence, and ostentatiously manoeuvring to help him on.  "Do you
+know her?  Don't you like her?"
+
+Matt started to speak, cleared his throat, and halted.  At last, in
+desperation, he blurted out, "For two cents, Frona, I'd lay ye acrost
+me knee."
+
+She laughed.  "You don't dare.  I'm not running barelegged at Dyea."
+
+"Now don't be tasin'," he blarneyed.
+
+"I'm not teasing.  Don't you like her?--Lucile?"
+
+"An' what iv it?" he challenged, brazenly.
+
+"Just what I asked,--what of it?"
+
+"Thin I'll tell ye in plain words from a man old enough to be yer
+father.  'Tis undacent, damnably undacent, for a man to kape company
+with a good young girl--"
+
+"Thank you," she laughed, dropping a courtesy.  Then she added, half in
+bitterness, "There have been others who--"
+
+"Name me the man!" he cried hotly.
+
+"There, there, go on.  You were saying?"
+
+"That it's a crying shame for a man to kape company with--with you, an'
+at the same time be chake by jowl with a woman iv her stamp."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"To come drippin' from the muck to dirty yer claneness!  An' ye can ask
+why?"
+
+"But wait, Matt, wait a moment.  Granting your premises--"
+
+"Little I know iv primises," he growled.  "'Tis facts I'm dalin' with."
+
+Frona bit her lip.  "Never mind.  Have it as you will; but let me go on
+and I will deal with facts, too.  When did you last see Lucile?"
+
+"An' why are ye askin'?" he demanded, suspiciously.
+
+"Never mind why.  The fact."
+
+"Well, thin, the fore part iv last night, an' much good may it do ye."
+
+"And danced with her?"
+
+"A rollickin' Virginia reel, an' not sayin' a word iv a quadrille or
+so.  Tis at square dances I excel meself."
+
+Frona walked on in a simulated brown study, no sound going up from the
+twain save the complaint of the snow from under their moccasins.
+
+"Well, thin?" he questioned, uneasily.
+
+"An' what iv it?" he insisted after another silence.
+
+"Oh, nothing," she answered.  "I was just wondering which was the
+muckiest, Mr. St. Vincent or you--or myself, with whom you have both
+been cheek by jowl."
+
+Now, McCarthy was unversed in the virtues of social wisdom, and, though
+he felt somehow the error of her position, he could not put it into
+definite thought; so he steered wisely, if weakly, out of danger.
+
+"It's gettin' mad ye are with yer old Matt," he insinuated, "who has
+yer own good at heart, an' because iv it makes a fool iv himself."
+
+"No, I'm not."
+
+"But ye are."
+
+"There!" leaning swiftly to him and kissing him.  "How could I remember
+the Dyea days and be angry?"
+
+"Ah, Frona darlin', well may ye say it.  I'm the dust iv the dirt under
+yer feet, an' ye may walk on me--anything save get mad.  I cud die for
+ye, swing for ye, to make ye happy.  I cud kill the man that gave ye
+sorrow, were it but a thimbleful, an' go plump into hell with a smile
+on me face an' joy in me heart."
+
+They had halted before her door, and she pressed his arm gratefully.
+"I am not angry, Matt.  But with the exception of my father you are the
+only person I would have permitted to talk to me about this--this
+affair in the way you have.  And though I like you, Matt, love you
+better than ever, I shall nevertheless be very angry if you mention it
+again.  You have no right.  It is something that concerns me alone.
+And it is wrong of you--"
+
+"To prevint ye walkin' blind into danger?"
+
+"If you wish to put it that way, yes."
+
+He growled deep down in his throat.
+
+"What is it you are saying?" she asked.
+
+"That ye may shut me mouth, but that ye can't bind me arm."
+
+"But you mustn't, Matt, dear, you mustn't."
+
+Again he answered with a subterranean murmur.
+
+"And I want you to promise me, now, that you will not interfere in my
+life that way, by word or deed."
+
+"I'll not promise."
+
+"But you must."
+
+"I'll not.  Further, it's gettin' cold on the stoop, an' ye'll be
+frostin' yer toes, the pink little toes I fished splinters out iv at
+Dyea.  So it's in with ye, Frona girl, an' good-night."
+
+He thrust her inside and departed.  When he reached the corner he
+stopped suddenly and regarded his shadow on the snow.  "Matt McCarthy,
+yer a damned fool!  Who iver heard iv a Welse not knowin' their own
+mind?  As though ye'd niver had dalin's with the stiff-necked breed, ye
+calamitous son iv misfortune!"
+
+Then he went his way, still growling deeply, and at every growl the
+curious wolf-dog at his heels bristled and bared its fangs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+"Tired?"
+
+Jacob Welse put both hands on Frona's shoulders, and his eyes spoke the
+love his stiff tongue could not compass.  The tree and the excitement
+and the pleasure were over with, a score or so of children had gone
+home frostily happy across the snow, the last guest had departed, and
+Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were blending into one.
+
+She returned his fondness with glad-eyed interest, and they dropped
+into huge comfortable chairs on either side the fireplace, in which the
+back-log was falling to ruddy ruin.
+
+"And this time next year?"  He put the question seemingly to the
+glowing log, and, as if in ominous foreshadow, it flared brightly and
+crumbled away in a burst of sparks.
+
+"It is marvellous," he went on, dismissing the future in an effort to
+shake himself into a wholesomer frame of mind.  "It has been one long
+continuous miracle, the last few months, since you have been with me.
+We have seen very little of each other, you know, since your childhood,
+and when I think upon it soberly it is hard to realize that you are
+really mine, sprung from me, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.  As
+the tangle-haired wild young creature of Dyea,--a healthy, little,
+natural animal and nothing more,--it required no imagination to accept
+you as one of the breed of Welse.  But as Frona, the woman, as you were
+to-night, as you are now as I look at you, as you have been since you
+came down the Yukon, it is hard . . .  I cannot realize . . .  I . . ."
+He faltered and threw up his hands helplessly.  "I almost wish that I
+had given you no education, that I had kept you with me, faring with
+me, adventuring with me, achieving with me, and failing with me.  I
+would have known you, now, as we sit by the fire.  As it is, I do not.
+To that which I did know there has been added, somehow (what shall I
+call it?), a subtlety; complexity,--favorite words of yours,--which is
+beyond me.
+
+"No."  He waved the speech abruptly from her lips.  She came over and
+knelt at his feet, resting her head on his knee and clasping his hand
+in firm sympathy.  "No, that is not true.  Those are not the words.  I
+cannot find them.  I fail to say what I feel.  Let me try again.
+Underneath all you do carry the stamp of the breed.  I knew I risked
+the loss of that when I sent you away, but I had faith in the
+persistence of the blood and I took the chance; doubted and feared when
+you were gone; waited and prayed dumbly, and hoped oftentimes
+hopelessly; and then the day dawned, the day of days!  When they said
+your boat was coming, death rose and walked on the one hand of me, and
+on the other life everlasting.  _Made or marred; made or marred_,--the
+words rang through my brain till they maddened me.  Would the Welse
+remain the Welse?  Would the blood persist?  Would the young shoot rise
+straight and tall and strong, green with sap and fresh and vigorous?
+Or would it droop limp and lifeless, withered by the heats of the world
+other than the little simple, natural Dyea world?
+
+"It was the day of days, and yet it was a lingering, watching, waiting
+tragedy.  You know I had lived the years lonely, fought the lone fight,
+and you, away, the only kin.  If it had failed . . .  But your boat
+shot from the bluffs into the open, and I was half-afraid to look.  Men
+have never called me coward, but I was nearer the coward then than ever
+and all before.  Ay, that moment I had faced death easier.  And it was
+foolish, absurd.  How could I know whether it was for good or ill when
+you drifted a distant speck on the river?  Still, I looked, and the
+miracle began, for I did know.  You stood at the steering-sweep.  You
+were a Welse.  It seems so little; in truth it meant so much.  It was
+not to be expected of a mere woman, but of a Welse, yes.  And when
+Bishop went over the side, and you gripped the situation as
+imperatively as the sweep, and your voice rang out, and the Siwashes
+bent their backs to your will,--then was it the day of days."
+
+"I tried always, and remembered," Frona whispered.  She crept up softly
+till her arm was about his neck and her head against his breast.  He
+rested one arm lightly on her body, and poured her bright hair again
+and again from his hand in glistening waves.
+
+"As I said, the stamp of the breed was unmarred, but there was yet a
+difference.  There is a difference.  I have watched it, studied it,
+tried to make it out.  I have sat at table, proud by the side of you,
+but dwarfed.  When you talked of little things I was large enough to
+follow; when of big things, too small.  I knew you, had my hand on you,
+when _presto_! and you were away, gone--I was lost.  He is a fool who
+knows not his own ignorance; I was wise enough to know mine.  Art,
+poetry, music,--what do I know of them?  And they were the great
+things, are the great things to you, mean more to you than the little
+things I may comprehend.  And I had hoped, blindly, foolishly, that we
+might be one in the spirit as well as the one flesh.  It has been
+bitter, but I have faced it, and understand.  But to see my own red
+blood get away from me, elude me, rise above me!  It stuns.  God!  I
+have heard you read from your Browning--no, no; do not speak--and
+watched the play of your face, the uplift and the passion of it, and
+all the while the words droning in upon me, meaningless, musical,
+maddening.  And Mrs. Schoville sitting there, nursing an expression of
+idiotic ecstasy, and understanding no more than I.  I could have
+strangled her.
+
+"Why, I have stolen away, at night, with your Browning, and locked
+myself in like a thief in fear.  The text was senseless, I have beaten
+my head with my fist like a wild man, to try and knock some
+comprehension into it.  For my life had worked itself out along one set
+groove, deep and narrow.  I was in the rut.  I had done those things
+which came to my hand and done them well; but the time was past; I
+could not turn my hand anew.  I, who am strong and dominant, who have
+played large with destiny, who could buy body and soul a thousand
+painters and versifiers, was baffled by a few paltry cents' worth of
+printed paper!"
+
+He spilled her hair for a moment's silence.
+
+"To come back.  I had attempted the impossible, gambled against the
+inevitable.  I had sent you from me to get that which I had not,
+dreaming that we would still be one.  As though two could be added to
+two and still remain two.  So, to sum up, the breed still holds, but
+you have learned an alien tongue.  When you speak it I am deaf.  And
+bitterest of all, I know that the new tongue is the greater.  I do not
+know why I have said all this, made my confession of weakness--"
+
+"Oh, father mine, greatest of men!" She raised her head and laughed
+into his eyes, the while brushing back the thick iron-gray hair which
+thatched the dome of his forehead.  "You, who have wrestled more
+mightily, done greater things than these painters and versifiers.  You
+who know so well the law of change.  Might not the same plaint fall
+from your father's lips were he to sit now beside you and look upon
+your work and you?"
+
+"Yes, yes.  I have said that I understand.  Do not let us discuss
+it . . .  a moment's weakness.  My father was a great man."
+
+"And so mine."
+
+"A struggler to the end of his days.  He fought the great lone
+fight--"
+
+"And so mine."
+
+"And died fighting."
+
+"And so shall mine.  So shall we all, we Welses."
+
+He shook her playfully, in token of returning spirits.  "But I intend
+to sell out,--mines, Company, everything,--and study Browning."
+
+"Still the fight.  You can't discount the blood, father."
+
+"Why were you not a boy?" he demanded, abruptly.  "You would have been
+a splendid one.  As it is, a woman, made to be the delight of some man,
+you must pass from me--to-morrow, next day, this time next year, who
+knows how soon?  Ah? now I know the direction my thought has been
+trending.  Just as I know you do, so do I recognize the inevitableness
+of it and the justness.  But the man, Frona, the man?"
+
+"Don't," she demurred.  "Tell me of your father's fight, the last
+fight, the great lone fight at Treasure City.  Ten to one it was, and
+well fought.  Tell me."
+
+"No, Frona.  Do you realize that for the first time in our lives we
+talk together seriously, as father and daughter,--for the first time?
+You have had no mother to advise; no father, for I trusted the blood,
+and wisely, and let you go.  But there comes a time when the mother's
+counsel is needed, and you, you who never knew one?"
+
+Frona yielded, in instant recognition, and waiting, snuggled more
+closely to him.
+
+"This man, St. Vincent--how is it between you?"
+
+"I . . .  I do not know.  How do you mean?"
+
+"Remember always, Frona, that you have free choice, yours is the last
+word.  Still, I would like to understand.  I could . . .  perhaps . . .
+I might be able to suggest.  But nothing more.  Still, a suggestion . . ."
+
+There was something inexpressibly sacred about it, yet she found
+herself tongue-tied.  Instead of the one definite thing to say, a
+muddle of ideas fluttered in her brain.  After all, could he
+understand?  Was there not a difference which prevented him from
+comprehending the motives which, for her, were impelling?  For all her
+harking back to the primitive and stout defence of its sanity and
+truth, did his native philosophy give him the same code which she drew
+from her acquired philosophy?  Then she stood aside and regarded
+herself and the queries she put, and drew apart from them, for they
+breathed of treason.
+
+"There is nothing between us, father," she spoke up resolutely.  "Mr.
+St. Vincent has said nothing, nothing.  We are good friends, we like
+each other, we are very good friends.  I think that is all."
+
+"But you like each other; you like him.  Is it in the way a woman must
+like a man before she can honestly share her life with him, lose
+herself in him?  Do you feel with Ruth, so that when the time comes you
+can say, 'Thy people are my people, and thy God my God'?"
+
+"N---o.  It may be; but I cannot, dare not face it, say it or not say
+it, think it or not think it--now.  It is the great affirmation.  When
+it comes it must come, no one may know how or why, in a great white
+flash, like a revelation, hiding nothing, revealing everything in
+dazzling, blinding truth.  At least I so imagine."
+
+Jacob Welse nodded his head with the slow meditation of one who
+understands, yet stops to ponder and weigh again.
+
+"But why have you asked, father?  Why has Mr. St. Vincent been raised?
+I have been friends with other men."
+
+"But I have not felt about other men as I do of St. Vincent.  We may be
+truthful, you and I, and forgive the pain we give each other.  My
+opinion counts for no more than another's.  Fallibility is the
+commonest of curses.  Nor can I explain why I feel as I do--I oppose
+much in the way you expect to when your great white flash sears your
+eyes.  But, in a word, I do not like St. Vincent."
+
+"A very common judgment of him among the men," Frona interposed, driven
+irresistibly to the defensive.
+
+"Such consensus of opinion only makes my position stronger," he
+returned, but not disputatively.  "Yet I must remember that I look upon
+him as men look.  His popularity with women must proceed from the fact
+that women look differently than men, just as women do differ
+physically and spiritually from men.  It is deep, too deep for me to
+explain.  I but follow my nature and try to be just."
+
+"But have you nothing more definite?" she asked, groping for better
+comprehension of his attitude.  "Can you not put into some sort of
+coherence some one certain thing of the things you feel?"
+
+"I hardly dare.  Intuitions can rarely be expressed in terms of
+thought.  But let me try.  We Welses have never known a coward.  And
+where cowardice is, nothing can endure.  It is like building on sand,
+or like a vile disease which rots and rots and we know not when it may
+break forth."
+
+"But it seems to me that Mr. St. Vincent is the last man in the world
+with whom cowardice may be associated.  I cannot conceive of him in
+that light."
+
+The distress in her face hurt him.  "I know nothing against St.
+Vincent.  There is no evidence to show that he is anything but what he
+appears.  Still, I cannot help feeling it, in my fallible human way.
+Yet there is one thing I have heard, a sordid pot-house brawl in the
+Opera House.  Mind you, Frona, I say nothing against the brawl or the
+place,--men are men, but it is said that he did not act as a man ought
+that night."
+
+"But as you say, father, men are men.  We would like to have them other
+than they are, for the world surely would be better; but we must take
+them as they are.  Lucile--"
+
+"No, no; you misunderstand.  I did not refer to her, but to the fight.
+He did not . . .  he was cowardly."
+
+"But as you say, it is _said_.  He told me about it, not long
+afterwards, and I do not think he would have dared had there been
+anything--"
+
+"But I do not make it as a charge," Jacob Welse hastily broke in.
+"Merely hearsay, and the prejudice of the men would be sufficient to
+account for the tale.  And it has no bearing, anyway.  I should not
+have brought it up, for I have known good men funk in my time--buck
+fever, as it were.  And now let us dismiss it all from our minds.  I
+merely wished to suggest, and I suppose I have bungled.  But understand
+this, Frona," turning her face up to his, "understand above all things
+and in spite of them, first, last, and always, that you are my
+daughter, and that I believe your life is sacredly yours, not mine,
+yours to deal with and to make or mar.  Your life is yours to live, and
+in so far that I influence it you will not have lived your life, nor
+would your life have been yours.  Nor would you have been a Welse, for
+there was never a Welse yet who suffered dictation.  They died first,
+or went away to pioneer on the edge of things.
+
+"Why, if you thought the dance house the proper or natural medium for
+self-expression, I might be sad, but to-morrow I would sanction your
+going down to the Opera House.  It would be unwise to stop you, and,
+further, it is not our way.  The Welses have ever stood by, in many a
+lost cause and forlorn hope, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder.
+Conventions are worthless for such as we.  They are for the swine who
+without them would wallow deeper.  The weak must obey or be crushed;
+not so with the strong.  The mass is nothing; the individual
+everything; and it is the individual, always, that rules the mass and
+gives the law.  A fig for what the world says!  If the Welse should
+procreate a bastard line this day, it would be the way of the Welse,
+and you would be a daughter of the Welse, and in the face of hell and
+heaven, of God himself, we would stand together, we of the one blood,
+Frona, you and I."
+
+"You are larger than I," she whispered, kissing his forehead, and the
+caress of her lips seemed to him the soft impact of a leaf falling
+through the still autumn air.
+
+And as the heat of the room ebbed away, he told of her foremother and
+of his, and of the sturdy Welse who fought the great lone fight, and
+died, fighting, at Treasure City.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+The "Doll's House" was a success.  Mrs. Schoville ecstasized over it in
+terms so immeasurable, so unqualifiable, that Jacob Welse, standing
+near, bent a glittering gaze upon her plump white throat and
+unconsciously clutched and closed his hand on an invisible windpipe.
+Dave Harney proclaimed its excellence effusively, though he questioned
+the soundness of Nora's philosophy and swore by his Puritan gods that
+Torvald was the longest-eared Jack in two hemispheres.  Even Miss
+Mortimer, antagonistic as she was to the whole school, conceded that
+the players had redeemed it; while Matt McCarthy announced that he
+didn't blame Nora darlin' the least bit, though he told the Gold
+Commissioner privately that a song or so and a skirt dance wouldn't
+have hurt the performance.
+
+"Iv course the Nora girl was right," he insisted to Harney, both of
+whom were walking on the heels of Frona and St. Vincent.  "I'd be
+seein'--"
+
+"Rubber--"
+
+"Rubber yer gran'mother!" Matt wrathfully exclaimed.
+
+"Ez I was sayin'," Harney continued, imperturbably, "rubber boots is
+goin' to go sky-high 'bout the time of wash-up.  Three ounces the pair,
+an' you kin put your chips on that for a high card.  You kin gather 'em
+in now for an ounce a pair and clear two on the deal.  A cinch, Matt, a
+dead open an' shut."
+
+"The devil take you an' yer cinches!  It's Nora darlin' I have in me
+mind the while."
+
+They bade good-by to Frona and St. Vincent and went off disputing under
+the stars in the direction of the Opera House.
+
+Gregory St. Vincent heaved an audible sigh.  "At last."
+
+"At last what?" Frona asked, incuriously.
+
+"At last the first opportunity for me to tell you how well you did.
+You carried off the final scene wonderfully; so well that it seemed you
+were really passing out of my life forever."
+
+"What a misfortune!"
+
+"It was terrible."
+
+"No."
+
+"But, yes.  I took the whole condition upon myself.  You were not Nora,
+you were Frona; nor I Torvald, but Gregory.  When you made your exit,
+capped and jacketed and travelling-bag in hand, it seemed I could not
+possibly stay and finish my lines.  And when the door slammed and you
+were gone, the only thing that saved me was the curtain.  It brought me
+to myself, or else I would have rushed after you in the face of the
+audience."
+
+"It is strange how a simulated part may react upon one," Frona
+speculated.
+
+"Or rather?"  St. Vincent suggested.
+
+Frona made no answer, and they walked on without speech.  She was still
+under the spell of the evening, and the exaltation which had come to
+her as Nora had not yet departed.  Besides, she read between the lines
+of St. Vincent's conversation, and was oppressed by the timidity which
+comes over woman when she faces man on the verge of the greater
+intimacy.
+
+It was a clear, cold night, not over-cold,--not more than forty
+below,--and the land was bathed in a soft, diffused flood of light
+which found its source not in the stars, nor yet in the moon, which was
+somewhere over on the other side of the world.  From the south-east to
+the northwest a pale-greenish glow fringed the rim of the heavens, and
+it was from this the dim radiance was exhaled.
+
+Suddenly, like the ray of a search-light, a band of white light
+ploughed overhead.  Night turned to ghostly day on the instant, then
+blacker night descended.  But to the southeast a noiseless commotion
+was apparent.  The glowing greenish gauze was in a ferment, bubbling,
+uprearing, downfalling, and tentatively thrusting huge bodiless hands
+into the upper ether.  Once more a cyclopean rocket twisted its fiery
+way across the sky, from horizon to zenith, and on, and on, in
+tremendous flight, to horizon again.  But the span could not hold, and
+in its wake the black night brooded.  And yet again, broader, stronger,
+deeper, lavishly spilling streamers to right and left, it flaunted the
+midmost zenith with its gorgeous flare, and passed on and down to the
+further edge of the world.  Heaven was bridged at last, and the bridge
+endured!
+
+At this flaming triumph the silence of earth was broken, and ten
+thousand wolf-dogs, in long-drawn unisoned howls, sobbed their dismay
+and grief.  Frona shivered, and St. Vincent passed his arm about her
+waist.  The woman in her was aware of the touch of man, and of a slight
+tingling thrill of vague delight; but she made no resistance.  And as
+the wolf-dogs mourned at her feet and the aurora wantoned overhead, she
+felt herself drawn against him closely.
+
+"Need I tell my story?" he whispered.
+
+She drooped her head in tired content on his shoulder, and together
+they watched the burning vault wherein the stars dimmed and vanished.
+Ebbing, flowing, pulsing to some tremendous rhythm, the prism colors
+hurled themselves in luminous deluge across the firmament.  Then the
+canopy of heaven became a mighty loom, wherein imperial purple and deep
+sea-green blended, wove, and interwove, with blazing woof and flashing
+warp, till the most delicate of tulles, fluorescent and bewildering,
+was daintily and airily shaken in the face of the astonished night.
+
+Without warning the span was sundered by an arrogant arm of black.  The
+arch dissolved in blushing confusion.  Chasms of blackness yawned,
+grew, and rushed together.  Broken masses of strayed color and fading
+fire stole timidly towards the sky-line.  Then the dome of night
+towered imponderable, immense, and the stars came back one by one, and
+the wolf-dogs mourned anew.
+
+"I can offer you so little, dear," the man said with a slightly
+perceptible bitterness.  "The precarious fortunes of a gypsy wanderer."
+
+And the woman, placing his hand and pressing it against her heart,
+said, as a great woman had said before her, "A tent and a crust of
+bread with you, Richard."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+How-ha was only an Indian woman, bred of a long line of fish-eating,
+meat-rending carnivores, and her ethics were as crude and simple as
+her blood.  But long contact with the whites had given her an insight
+into their way of looking at things, and though she grunted
+contemptuously in her secret soul, she none the less understood their
+way perfectly.  Ten years previous she had cooked for Jacob Welse,
+and served him in one fashion or another ever since; and when on a
+dreary January morning she opened the front door in response to the
+deep-tongued knocker, even her stolid presence was shaken as she
+recognized the visitor.  Not that the average man or woman would have
+so recognized.  But How-ha's faculties of observing and remembering
+details had been developed in a hard school where death dealt his
+blow to the lax and life saluted the vigilant.
+
+How-ha looked up and down the woman who stood before her.  Through
+the heavy veil she could barely distinguish the flash of the eyes,
+while the hood of the _parka_ effectually concealed the hair, and the
+_parka_ proper the particular outlines of the body.  But How-ha
+paused and looked again.  There was something familiar in the vague
+general outline.  She quested back to the shrouded head again, and
+knew the unmistakable poise.  Then How-ha's eyes went blear as she
+traversed the simple windings of her own brain, inspecting the bare
+shelves taciturnly stored with the impressions of a meagre life.  No
+disorder; no confused mingling of records; no devious and
+interminable impress of complex emotions, tangled theories, and
+bewildering abstractions--nothing but simple facts, neatly classified
+and conveniently collated.  Unerringly from the stores of the past
+she picked and chose and put together in the instant present, till
+obscurity dropped from the woman before her, and she knew her, word
+and deed and look and history.
+
+"Much better you go 'way quickety-quick," How-ha informed her.
+
+"Miss Welse.  I wish to see her."
+
+The strange woman spoke in firm, even tones which betokened the will
+behind, but which failed to move How-ha.
+
+"Much better you go," she repeated, stolidly.
+
+"Here, take this to Frona Welse, and--ah! would you!" (thrusting her
+knee between the door and jamb) "and leave the door open."
+
+How-ha scowled, but took the note; for she could not shake off the
+grip of the ten years of servitude to the superior race.
+
+
+  May I see you?
+
+     LUCILE.
+
+
+So the note ran.  Frona glanced up expectantly at the Indian woman.
+
+"Um kick toes outside," How-ha explained.  "Me tell um go 'way
+quickety-quick?  Eh?  You t'ink yes?  Um no good.  Um--"
+
+"No.  Take her,"--Frona was thinking quickly,--"no; bring her up
+here."
+
+"Much better--"
+
+"Go!"
+
+How-ha grunted, and yielded up the obedience she could not withhold;
+though, as she went down the stairs to the door, in a tenebrous,
+glimmering way she wondered that the accident of white skin or swart
+made master or servant as the case might be.
+
+In the one sweep of vision, Lucile took in Frona smiling with
+extended hand in the foreground, the dainty dressing-table, the
+simple finery, the thousand girlish evidences; and with the sweet
+wholesomeness of it pervading her nostrils, her own girlhood rose up
+and smote her.  Then she turned a bleak eye and cold ear on outward
+things.
+
+"I am glad you came," Frona was saying.  "I have _so_ wanted to see
+you again, and--but do get that heavy _parka_ off, please.  How thick
+it is, and what splendid fur and workmanship!"
+
+"Yes, from Siberia."  A present from St. Vincent, Lucile felt like
+adding, but said instead, "The Siberians have not yet learned to
+scamp their work, you know."
+
+She sank down into the low-seated rocker with a native grace which
+could not escape the beauty-loving eye of the girl, and with
+proud-poised head and silent tongue listened to Frona as the minutes
+ticked away, and observed with impersonal amusement Frona's painful
+toil at making conversation.
+
+"What has she come for?" Frona asked herself, as she talked on furs
+and weather and indifferent things.
+
+"If you do not say something, Lucile, I shall get nervous, soon," she
+ventured at last in desperation.  "Has anything happened?"
+
+Lucile went over to the mirror and picked up, from among the trinkets
+beneath, a tiny open-work miniature of Frona.  "This is you?  How old
+were you?"
+
+"Sixteen."
+
+"A sylph, but a cold northern one."
+
+"The blood warms late with us," Frona reproved; "but is--"
+
+"None the less warm for that," Lucile laughed.  "And how old are you
+now?"
+
+"Twenty."
+
+"Twenty," Lucile repeated, slowly.  "Twenty," and resumed her seat.
+"You are twenty.  And I am twenty-four."
+
+"So little difference as that!"
+
+"But our blood warms early."  Lucile voiced her reproach across the
+unfathomable gulf which four years could not plumb.
+
+Frona could hardly hide her vexation.  Lucile went over and looked at
+the miniature again and returned.
+
+"What do you think of love?" she asked abruptly, her face softening
+unheralded into a smile.
+
+"Love?" the girl quavered.
+
+"Yes, love.  What do you know about it?  What do you think of it?"
+
+A flood of definitions, glowing and rosy, sped to her tongue, but
+Frona swept them aside and answered, "Love is immolation."
+
+"Very good--sacrifice.  And, now, does it pay?"
+
+"Yes, it pays.  Of course it pays.  Who can doubt it?"
+
+Lucile's eyes twinkled amusedly.
+
+"Why do you smile?" Frona asked.
+
+"Look at me, Frona."  Lucile stood up and her face blazed.  "I am
+twenty-four.  Not altogether a fright; not altogether a dunce.  I
+have a heart.  I have good red blood and warm.  And I have loved.  I
+do not remember the pay.  I know only that I have paid."
+
+"And in the paying were paid," Frona took up warmly.  "The price was
+the reward.  If love be fallible, yet you have loved; you have done,
+you have served.  What more would you?"
+
+"The whelpage love," Lucile sneered.
+
+"Oh!  You are unfair."
+
+"I do you justice," Lucile insisted firmly.  "You would tell me that
+you know; that you have gone unveiled and seen clear-eyed; that
+without placing more than lips to the brim you have divined the taste
+of the dregs, and that the taste is good.  Bah!  The whelpage love!
+And, oh, Frona, I know; you are full womanly and broad, and lend no
+ear to little things, but"--she tapped a slender finger to
+forehead--"it is all here.  It is a heady brew, and you have smelled
+the fumes overmuch.  But drain the dregs, turn down the glass, and
+say that it is good.  No, God forbid!" she cried, passionately.
+"There are good loves.  You should find no masquerade, but one fair
+and shining."
+
+Frona was up to her old trick,--their common one,--and her hand slid
+down Lucile's arm till hand clasped in hand.  "You say things which I
+feel are wrong, yet may not answer.  I can, but how dare I?  I dare
+not put mere thoughts against your facts.  I, who have lived so
+little, cannot in theory give the lie to you who have lived so
+much--"
+
+"'For he who lives more lives than one, more lives than one must
+die.'"
+
+From out of her pain, Lucile spoke the words of her pain, and Frona,
+throwing arms about her, sobbed on her breast in understanding.  As
+for Lucile, the slight nervous ingathering of the brows above her
+eyes smoothed out, and she pressed the kiss of motherhood, lightly
+and secretly, on the other's hair.  For a space,--then the brows
+ingathered, the lips drew firm, and she put Frona from her.
+
+"You are going to marry Gregory St. Vincent?"
+
+Frona was startled.  It was only a fortnight old, and not a word had
+been breathed.  "How do you know?"
+
+"You have answered."  Lucile watched Frona's open face and the bold
+running advertisement, and felt as the skilled fencer who fronts a
+tyro, weak of wrist, each opening naked to his hand.  "How do I
+know?"  She laughed harshly.  "When a man leaves one's arms suddenly,
+lips wet with last kisses and mouth areek with last lies!"
+
+"And--?"
+
+"Forgets the way back to those arms."
+
+"So?"  The blood of the Welse pounded up, and like a hot sun dried
+the mists from her eyes and left them flashing.  "Then that is why
+you came.  I could have guessed it had I given second thought to
+Dawson's gossip."
+
+"It is not too late." Lucile's lip curled.  "And it is your way."
+
+"And I am mindful.  What is it?  Do you intend telling me what he has
+done, what he has been to you.  Let me say that it is useless.  He is
+a man, as you and I are women."
+
+"No," Lucile lied, swallowing her astonishment.
+
+"I had not thought that any action of his would affect you.  I knew
+you were too great for that.  But--have you considered me?"
+
+Frona caught her breath for a moment.  Then she straightened out her
+arms to hold the man in challenge to the arms of Lucile.
+
+"Your father over again," Lucile exclaimed.  "Oh, you impossible
+Welses!"
+
+"But he is not worthy of you, Frona Welse," she continued; "of me,
+yes.  He is not a nice man, a great man, nor a good.  His love cannot
+match with yours.  Bah!  He does not possess love; passion, of one
+sort and another, is the best he may lay claim to.  That you do not
+want.  It is all, at the best, he can give you.  And you, pray what
+may you give him?  Yourself?  A prodigious waste!  But your father's
+yellow--"
+
+"Don't go on, or I shall refuse to listen.  It is wrong of you."  So
+Frona made her cease, and then, with bold inconsistency, "And what
+may the woman Lucile give him?"
+
+"Some few wild moments," was the prompt response; "a burning burst of
+happiness, and the regrets of hell--which latter he deserves, as do
+I.  So the balance is maintained, and all is well."
+
+"But--but--"
+
+"For there is a devil in him," she held on, "a most alluring devil,
+which delights me, on my soul it does, and which, pray God, Frona,
+you may never know.  For you have no devil; mine matches his and
+mates.  I am free to confess that the whole thing is only an
+attraction.  There is nothing permanent about him, nor about me.  And
+there's the beauty, the balance is preserved."
+
+Frona lay back in her chair and lazily regarded her visitor, Lucile
+waited for her to speak.  It was very quiet.
+
+"Well?" Lucile at last demanded, in a low, curious tone, at the same
+time rising to slip into her parka.
+
+"Nothing.  I was only waiting."
+
+"I am done."
+
+"Then let me say that I do not understand you," Frona summed up,
+coldly.  "I cannot somehow just catch your motive.  There is a flat
+ring to what you have said.  However, of this I am sure: for some
+unaccountable reason you have been untrue to yourself to-day.  Do not
+ask me, for, as I said before, I do not know where or how; yet I am
+none the less convinced.  This I do know, you are not the Lucile I
+met by the wood trail across the river.  That was the true Lucile,
+little though I saw of her.  The woman who is here to-day is a
+strange woman.  I do not know her.  Sometimes it has seemed she was
+Lucile, but rarely.  This woman has lied, lied to me, and lied to me
+about herself.  As to what she said of the man, at the worst that is
+merely an opinion.  It may be she has lied about him likewise.  The
+chance is large that she has.  What do you think about it?"
+
+"That you are a very clever girl, Frona.  That you speak sometimes
+more truly than you know, and that at others you are blinder than you
+dream."
+
+"There is something I could love in you, but you have hidden it away
+so that I cannot find it."
+
+Lucile's lips trembled on the verge of speech.  But she settled her
+parka about her and turned to go.
+
+Frona saw her to the door herself, and How-ha pondered over the white
+who made the law and was greater than the law.
+
+When the door had closed, Lucile spat into the street.  "Faugh!  St.
+Vincent!  I have defiled my mouth with your name!"  And she spat
+again.
+
+
+"Come in."
+
+At the summons Matt McCarthy pulled the latch-string, pushed the door
+open, and closed it carefully behind him.
+
+"Oh, it is you!"  St. Vincent regarded his visitor with dark
+abstraction, then, recollecting himself, held out his hand.  "Why,
+hello, Matt, old man.  My mind was a thousand miles away when you
+entered.  Take a stool and make yourself comfortable.  There's the
+tobacco by your hand.  Take a try at it and give us your verdict."
+
+"An' well may his mind be a thousand miles away," Matt assured
+himself; for in the dark he had passed a woman on the trail who
+looked suspiciously like Lucile.  But aloud, "Sure, an' it's
+day-dramin' ye mane.  An' small wondher."
+
+"How's that?" the correspondent asked, cheerily.
+
+"By the same token that I met Lucile down the trail a piece, an' the
+heels iv her moccasins pointing to yer shack.  It's a bitter tongue
+the jade slings on occasion," Matt chuckled.
+
+"That's the worst of it."  St. Vincent met him frankly.  "A man looks
+sidewise at them for a passing moment, and they demand that the
+moment be eternal."
+
+Off with the old love's a stiff proposition, eh?"
+
+"I should say so.  And you understand.  It's easy to see, Matt,
+you've had some experience in your time."
+
+"In me time?  I'll have ye know I'm not too old to still enjoy a bit
+iv a fling."
+
+"Certainly, certainly.  One can read it in your eyes.  The warm heart
+and the roving eye, Matt!"  He slapped his visitor on the shoulder
+with a hearty laugh.
+
+"An' I've none the best iv ye, Vincent.  'Tis a wicked lad ye are,
+with a takin' way with the ladies--as plain as the nose on yer face.
+Manny's the idle kiss ye've given, an' manny's the heart ye've broke.
+But, Vincent, bye, did ye iver know the rale thing?"
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"The rale thing, the rale thing--that is--well, have ye been iver a
+father?"
+
+St. Vincent shook his head.
+
+"And niver have I.  But have ye felt the love iv a father, thin?"
+
+"I hardly know.  I don't think so."
+
+"Well, I have.  An' it's the rale thing, I'll tell ye.  If iver a man
+suckled a child, I did, or the next door to it.  A girl child at
+that, an' she's woman grown, now, an' if the thing is possible, I
+love her more than her own blood-father.  Bad luck, exciptin' her,
+there was niver but one woman I loved, an' that woman had mated
+beforetime.  Not a soul did I brathe a word to, trust me, nor even
+herself.  But she died.  God's love be with her."
+
+His chin went down upon his chest and he quested back to a
+flaxen-haired Saxon woman, strayed like a bit of sunshine into the
+log store by the Dyea River.  He looked up suddenly, and caught St.
+Vincent's stare bent blankly to the floor as he mused on other things.
+
+"A truce to foolishness, Vincent."
+
+The correspondent returned to himself with an effort and found the
+Irishman's small blue eyes boring into him.
+
+"Are ye a brave man, Vincent?"
+
+For a second's space they searched each other's souls.  And in that
+space Matt could have sworn he saw the faintest possible flicker or
+flutter in the man's eyes.
+
+He brought his fist down on the table with a triumphant crash.  "By
+God, yer not!"
+
+The correspondent pulled the tobacco jug over to him and rolled a
+cigarette.  He rolled it carefully, the delicate rice paper crisping
+in his hand without a tremor; but all the while a red tide mounting
+up from beneath the collar of his shirt, deepening in the hollows of
+the cheeks and thinning against the cheekbones above, creeping,
+spreading, till all his face was aflame.
+
+"'Tis good.  An' likely it saves me fingers a dirty job.  Vincent,
+man, the girl child which is woman grown slapes in Dawson this night.
+God help us, you an' me, but we'll niver hit again the pillow as
+clane an' pure as she!  Vincent, a word to the wise: ye'll niver lay
+holy hand or otherwise upon her."
+
+The devil, which Lucile had proclaimed, began to quicken,--a fuming,
+fretting, irrational devil.
+
+"I do not like ye.  I kape me raysons to meself.  It is sufficient.
+But take this to heart, an' take it well: should ye be mad enough to
+make her yer wife, iv that damned day ye'll niver see the inding, nor
+lay eye upon the bridal bed.  Why, man, I cud bate ye to death with
+me two fists if need be.  But it's to be hoped I'll do a nater job.
+Rest aisy.  I promise ye."
+
+"You Irish pig!"
+
+So the devil burst forth, and all unaware, for McCarthy found himself
+eye-high with the muzzle of a Colt's revolver.
+
+"Is it loaded?" he asked.  "I belave ye.  But why are ye lingerin'?
+Lift the hammer, will ye?"
+
+The correspondent's trigger-finger moved and there was a warning
+click.
+
+"Now pull it.  Pull it, I say.  As though ye cud, with that flutter
+to yer eye."
+
+St. Vincent attempted to turn his head aside.
+
+"Look at me, man!" McCarthy commanded.  "Kape yer eyes on me when ye
+do it."
+
+Unwillingly the sideward movement was arrested, and his eyes returned
+and met the Irishman's.
+
+"Now!"
+
+St. Vincent ground his teeth and pulled the trigger--at least he
+thought he did, as men think they do things in dreams.  He willed the
+deed, flashed the order forth; but the flutter of his soul stopped it.
+
+"'Tis paralyzed, is it, that shaky little finger?"  Matt grinned into
+the face of the tortured man.  "Now turn it aside, so, an' drop it,
+gently . . . gently . . . gently."  His voice crooned away in
+soothing diminuendo.
+
+When the trigger was safely down, St. Vincent let the revolver fall
+from his hand, and with a slight audible sigh sank nervelessly upon a
+stool.  He tried to straighten himself, but instead dropped down upon
+the table and buried his face in his palsied hands.  Matt drew on his
+mittens, looking down upon him pityingly the while, and went out,
+closing the door softly behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Where nature shows the rough hand, the sons of men are apt to respond
+with kindred roughness.  The amenities of life spring up only in mellow
+lands, where the sun is warm and the earth fat.  The damp and soggy
+climate of Britain drives men to strong drink; the rosy Orient lures to
+the dream splendors of the lotus.  The big-bodied, white-skinned
+northern dweller, rude and ferocious, bellows his anger uncouthly and
+drives a gross fist into the face of his foe.  The supple
+south-sojourner, silken of smile and lazy of gesture, waits, and does
+his work from behind, when no man looketh, gracefully and without
+offence.  Their ends are one; the difference lies in their ways, and
+therein the climate, and the cumulative effect thereof, is the
+determining factor.  Both are sinners, as men born of women have ever
+been; but the one does his sin openly, in the clear sight of God; the
+other--as though God could not see--veils his iniquity with shimmering
+fancies, hiding it like it were some splendid mystery.
+
+These be the ways of men, each as the sun shines upon him and the wind
+blows against him, according to his kind, and the seed of his father,
+and the milk of his mother.  Each is the resultant of many forces which
+go to make a pressure mightier than he, and which moulds him in the
+predestined shape.  But, with sound legs under him, he may run away,
+and meet with a new pressure.  He may continue running, each new
+pressure prodding him as he goes, until he dies and his final form will
+be that predestined of the many pressures.  An exchange of
+cradle-babes, and the base-born slave may wear the purple imperially,
+and the royal infant begs an alms as wheedlingly or cringe to the lash
+as abjectly as his meanest subject.  A Chesterfield, with an empty
+belly, chancing upon good fare, will gorge as faithfully as the swine
+in the next sty.  And an Epicurus, in the dirt-igloo of the Eskimos,
+will wax eloquent over the whale oil and walrus blubber, or die.
+
+Thus, in the young Northland, frosty and grim and menacing, men
+stripped off the sloth of the south and gave battle greatly.  And they
+stripped likewise much of the veneer of civilization--all of its
+follies, most of its foibles, and perhaps a few of its virtues.  Maybe
+so; but they reserved the great traditions and at least lived frankly,
+laughed honestly, and looked one another in the eyes.
+
+And so it is not well for women, born south of fifty-three and reared
+gently, to knock loosely about the Northland, unless they be great of
+heart.  They may be soft and tender and sensitive, possessed of eyes
+which have not lost the lustre and the wonder, and of ears used only to
+sweet sounds; but if their philosophy is sane and stable, large enough
+to understand and to forgive, they will come to no harm and attain
+comprehension.  If not, they will see things and hear things which
+hurt, and they will suffer greatly, and lose faith in man--which is the
+greatest evil that may happen them.  Such should be sedulously
+cherished, and it were well to depute this to their men-folk, the
+nearer of kin the better.  In line, it were good policy to seek out a
+cabin on the hill overlooking Dawson, or--best of all--across the Yukon
+on the western bank.  Let them not move abroad unheralded and
+unaccompanied; and the hillside back of the cabin may be recommended as
+a fit field for stretching muscles and breathing deeply, a place where
+their ears may remain undefiled by the harsh words of men who strive to
+the utmost.
+
+
+Vance Corliss wiped the last tin dish and filed it away on the shelf,
+lighted his pipe, and rolled over on his back on the bunk to
+contemplate the moss-chinked roof of his French Hill cabin.  This
+French Hill cabin stood on the last dip of the hill into Eldorado
+Creek, close to the main-travelled trail; and its one window blinked
+cheerily of nights at those who journeyed late.
+
+The door was kicked open, and Del Bishop staggered in with a load of
+fire-wood.  His breath had so settled on his face in a white rime that
+he could not speak.  Such a condition was ever a hardship with the man,
+so he thrust his face forthwith into the quivering heat above the
+stove.  In a trice the frost was started and the thawed streamlets
+dancing madly on the white-hot surface beneath.  Then the ice began to
+fall from is beard in chunks, rattling on the lid-tops and simmering
+spitefully till spurted upward in clouds of steam.
+
+"And so you witness an actual phenomenon, illustrative of the three
+forms of matter," Vance laughed, mimicking the monotonous tones of the
+demonstrator; "solid, liquid, and vapor.  In another moment you will
+have the gas."
+
+"Th--th--that's all very well," Bishop spluttered, wrestling with an
+obstructing piece of ice until it was wrenched from his upper lip and
+slammed stoveward with a bang.
+
+"How cold do you make it, Del?  Fifty?"
+
+"Fifty?" the pocket-miner demanded with unutterable scorn, wiping his
+face.  "Quicksilver's been solid for hours, and it's been gittin'
+colder an' colder ever since.  Fifty?  I'll bet my new mittens against
+your old moccasins that it ain't a notch below seventy."
+
+"Think so?"
+
+"D'ye want to bet?"
+
+Vance nodded laughingly.
+
+"Centigrade or Fahrenheit?" Bishop asked, suddenly suspicious.
+
+"Oh, well, if you want my old moccasins so badly," Vance rejoined,
+feigning to be hurt by the other's lack of faith, "why, you can have
+them without betting."
+
+Del snorted and flung himself down on the opposite bunk.  "Think yer
+funny, don't you?"  No answer forthcoming, he deemed the retort
+conclusive, rolled over, and fell to studying the moss chinks.
+
+Fifteen minutes of this diversion sufficed.  "Play you a rubber of crib
+before bed," he challenged across to the other bunk.
+
+"I'll go you." Corliss got up, stretched, and moved the kerosene lamp
+from the shelf to the table, "Think it will hold out?" he asked,
+surveying the oil-level through the cheap glass.
+
+Bishop threw down the crib-board and cards, and measured the contents
+of the lamp with his eye.  "Forgot to fill it, didn't I?  Too late now.
+Do it to-morrow.  It'll last the rubber out, sure."
+
+Corliss took up the cards, but paused in the shuffling.  "We've a big
+trip before us, Del, about a month from now, the middle of March as
+near as I can plan it,--up the Stuart River to McQuestion; up
+McQuestion and back again down the Mayo; then across country to Mazy
+May, winding up at Henderson Creek--"
+
+"On the Indian River?"
+
+"No," Corliss replied, as he dealt the hands; "just below where the
+Stuart taps the Yukon.  And then back to Dawson before the ice breaks."
+
+The pocket-miner's eyes sparkled.  "Keep us hustlin'; but, say, it's a
+trip, isn't it!  Hunch?"
+
+"I've received word from the Parker outfit on the Mayo, and McPherson
+isn't asleep on Henderson--you don't know him.  They're keeping quiet,
+and of course one can't tell, but . . ."
+
+Bishop nodded his head sagely, while Corliss turned the trump he had
+cut.  A sure vision of a "twenty-four" hand was dazzling him, when
+there was a sound of voices without and the door shook to a heavy knock.
+
+"Come in!" he bawled.  "An' don't make such a row about it!  Look at
+that"--to Corliss, at the same time facing his hand--"fifteen-eight,
+fifteen-sixteen, and eight are twenty-four.  Just my luck!"
+
+Corliss started swiftly to his feet.  Bishop jerked his head about.
+Two women and a man had staggered clumsily in through the door, and
+were standing just inside, momentarily blinded by the light.
+
+"By all the Prophets!  Cornell!"  The pocket-miner wrung the man's hand
+and led him forward.  "You recollect Cornell, Corliss?  Jake Cornell,
+Thirty-Seven and a Half Eldorado."
+
+"How could I forget?" the engineer acknowledged warmly, shaking his
+hand.  "That was a miserable night you put us up last fall, about as
+miserable as the moose-steak was good that you gave us for breakfast."
+
+Jake Cornell, hirsute and cadaverous of aspect, nodded his head with
+emphasis and deposited a corpulent demijohn on the table.  Again he
+nodded his head, and glared wildly about him.  The stove caught his eye
+and he strode over to it, lifted a lid, and spat out a mouthful of
+amber-colored juice.  Another stride and he was back.
+
+"'Course I recollect the night," he rumbled, the ice clattering from
+his hairy jaws.  "And I'm danged glad to see you, that's a fact."  He
+seemed suddenly to remember himself, and added a little sheepishly,
+"The fact is, we're all danged glad to see you, ain't we, girls?"  He
+twisted his head about and nodded his companions up.  "Blanche, my
+dear, Mr. Corliss--hem--it gives me . . . hem . . . it gives me
+pleasure to make you acquainted.  Cariboo Blanche, sir.  Cariboo
+Blanche."
+
+"Pleased to meet you."  Cariboo Blanche put out a frank hand and looked
+him over keenly.  She was a fair-featured, blondish woman, originally
+not unpleasing of appearance, but now with lines all deepened and
+hardened as on the faces of men who have endured much weather-beat.
+
+Congratulating himself upon his social proficiency, Jake Cornell
+cleared his throat and marshalled the second woman to the front.  "Mr.
+Corliss, the Virgin; I make you both acquainted.  Hem!" in response to
+the query in Vance's eyes--"Yes, the Virgin.  That's all, just the
+Virgin."
+
+She smiled and bowed, but did not shake hands.  "A toff" was her secret
+comment upon the engineer; and from her limited experience she had been
+led to understand that it was not good form among "toffs" to shake
+hands.
+
+Corliss fumbled his hand, then bowed, and looked at her curiously.  She
+was a pretty, low-browed creature; darkly pretty, with a well-favored
+body, and for all that the type was mean, he could not escape the charm
+of her over-brimming vitality.  She seemed bursting with it, and every
+quick, spontaneous movement appeared to spring from very excess of red
+blood and superabundant energy.
+
+"Pretty healthy proposition, ain't she?" Jake Cornell demanded,
+following his host's gaze with approval.
+
+"None o' your gammon, Jake," the Virgin snapped back, with lip curled
+contemptuously for Vance's especial benefit.  "I fancy it'd be more in
+keeping if you'd look to pore Blanche, there."
+
+"Fact is, we're plum ding dong played out," Jake said.  "An' Blanche
+went through the ice just down the trail, and her feet's like to
+freezin'."
+
+Blanche smiled as Corliss piloted her to a stool by the fire, and her
+stern mouth gave no indication of the pain she was suffering.  He
+turned away when the Virgin addressed herself to removing the wet
+footgear, while Bishop went rummaging for socks and moccasins.
+
+"Didn't go in more'n to the ankles," Cornell explained confidentially;
+"but that's plenty a night like this."
+
+Corliss agreed with a nod of the head.
+
+"Spotted your light, and--hem--and so we come.  Don't mind, do you?"
+
+"Why, certainly not--"
+
+"No intrudin'?"
+
+Corliss reassured him by laying hand on his shoulder and cordially
+pressing him to a seat.  Blanche sighed luxuriously.  Her wet stockings
+were stretched up and already steaming, and her feet basking in the
+capacious warmth of Bishop's Siwash socks.  Vance shoved the tobacco
+canister across, but Cornell pulled out a handful of cigars and passed
+them around.
+
+"Uncommon bad piece of trail just this side of the turn," he remarked
+stentoriously, at the same time flinging an eloquent glance at the
+demijohn.  "Ice rotten from the springs and no sign till you're into
+it."  Turning to the woman by the stove, "How're you feeling, Blanche?"
+
+"Tony," she responded, stretching her body lazily and redisposing her
+feet; "though my legs ain't as limber as when we pulled out."
+
+Looking to his host for consent, Cornell tilted the demijohn over his
+arm and partly filled the four tin mugs and an empty jelly glass.
+
+"Wot's the matter with a toddy?" the Virgin broke in; "or a punch?"
+
+"Got any lime juice?" she demanded of Corliss.
+
+"You 'ave?  Jolly!"  She directed her dark eyes towards Del.  "'Ere,
+you, cookie!  Trot out your mixing-pan and sling the kettle for 'ot
+water.  Come on!  All hands!  Jake's treat, and I'll show you 'ow!  Any
+sugar, Mr. Corliss?  And nutmeg?  Cinnamon, then?  O.K.  It'll do.
+Lively now, cookie!"
+
+"Ain't she a peach?" Cornell confided to Vance, watching her with
+mellow eyes as she stirred the steaming brew.
+
+But the Virgin directed her attentions to the engineer.  "Don't mind
+'im, sir," she advised.  "'E's more'n arf-gorn a'ready, a-'itting the
+jug every blessed stop."
+
+"Now, my dear--" Jake protested.
+
+"Don't you my-dear me," she sniffed.  "I don't like you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Cos . . ."  She ladled the punch carefully into the mugs and
+meditated.  "Cos you chew tobacco.  Cos you're whiskery.  Wot I take to
+is smooth-faced young chaps."
+
+"Don't take any stock in her nonsense," the Fraction King warned, "She
+just does it a-purpose to get me mad."
+
+"Now then!" she commanded, sharply.  "Step up to your licker!  'Ere's
+'ow!"
+
+"What'll it be?" cried Blanche from the stove.
+
+The elevated mugs wavered and halted.
+
+"The Queen, Gawd bless 'er!" the Virgin toasted promptly.
+
+"And Bill!" Del Bishop interrupted.
+
+Again the mugs wavered.
+
+"Bill 'oo?" the Virgin asked, suspiciously.
+
+"McKinley."
+
+She favored him with a smile.  "Thank you, cookie, you're a trump.
+Now!  'Ere's a go, gents!  Take it standing.  The Queen, Gawd bless
+'er, and Bill McKinley!"
+
+"Bottoms up!" thundered Jake Cornell, and the mugs smote the table with
+clanging rims.
+
+Vance Corliss discovered himself amused and interested.  According to
+Frona, he mused ironically,--this was learning life, was adding to his
+sum of human generalizations.  The phrase was hers, and he rolled it
+over a couple of times.  Then, again, her engagement with St. Vincent
+crept into his thought, and he charmed the Virgin by asking her to
+sing.  But she was coy, and only after Bishop had rendered the several
+score stanzas of "Flying Cloud" did she comply.  Her voice, in a weakly
+way, probably registered an octave and a half; below that point it
+underwent strange metamorphoses, while on the upper levels it was
+devious and rickety.  Nevertheless she sang "Take Back Your Gold" with
+touching effect, which brought a fiery moisture into the eyes of the
+Fraction King, who listened greedily, for the time being experiencing
+unwonted ethical yearnings.
+
+The applause was generous, followed immediately by Bishop, who toasted
+the singer as the "Enchantress of Bow Bells," to the reverberating
+"bottoms up!" of Jake Cornell.
+
+
+Two hours later, Frona Welse rapped.  It was a sharp, insistent rap,
+penetrating the din within and bringing Corliss to the door.
+
+She gave a glad little cry when she saw who it was.  "Oh; it is you,
+Vance!  I didn't know you lived here."
+
+He shook hands and blocked the doorway with his body.  Behind him the
+Virgin was laughing and Jake Cornell  roaring:
+
+  "Oh, cable this message along the track;
+  The Prod's out West, but he's coming back;
+  Put plenty of veal for one on the rack,
+    Trolla lala, la la la, la la!"
+
+
+"What is it?" Vance questioned.  "Anything up?"
+
+"I think you might ask me in."  There was a hint of reproach in Frona's
+voice, and of haste.  "I blundered through the ice, and my feet are
+freezing."
+
+"O Gawd!" in the exuberant tones of the Virgin, came whirling over
+Vance's shoulder, and the voices of Blanche and Bishop joining in a
+laugh against Cornell, and that worthy's vociferous protestations.  It
+seemed to him that all the blood of his body had rushed into his face.
+"But you can't come in, Frona.  Don't you hear them?"
+
+"But I must," she insisted.  "My feet are freezing."
+
+With a gesture of resignation he stepped aside and closed the door
+after her.  Coming suddenly in from the darkness, she hesitated a
+moment, but in that moment recovered her sight and took in the scene.
+The air was thick with tobacco smoke, and the odor of it, in the close
+room, was sickening to one fresh from the pure outside.  On the table a
+column of steam was ascending from the big mixing-pan.  The Virgin,
+fleeing before Cornell, was defending herself with a long mustard
+spoon.  Evading him and watching her chance, she continually daubed his
+nose and cheeks with the yellow smear.  Blanche had twisted about from
+the stove to see the fun, and Del Bishop, with a mug at rest half-way
+to his lips, was applauding the successive strokes.  The faces of all
+were flushed.
+
+Vance leaned nervelessly against the door.  The whole situation seemed
+so unthinkably impossible.  An insane desire to laugh came over him,
+which resolved itself into a coughing fit.  But Frona, realizing her
+own pressing need by the growing absence of sensation in her feet,
+stepped forward.
+
+"Hello, Del!" she called.
+
+The mirth froze on his face at the familiar sound and he slowly and
+unwilling turned his head to meet her.  She had slipped the hood of her
+parka back, and her face, outlined against the dark fur, rosy with the
+cold and bright, was like a shaft of the sun shot into the murk of a
+boozing-ken.  They all knew her, for who did not know Jacob Welse's
+daughter?  The Virgin dropped the mustard-spoon with a startled shriek,
+while Cornell, passing a dazed hand across his yellow markings and
+consummating the general smear, collapsed on the nearest stool.
+Cariboo Blanche alone retained her self-possession, and laughed softly.
+
+Bishop managed to articulate "Hello!" but was unable to stave off the
+silence which settled down.
+
+Frona waited a second, and then said, "Good-evening, all."
+
+"This way."  Vance had recovered himself, and seated her by the stove
+opposite Blanche.  "Better get your things off quickly, and be careful
+of the heat.  I'll see what I can find for you."
+
+"Some cold water, please," she asked.  "It will take the frost out.
+Del will get it."
+
+"I hope it is not serious?"
+
+"No."  She shook her head and smiled up to him, at the same time
+working away at her ice-coated moccasins.  "There hasn't been time for
+more than surface-freezing.  At the worst the skin will peel off."
+
+An unearthly silence brooded in the cabin, broken only by Bishop
+filling a basin from the water-bucket, and by Corliss seeking out his
+smallest and daintiest house-moccasins and his warmest socks.
+
+Frona, rubbing her feet vigorously, paused and looked up.  "Don't let
+me chill the festivities just because I'm cold," she laughed.  "Please
+go on."
+
+Jake Cornell straightened up and cleared his throat inanely, and the
+Virgin looked over-dignified; but Blanche came over and took the towel
+out of Frona's hands.
+
+"I wet my feet in the same place," she said, kneeling down and bringing
+a glow to the frosted feet.
+
+"I suppose you can manage some sort of a fit with them.  Here!"  Vance
+tossed over the house-moccasins and woollen wrappings, which the two
+women, with low laughs and confidential undertones, proceeded to
+utilize.
+
+"But what in the world were you doing on trail, alone, at this time of
+night?" Vance asked.  In his heart he was marvelling at the coolness
+and pluck with which she was carrying off the situation.
+
+"I know beforehand that you will censure me," she replied, helping
+Blanche arrange the wet gear over the fire.  "I was at Mrs. Stanton's;
+but first, you must know, Miss Mortimer and I are staying at the
+Pently's for a week.  Now, to start fresh again.  I intended to leave
+Mrs. Stanton's before dark; but her baby got into the kerosene, her
+husband had gone down to Dawson, and--well, we weren't sure of the baby
+up to half an hour ago.  She wouldn't hear of me returning alone; but
+there was nothing to fear; only I had not expected soft ice in such a
+snap."
+
+"How'd you fix the kid?" Del asked, intent on keeping the talk going
+now that it had started.
+
+"Chewing tobacco."  And when the laughter had subsided, she went on:
+"There wasn't any mustard, and it was the best I could think of.
+Besides, Matt McCarthy saved my life with it once, down at Dyea when I
+had the croup.  But you were singing when I came in," she suggested.
+"Do go on."
+
+Jake Cornell hawed prodigiously.   "And I got done."
+
+"Then you, Del.  Sing 'Flying Cloud' as you used to coming down the
+river."
+
+"Oh, 'e 'as!" said the Virgin.
+
+"Then you sing.  I am sure you do."
+
+She smiled into the Virgin's eyes, and that lady delivered herself of a
+coster ballad with more art than she was aware.  The chill of Frona's
+advent was quickly dissipated, and song and toast and merriment went
+round again.  Nor was Frona above touching lips to the jelly glass in
+fellowship; and she contributed her quota by singing "Annie Laurie" and
+"Ben Bolt."  Also, but privily, she watched the drink saturating the
+besotted souls of Cornell and the Virgin.  It was an experience, and
+she was glad of it, though sorry in a way for Corliss, who played the
+host lamely.
+
+But he had little need of pity.  "Any other woman--" he said to
+himself a score of times, looking at Frona and trying to picture
+numerous women he had known by his mother's teapot, knocking at the
+door and coming in as Frona had done.  Then, again, it was only
+yesterday that it would have hurt him, Blanche's rubbing her feet; but
+now he gloried in Frona's permitting it, and his heart went out in a
+more kindly way to Blanche.  Perhaps it was the elevation of the
+liquor, but he seemed to discover new virtues in her rugged face.
+
+Frona had put on her dried moccasins and risen to her feet, and was
+listening patiently to Jake Cornell, who hiccoughed a last incoherent
+toast.
+
+"To the--hic--man," he rumbled, cavernously, "the man--hic--that
+made--that made--"
+
+"The blessed country," volunteered the Virgin.
+
+"True, my dear--hic.  To the man that made the blessed country.
+To--hic--to Jacob Welse!"
+
+"And a rider!" Blanche cried.  "To Jacob Welse's daughter!"
+
+"Ay!  Standing!  And bottoms up!"
+
+"Oh! she's a jolly good fellow," Del led off, the drink ruddying his
+cheek.
+
+"I'd like to shake hands with you, just once," Blanche said in a low
+voice, while the rest were chorusing.
+
+Frona slipped her mitten, which she had already put on, and the
+pressure was firm between them.
+
+"No," she said to Corliss, who had put on his cap and was tying the
+ear-flaps; "Blanche tells me the Pently's are only half a mile from
+here.  The trail is straight.  I'll not hear of any one accompanying me.
+
+"No!"  This time she spoke so authoritatively that he tossed his cap
+into the bunk.  "Good-night, all!" she called, sweeping the roisterers
+with a smile.
+
+But Corliss saw her to the door and stepped outside.  She glanced up to
+him.  Her hood was pulled only partly up, and her face shone alluringly
+under the starlight.
+
+"I--Frona . . .  I wish--"
+
+"Don't be alarmed," she whispered.  "I'll not tell on you, Vance."
+
+He saw the mocking glint in her eyes, but tried to go on.  "I wish to
+explain just how--"
+
+"No need.  I understand.  But at the same time I must confess I do not
+particularly admire your taste--"
+
+"Frona!" The evident pain in his voice reached her.
+
+"Oh, you big foolish!" she laughed.  "Don't I know?  Didn't Blanche
+tell me she wet her feet?"
+
+Corliss bowed his head.  "Truly, Frona, you are the most consistent
+woman I ever met.  Furthermore," with a straightening of his form and a
+dominant assertion in his voice, "this is not the last."
+
+She tried to stop him, but he continued.  "I feel, I know that things
+will turn out differently.  To fling your own words back at you, all
+the factors have not been taken into consideration.  As for St. Vincent
+. . . I'll have you yet.  For that matter, now could not be too soon!"
+
+He flashed out hungry arms to her, but she read quicker than he moved,
+and, laughing, eluded him and ran lightly down the trail.
+
+"Come back, Frona!  Come back!" he called, "I am sorry."
+
+"No, you're not," came the answer.  "And I'd be sorry if you were.
+Good-night."
+
+He watched her merge into the shadows, then entered the cabin.  He had
+utterly forgotten the scene within, and at the first glance it startled
+him.  Cariboo Blanche was crying softly to herself.  Her eyes were
+luminous and moist, and, as he looked, a lone tear stole down her
+cheek.  Bishop's face had gone serious.  The Virgin had sprawled head
+and shoulders on the table, amid overturned mugs and dripping lees, and
+Cornell was tittubating over her, hiccoughing, and repeating vacuously,
+"You're all right, my dear.  You're all right."
+
+But the Virgin was inconsolable.  "O Gawd!  Wen I think on wot is, an'
+was . . .  an' no fault of mine.  No fault of mine, I tell you!" she
+shrieked with quick fierceness.  "'Ow was I born, I ask?  Wot was my
+old man?  A drunk, a chronic.  An' my old woman?  Talk of Whitechapel!
+'Oo guv a cent for me, or 'ow I was dragged up?  'Oo cared a rap, I
+say?  'Oo cared a rap?"
+
+A sudden revulsion came over Corliss.  "Hold your tongue!" he ordered.
+
+The Virgin raised her head, her loosened hair streaming about her like
+a Fury's.  "Wot is she?" she sneered.  "Sweet'eart?"
+
+Corliss whirled upon her savagely, face white and voice shaking with
+passion.
+
+The Virgin cowered down and instinctively threw up her hands to protect
+her face.  "Don't 'it me, sir!" she whined.  "Don't 'it me!"
+
+He was frightened at himself, and waited till he could gather control.
+"Now," he said, calmly, "get into your things and go.  All of you.
+Clear out.  Vamose."
+
+"You're no man, you ain't," the Virgin snarled, discovering that
+physical assault was not imminent.
+
+But Corliss herded her particularly to the door, and gave no heed.
+
+"A-turning ladies out!" she sniffed, with a stumble over the threshold;
+
+"No offence," Jake Cornell muttered, pacifically; "no offence."
+
+"Good-night.  Sorry," Corliss said to Blanche, with the shadow of a
+forgiving smile, as she passed out.
+
+
+"You're a toff!  That's wot you are, a bloomin' toff!" the Virgin
+howled back as he shut the door.
+
+He looked blankly at Del Bishop and surveyed the sodden confusion on
+the table.  Then he walked over and threw himself down on his bunk.
+Bishop leaned an elbow on the table and pulled at his wheezy pipe.  The
+lamp smoked, flickered, and went out; but still he remained, filling
+his pipe again and again and striking endless matches.
+
+"Del!  Are you awake?" Corliss called at last.
+
+Del grunted.
+
+"I was a cur to turn them out into the snow.  I am ashamed."
+
+"Sure," was the affirmation.
+
+A long silence followed.  Del knocked the ashes out and raised up.
+
+"'Sleep?" he called.
+
+There was no reply, and he walked to the bunk softly and pulled the
+blankets over the engineer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+"Yes; what does it all mean?"  Corliss stretched lazily, and cocked up
+his feet on the table.  He was not especially interested, but Colonel
+Trethaway persisted in talking seriously.
+
+"That's it!  The very thing--the old and ever young demand which man
+slaps into the face of the universe."  The colonel searched among the
+scraps in his note-book.  "See," holding up a soiled slip of typed
+paper, "I copied this out years ago.  Listen.  'What a monstrous
+spectre is this man, this disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting
+alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding,
+growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown up with hair
+like grass, fitted with eyes that glitter in his face; a thing to set
+children screaming.  Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many
+hardships, filled with desires so incommensurate and so inconsistent;
+savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey
+upon his fellow-lives.  Infinitely childish, often admirably valiant,
+often touchingly kind; sitting down to debate of right or wrong and the
+attributes of the deity; rising up to battle for an egg or die for an
+idea!'
+
+"And all to what end?" he demanded, hotly, throwing down the paper,
+"this disease of the agglutinated dust?"
+
+Corliss yawned in reply.  He had been on trail all day and was yearning
+for between-blankets.
+
+"Here am I, Colonel Trethaway, modestly along in years, fairly well
+preserved, a place in the community, a comfortable bank account, no
+need to ever exert myself again, yet enduring life bleakly and working
+ridiculously with a zest worthy of a man half my years.  And to what
+end?  I can only eat so much, smoke so much, sleep so much, and this
+tail-dump of earth men call Alaska is the worst of all possible places
+in the matter of grub, tobacco, and blankets."
+
+"But it is the living strenuously which holds you," Corliss interjected.
+
+"Frona's philosophy," the colonel sneered.
+
+"And my philosophy, and yours."
+
+"And of the agglutinated dust--"
+
+"Which is quickened with a passion you do not take into account,--the
+passion of duty, of race, of God!"
+
+"And the compensation?" Trethaway demanded.
+
+"Each breath you draw.  The Mayfly lives an hour."
+
+"I don't see it."
+
+"Blood and sweat!  Blood and sweat!  You cried that after the rough and
+tumble in the Opera House, and every word of it was receipt in full."
+
+"Frona's philosophy."
+
+"And yours and mine."
+
+The colonel threw up his shoulders, and after a pause confessed.  "You
+see, try as I will, I can't make a pessimist out of myself.  We are all
+compensated, and I more fully than most men.  What end? I asked, and
+the answer forthcame: Since the ultimate end is beyond us, then the
+immediate.  More compensation, here and now!"
+
+"Quite hedonistic."
+
+"And rational.  I shall look to it at once.  I can buy grub and
+blankets for a score; I can eat and sleep for only one; ergo, why not
+for two?"
+
+Corliss took his feet down and sat up.  "In other words?"
+
+"I shall get married, and--give the community a shock.  Communities
+like shocks.  That's one of their compensations for being
+agglutinative."
+
+"I can't think of but one woman," Corliss essayed tentatively, putting
+out his hand.
+
+Trethaway shook it slowly.  "It is she."
+
+Corliss let go, and misgiving shot into his face.  "But St. Vincent?"
+
+"Is your problem, not mine."
+
+"Then Lucile--?"
+
+"Certainly not.  She played a quixotic little game of her own and
+botched it beautifully."
+
+"I--I do not understand."  Corliss brushed his brows in a dazed sort of
+way.
+
+Trethaway parted his lips in a superior smile.  "It is not necessary
+that you should.  The question is, Will you stand up with me?"
+
+"Surely.  But what a confoundedly long way around you took.  It is not
+your usual method."
+
+"Nor was it with her," the colonel declared, twisting his moustache
+proudly.
+
+
+A captain of the North-West Mounted Police, by virtue of his
+magisterial office, may perform marriages in time of stress as well as
+execute exemplary justice.  So Captain Alexander received a call from
+Colonel Trethaway, and after he left jotted down an engagement for the
+next morning.  Then the impending groom went to see Frona.  Lucile did
+not make the request, he hastened to explain, but--well, the fact was
+she did not know any women, and, furthermore, he (the colonel) knew
+whom Lucile would like to ask, did she dare.  So he did it upon his own
+responsibility.  And coming as a surprise, he knew it would be a great
+joy to her.
+
+Frona was taken aback by the suddenness of it.  Only the other day, it
+was, that Lucile had made a plea to her for St. Vincent, and now it was
+Colonel Trethaway!  True, there had been a false quantity somewhere,
+but now it seemed doubly false.  Could it be, after all, that Lucile
+was mercenary?  These thoughts crowded upon her swiftly, with the
+colonel anxiously watching her face the while.  She knew she must
+answer quickly, yet was distracted by an involuntary admiration for his
+bravery.  So she followed, perforce, the lead of her heart, and
+consented.
+
+Yet the whole thing was rather strained when the four of them came
+together, next day, in Captain Alexander's private office.  There was a
+gloomy chill about it.  Lucile seemed ready to cry, and showed a
+repressed perturbation quite unexpected of her; while, try as she
+would, Frona could not call upon her usual sympathy to drive away the
+coldness which obtruded intangibly between them.  This, in turn, had a
+consequent effect on Vance, and gave a certain distance to his manner
+which forced him out of touch even with the colonel.
+
+Colonel Trethaway seemed to have thrown twenty years off his erect
+shoulders, and the discrepancy in the match which Frona had felt
+vanished as she looked at him.  "He has lived the years well," she
+thought, and prompted mysteriously, almost with vague apprehension she
+turned her eyes to Corliss.  But if the groom had thrown off twenty
+years, Vance was not a whit behind.  Since their last meeting he had
+sacrificed his brown moustache to the frost, and his smooth face,
+smitten with health and vigor, looked uncommonly boyish; and yet,
+withal, the naked upper lip advertised a stiffness and resolution
+hitherto concealed.  Furthermore, his features portrayed a growth, and
+his eyes, which had been softly firm, were now firm with the added
+harshness or hardness which is bred of coping with things and coping
+quickly,--the stamp of executiveness which is pressed upon men who do,
+and upon all men who do, whether they drive dogs, buck the sea, or
+dictate the policies of empires.
+
+When the simple ceremony was over, Frona kissed Lucile; but Lucile felt
+that there was a subtle something wanting, and her eyes filled with
+unshed tears.  Trethaway, who had felt the aloofness from the start,
+caught an opportunity with Frona while Captain Alexander and Corliss
+were being pleasant to Mrs. Trethaway.
+
+"What's the matter, Frona?" the colonel demanded, bluntly.  "I hope you
+did not come under protest.  I am sorry, not for you, because lack of
+frankness deserves nothing, but for Lucile.  It is not fair to her."
+
+"There has been a lack of frankness throughout."  Her voice trembled.
+"I tried my best,--I thought I could do better,--but I cannot feign
+what I do not feel.  I am sorry, but I . . . I am disappointed.  No, I
+cannot explain, and to you least of all."
+
+"Let's be above-board, Frona.  St. Vincent's concerned?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"And I can put my hand right on the spot.  First place," he looked to
+the side and saw Lucile stealing an anxious glance to him,--"first
+place, only the other day she gave you a song about St. Vincent.
+Second place, and therefore, you think her heart's not in this present
+proposition; that she doesn't care a rap for me; in short, that she's
+marrying me for reinstatement and spoils.  Isn't that it?"
+
+"And isn't it enough?  Oh, I am disappointed, Colonel Trethaway,
+grievously, in her, in you, in myself."
+
+"Don't be a fool!  I like you too well to see you make yourself one.
+The play's been too quick, that is all.  Your eye lost it.  Listen.
+We've kept it quiet, but she's in with the elect on French Hill.  Her
+claim's prospected the richest of the outfit.  Present indication half
+a million at least.  In her own name, no strings attached.  Couldn't
+she take that and go anywhere in the world and reinstate herself?  And
+for that matter, you might presume that I am marrying her for spoils.
+Frona, she cares for me, and in your ear, she's too good for me.  My
+hope is that the future will make up.  But never mind that--haven't got
+the time now.
+
+"You consider her affection sudden, eh?  Let me tell you we've been
+growing into each other from the time I came into the country, and with
+our eyes open.  St. Vincent?  Pshaw!  I knew it all the time.  She got
+it into her head that the whole of him wasn't worth a little finger of
+you, and she tried to break things up.  You'll never know how she
+worked with him.  I told her she didn't know the Welse, and she said
+so, too, after.  So there it is; take it or leave it."
+
+"But what do you think about St. Vincent?"
+
+"What I think is neither here nor there; but I'll tell you honestly
+that I back her judgment.  But that's not the point.  What are you
+going to do about it? about her? now?"
+
+She did not answer, but went back to the waiting group.  Lucile saw her
+coming and watched her face.
+
+"He's been telling you--?"
+
+"That I am a fool," Frona answered.  "And I think I am."  And with a
+smile, "I take it on faith that I am, anyway.  I--I can't reason it out
+just now, but. . ."
+
+Captain Alexander discovered a prenuptial joke just about then, and led
+the way over to the stove to crack it upon the colonel, and Vance went
+along to see fair play.
+
+"It's the first time," Lucile was saying, "and it means more to me, so
+much more, than to . . . most women.  I am afraid.  It is a terrible
+thing for me to do.  But I do love him, I do!"  And when the joke had
+been duly digested and they came back, she was sobbing, "Dear, dear
+Frona."
+
+It was just the moment, better than he could have chosen; and capped
+and mittened, without knocking, Jacob Welse came in.
+
+"The uninvited guest," was his greeting.  "Is it all over?  So?"  And
+he swallowed Lucile up in his huge bearskin.  "Colonel, your hand, and
+your pardon for my intruding, and your regrets for not giving me the
+word.  Come, out with them!  Hello, Corliss!  Captain Alexander, a good
+day."
+
+"What have I done?" Frona wailed, received the bear-hug, and managed to
+press his hand till it almost hurt.
+
+"Had to back the game," he whispered; and this time his hand did hurt.
+
+"Now, colonel, I don't know what your plans are, and I don't care.
+Call them off.  I've got a little spread down to the house, and the
+only honest case of champagne this side of Circle.  Of course, you're
+coming, Corliss, and--"  His eye roved past Captain Alexander with
+hardly a pause.
+
+"Of course," came the answer like a flash, though the Chief Magistrate
+of the Northwest had had time to canvass the possible results of such
+unofficial action.  "Got a hack?"
+
+Jacob Welse laughed and held up a moccasined foot.  "Walking
+be--chucked!"  The captain started impulsively towards the door.  "I'll
+have the sleds up before you're ready.  Three of them, and bells
+galore!"
+
+So Trethaway's forecast was correct, and Dawson vindicated its
+agglutinativeness by rubbing its eyes when three sleds, with three
+scarlet-tuniced policemen swinging the whips, tore down its main
+street; and it rubbed its eyes again when it saw the occupants thereof.
+
+
+"We shall live quietly," Lucile told Frona.  "The Klondike is not all
+the world, and the best is yet to come."
+
+But Jacob Welse said otherwise.  "We've got to make this thing go," he
+said to Captain Alexander, and Captain Alexander said that he was
+unaccustomed to backing out.
+
+Mrs. Schoville emitted preliminary thunders, marshalled the other
+women, and became chronically seismic and unsafe.
+
+Lucile went nowhere save to Frona's.  But Jacob Welse, who rarely went
+anywhere, was often to be found by Colonel Trethaway's fireside, and
+not only was he to be found there, but he usually brought somebody
+along.  "Anything on hand this evening?" he was wont to say on casual
+meeting.  "No?  Then come along with me."  Sometimes he said it with
+lamb-like innocence, sometimes with a challenge brooding under his
+bushy brows, and rarely did he fail to get his man.  These men had
+wives, and thus were the germs of dissolution sown in the ranks of the
+opposition.
+
+Then, again, at Colonel Trethaway's there was something to be found
+besides weak tea and small talk; and the correspondents, engineers, and
+gentlemen rovers kept the trail well packed in that direction, though
+it was the Kings, to a man, who first broke the way.  So the Trethaway
+cabin became the centre of things, and, backed commercially,
+financially, and officially, it could not fail to succeed socially.
+
+The only bad effect of all this was to make the lives of Mrs. Schoville
+and divers others of her sex more monotonous, and to cause them to lose
+faith in certain hoary and inconsequent maxims.  Furthermore, Captain
+Alexander, as highest official, was a power in the land, and Jacob
+Welse was the Company, and there was a superstition extant concerning
+the unwisdom of being on indifferent terms with the Company.  And the
+time was not long till probably a bare half-dozen remained in outer
+cold, and they were considered a warped lot, anyway.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Quite an exodus took place in Dawson in the spring.  Men, because they
+had made stakes, and other men, because they had made none, bought up
+the available dogs and rushed out for Dyea over the last ice.
+Incidentally, it was discovered that Dave Harney possessed most of
+these dogs.
+
+"Going out?" Jacob Welse asked him on a day when the meridian sun for
+the first time felt faintly warm to the naked skin.
+
+"Well, I calkilate not.  I'm clearin' three dollars a pair on the
+moccasins I cornered, to say nothing but saw wood on the boots.  Say,
+Welse, not that my nose is out of joint, but you jest cinched me
+everlastin' on sugar, didn't you?"
+
+Jacob Welse smiled.
+
+"And by the Jimcracky I'm squared!  Got any rubber boots?"
+
+"No; went out of stock early in the winter."  Dave snickered slowly.
+"And I'm the pertickler party that hocus-pocused 'em."
+
+"Not you.  I gave special orders to the clerks.  They weren't sold in
+lots."
+
+"No more they wa'n't.  One man to the pair and one pair to the man, and
+a couple of hundred of them; but it was my dust they chucked into the
+scales an nobody else's.  Drink?  Don't mind.  Easy!  Put up your sack.
+Call it rebate, for I kin afford it. . .  Goin' out?  Not this year, I
+guess.  Wash-up's comin'."
+
+A strike on Henderson the middle of April, which promised to be
+sensational, drew St. Vincent to Stewart River.  And a little later,
+Jacob Welse, interested on Gallagher Gulch and with an eye riveted on
+the copper mines of White River, went up into the same district, and
+with him went Frona, for it was more vacation than business.  In the
+mean time, Corliss and Bishop, who had been on trail for a month or
+more running over the Mayo and McQuestion Country, rounded up on the
+left fork of Henderson, where a block of claims waited to be surveyed.
+
+But by May, spring was so far advanced that travel on the creeks became
+perilous, and on the last of the thawing ice the miners travelled down
+to the bunch of islands below the mouth of the Stewart, where they went
+into temporary quarters or crowded the hospitality of those who
+possessed cabins.  Corliss and Bishop located on Split-up Island (so
+called through the habit parties from the Outside had of dividing there
+and going several ways), where Tommy McPherson was comfortably
+situated.  A couple of days later, Jacob Welse and Frona arrived from a
+hazardous trip out of White River, and pitched tent on the high ground
+at the upper end of Split-up.  A few _chechaquos_, the first of the
+spring rush, strung in exhausted and went into camp against the
+breaking of the river.  Also, there were still men going out who,
+barred by the rotten ice, came ashore to build poling-boats and await
+the break-up or to negotiate with the residents for canoes.  Notably
+among these was the Baron Courbertin.
+
+"Ah!  Excruciating!  Magnificent!  Is it not?"
+
+So Frona first ran across him on the following day.  "What?" she asked,
+giving him her hand.
+
+"You!  You!" doffing his cap.  "It is a delight!"
+
+"I am sure--" she began.
+
+"No!  No!"  He shook his curly mop warmly.  "It is not you.  See!"  He
+turned to a Peterborough, for which McPherson had just mulcted him of
+thrice its value.  "The canoe!  Is it not--not--what you Yankees
+call--a bute?"
+
+"Oh, the canoe," she repeated, with a falling inflection of chagrin.
+
+"No!  No!  Pardon!"  He stamped angrily upon the ground.  "It is not
+so.  It is not you.  It is not the canoe.  It is--ah!  I have it now!
+It is your promise.  One day, do you not remember, at Madame
+Schoville's, we talked of the canoe, and of my ignorance, which was
+sad, and you promised, you said--"
+
+"I would give you your first lesson?"
+
+"And is it not delightful?  Listen!  Do you not hear?  The
+rippling--ah! the rippling!--deep down at the heart of things!  Soon
+will the water run free.  Here is the canoe!  Here we meet!  The first
+lesson!  Delightful!  Delightful!"
+
+The next island below Split-up was known as Roubeau's Island, and was
+separated from the former by a narrow back-channel.  Here, when the
+bottom had about dropped out of the trail, and with the dogs swimming
+as often as not, arrived St. Vincent--the last man to travel the winter
+trail.  He went into the cabin of John Borg, a taciturn, gloomy
+individual, prone to segregate himself from his kind.  It was the
+mischance of St. Vincent's life that of all cabins he chose Borg's for
+an abiding-place against the break-up.
+
+"All right," the man said, when questioned by him.  "Throw your
+blankets into the corner.  Bella'll clear the litter out of the spare
+bunk."
+
+Not till evening did he speak again, and then, "You're big enough to do
+your own cooking.  When the woman's done with the stove you can fire
+away."
+
+The woman, or Bella, was a comely Indian girl, young, and the prettiest
+St. Vincent had run across.  Instead of the customary greased
+swarthiness of the race, her skin was clear and of a light-bronze tone,
+and her features less harsh, more felicitously curved, than those
+common to the blood.
+
+After supper, Borg, both elbows on table and huge misshapen hands
+supporting chin and jaws, sat puffing stinking Siwash tobacco and
+staring straight before him.  It would have seemed ruminative, the
+stare, had his eyes been softer or had he blinked; as it was, his face
+was set and trance-like.
+
+"Have you been in the country long?" St. Vincent asked, endeavoring to
+make conversation.
+
+Borg turned his sullen-black eyes upon him, and seemed to look into him
+and through him and beyond him, and, still regarding him, to have
+forgotten all about him.  It was as though he pondered some great and
+weighty matter--probably his sins, the correspondent mused nervously,
+rolling himself a cigarette.  When the yellow cube had dissipated
+itself in curling fragrance, and he was deliberating about rolling a
+second, Borg suddenly spoke.
+
+"Fifteen years," he said, and returned to his tremendous cogitation.
+
+Thereat, and for half an hour thereafter, St. Vincent, fascinated,
+studied his inscrutable countenance.  To begin with, it was a massive
+head, abnormal and top-heavy, and its only excuse for being was the
+huge bull-throat which supported it.  It had been cast in a mould of
+elemental generousness, and everything about it partook of the
+asymmetrical crudeness of the elemental.  The hair, rank of growth,
+thick and unkempt, matted itself here and there into curious splotches
+of gray; and again, grinning at age, twisted itself into curling locks
+of lustreless black--locks of unusual thickness, like crooked fingers,
+heavy and solid.  The shaggy whiskers, almost bare in places, and in
+others massing into bunchgrass-like clumps, were plentifully splashed
+with gray.  They rioted monstrously over his face and fell raggedly to
+his chest, but failed to hide the great hollowed cheeks or the twisted
+mouth.  The latter was thin-lipped and cruel, but cruel only in a
+passionless sort of way.  But the forehead was the anomaly,--the
+anomaly required to complete the irregularity of the face.  For it was
+a perfect forehead, full and broad, and rising superbly strong to its
+high dome.  It was as the seat and bulwark of some vast intelligence;
+omniscience might have brooded there.
+
+Bella, washing the dishes and placing them away on the shelf behind
+Borg's back, dropped a heavy tin cup.  The cabin was very still, and
+the sharp rattle came without warning.  On the instant, with a brute
+roar, the chair was overturned and Borg was on his feet, eyes blazing
+and face convulsed.  Bella gave an inarticulate, animal-like cry of
+fear and cowered at his feet.  St. Vincent felt his hair bristling, and
+an uncanny chill, like a jet of cold air, played up and down his spine.
+Then Borg righted the chair and sank back into his old position, chin
+on hands and brooding ponderously.  Not a word was spoken, and Bella
+went on unconcernedly with the dishes, while St. Vincent rolled, a
+shaky cigarette and wondered if it had been a dream.
+
+Jacob Welse laughed when the correspondent told him.  "Just his way,"
+he said; "for his ways are like his looks,--unusual.  He's an
+unsociable beast.  Been in the country more years than he can number
+acquaintances.  Truth to say, I don't think he has a friend in all
+Alaska, not even among the Indians, and he's chummed thick with them
+off and on.  'Johnny Sorehead,' they call him, but it might as well be
+'Johnny Break-um-head,' for he's got a quick temper and a rough hand.
+Temper!  Some little misunderstanding popped up between him and the
+agent at Arctic City.  He was in the right, too,--agent's mistake,--but
+he tabooed the Company on the spot and lived on straight meat for a
+year.  Then I happened to run across him at Tanana Station, and after
+due explanations he consented to buy from us again."
+
+"Got the girl from up the head-waters of the White," Bill Brown told
+St. Vincent.  "Welse thinks he's pioneering in that direction, but Borg
+could give him cards and spades on it and then win out.  He's been over
+the ground years ago.  Yes, strange sort of a chap.  Wouldn't hanker to
+be bunk-mates with him."
+
+But St. Vincent did not mind the eccentricities of the man, for he
+spent most of his time on Split-up Island with Frona and the Baron.
+One day, however, and innocently, he ran foul of him.  Two Swedes,
+hunting tree-squirrels from the other end of Roubeau Island, had
+stopped to ask for matches and to yarn a while in the warm sunshine of
+the clearing.  St. Vincent and Borg were accommodating them, the latter
+for the most part in meditative monosyllables.  Just to the rear, by
+the cabin-door, Bella was washing clothes.  The tub was a cumbersome
+home-made affair, and half-full of water, was more than a fair match
+for an ordinary woman.  The correspondent noticed her struggling with
+it, and stepped back quickly to her aid.
+
+With the tub between them, they proceeded to carry it to one side in
+order to dump it where the ground drained from the cabin.  St. Vincent
+slipped in the thawing snow and the soapy water splashed up.  Then
+Bella slipped, and then they both slipped.  Bella giggled and laughed,
+and St. Vincent laughed back.  The spring was in the air and in their
+blood, and it was very good to be alive.  Only a wintry heart could
+deny a smile on such a day.  Bella slipped again, tried to recover,
+slipped with the other foot, and sat down abruptly.  Laughing
+gleefully, both of them, the correspondent caught her hands to pull her
+to her feet.  With a bound and a bellow, Borg was upon them.  Their
+hands were torn apart and St. Vincent thrust heavily backward.  He
+staggered for a couple of yards and almost fell.  Then the scene of the
+cabin was repeated.  Bella cowered and grovelled in the muck, and her
+lord towered wrathfully over her.
+
+"Look you," he said in stifled gutturals, turning to St. Vincent.  "You
+sleep in my cabin and you cook.  That is enough.  Let my woman alone."
+
+Things went on after that as though nothing had happened; St. Vincent
+gave Bella a wide berth and seemed to have forgotten her existence.
+But the Swedes went back to their end of the island, laughing at the
+trivial happening which was destined to be significant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Spring, smiting with soft, warm hands, had come like a miracle, and now
+lingered for a dreamy spell before bursting into full-blown summer.
+The snow had left the bottoms and valleys and nestled only on the north
+slopes of the ice-scarred ridges.  The glacial drip was already in
+evidence, and every creek in roaring spate.  Each day the sun rose
+earlier and stayed later.  It was now chill day by three o'clock and
+mellow twilight at nine.  Soon a golden circle would be drawn around
+the sky, and deep midnight become bright as high noon.  The willows and
+aspens had long since budded, and were now decking themselves in
+liveries of fresh young green, and the sap was rising in the pines.
+
+Mother nature had heaved her waking sigh and gone about her brief
+business.  Crickets sang of nights in the stilly cabins, and in the
+sunshine mosquitoes crept from out hollow logs and snug crevices among
+the rocks,--big, noisy, harmless fellows, that had procreated the year
+gone, lain frozen through the winter, and were now rejuvenated to buzz
+through swift senility to second death.  All sorts of creeping,
+crawling, fluttering life came forth from the warming earth and
+hastened to mature, reproduce, and cease.  Just a breath of balmy air,
+and then the long cold frost again--ah! they knew it well and lost no
+time.  Sand martins were driving their ancient tunnels into the soft
+clay banks, and robins singing on the spruce-garbed islands.  Overhead
+the woodpecker knocked insistently, and in the forest depths the
+partridge boom-boomed and strutted in virile glory.
+
+But in all this nervous haste the Yukon took no part.  For many a
+thousand miles it lay cold, unsmiling, dead.  Wild fowl, driving up
+from the south in wind-jamming wedges, halted, looked vainly for open
+water, and quested dauntlessly on into the north.  From bank to bank
+stretched the savage ice.  Here and there the water burst through and
+flooded over, but in the chill nights froze solidly as ever.  Tradition
+has it that of old time the Yukon lay unbroken through three long
+summers, and on the face of it there be traditions less easy of belief.
+
+So summer waited for open water, and the tardy Yukon took to stretching
+of days and cracking its stiff joints.  Now an air-hole ate into the
+ice, and ate and ate; or a fissure formed, and grew, and failed to
+freeze again.  Then the ice ripped from the shore and uprose bodily a
+yard.  But still the river was loth to loose its grip.  It was a slow
+travail, and man, used to nursing nature with pigmy skill, able to
+burst waterspouts and harness waterfalls, could avail nothing against
+the billions of frigid tons which refused to run down the hill to
+Bering Sea.
+
+On Split-up Island all were ready for the break-up.  Waterways have
+ever been first highways, and the Yukon was the sole highway in all the
+land.  So those bound up-river pitched their poling-boats and shod
+their poles with iron, and those bound down caulked their scows and
+barges and shaped spare sweeps with axe and drawing-knife.  Jacob Welse
+loafed and joyed in the utter cessation from work, and Frona joyed with
+him in that it was good.  But Baron Courbertin was in a fever at the
+delay.  His hot blood grew riotous after the long hibernation, and the
+warm sunshine dazzled him with warmer fancies.
+
+"Oh!  Oh!  It will never break!  Never!"  And he stood gazing at the
+surly ice and raining politely phrased anathema upon it.  "It is a
+conspiracy, poor La Bijou, a conspiracy!"  He caressed La Bijou like it
+were a horse, for so he had christened the glistening Peterborough
+canoe.
+
+Frona and St. Vincent laughed and preached him the gospel of patience,
+which he proceeded to tuck away into the deepest abysses of perdition
+till interrupted by Jacob Welse.
+
+"Look, Courbertin!  Over there, south of the bluff.  Do you make out
+anything?  Moving?"
+
+"Yes; a dog."
+
+"It moves too slowly for a dog.  Frona, get the glasses."
+
+Courbertin and St. Vincent sprang after them, but the latter knew their
+abiding-place and returned triumphant.  Jacob Welse put the binoculars
+to his eyes and gazed steadily across the river.  It was a sheer mile
+from the island to the farther bank, and the sunglare on the ice was a
+sore task to the vision.
+
+"It is a man."  He passed the glasses to the Baron and strained
+absently with his naked eyes.  "And something is up."
+
+"He creeps!" the baron exclaimed.  "The man creeps, he crawls, on hand
+and knee!  Look!  See!"  He thrust the glasses tremblingly into Frona's
+hands.
+
+Looking across the void of shimmering white, it was difficult to
+discern a dark object of such size when dimly outlined against an
+equally dark background of brush and earth.  But Frona could make the
+man out with fair distinctness; and as she grew accustomed to the
+strain she could distinguish each movement, and especially so when he
+came to a wind-thrown pine.  Sue watched painfully.  Twice, after
+tortuous effort, squirming and twisting, he failed in breasting the big
+trunk, and on the third attempt, after infinite exertion, he cleared it
+only to topple helplessly forward and fall on his face in the tangled
+undergrowth.
+
+"It is a man."  She turned the glasses over to St. Vincent.  "And he is
+crawling feebly.  He fell just then this side of the log."
+
+"Does he move?" Jacob Welse asked, and, on a shake of St. Vincent's
+head, brought his rifle from the tent.
+
+He fired six shots skyward in rapid succession.  "He moves!"  The
+correspondent followed him closely.  "He is crawling to the bank.  Ah!
+. . .  No; one moment . . . Yes!  He lies on the ground and raises his
+hat, or something, on a stick.  He is waving it." (Jacob Welse fired
+six more shots.)  "He waves again.  Now he has dropped it and lies
+quite still."
+
+All three looked inquiringly to Jacob Welse.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "How should I know?  A white man or an
+Indian; starvation most likely, or else he is injured."
+
+"But he may be dying," Frona pleaded, as though her father, who had
+done most things, could do all things.
+
+"We can do nothing."
+
+"Ah!  Terrible! terrible!"  The baron wrung his hands.  "Before our
+very eyes, and we can do nothing!  No!" he exclaimed, with swift
+resolution, "it shall not be!  I will cross the ice!"
+
+He would have started precipitately down the bank had not Jacob Welse
+caught his arm.
+
+"Not such a rush, baron.  Keep your head."
+
+"But--"
+
+"But nothing.  Does the man want food, or medicine, or what?  Wait a
+moment.  We will try it together."
+
+"Count me in," St. Vincent volunteered promptly, and Frona's eyes
+sparkled.
+
+While she made up a bundle of food in the tent, the men provided and
+rigged themselves with sixty or seventy feet of light rope.  Jacob
+Welse and St. Vincent made themselves fast to it at either end, and the
+baron in the middle.  He claimed the food as his portion, and strapped
+it to his broad shoulders.  Frona watched their progress from the bank.
+The first hundred yards were easy going, but she noticed at once the
+change when they had passed the limit of the fairly solid shore-ice.
+Her father led sturdily, feeling ahead and to the side with his staff
+and changing direction continually.
+
+St. Vincent, at the rear of the extended line, was the first to go
+through, but he fell with the pole thrust deftly across the opening and
+resting on the ice.  His head did not go under, though the current
+sucked powerfully, and the two men dragged him out after a sharp pull.
+Frona saw them consult together for a minute, with much pointing and
+gesticulating on the part of the baron, and then St. Vincent detach
+himself and turn shoreward.
+
+"Br-r-r-r," he shivered, coming up the bank to her.  "It's impossible."
+
+"But why didn't they come in?" she asked, a slight note of displeasure
+manifest in her voice.
+
+"Said they were going to make one more try, first.  That Courbertin is
+hot-headed, you know."
+
+"And my father just as bull-headed," she smiled.  "But hadn't you
+better change?  There are spare things in the tent."
+
+"Oh, no."  He threw himself down beside her.  "It's warm in the sun."
+
+For an hour they watched the two men, who had become mere specks of
+black in the distance; for they had managed to gain the middle of the
+river and at the same time had worked nearly a mile up-stream.  Frona
+followed them closely with the glasses, though often they were lost to
+sight behind the ice-ridges.
+
+"It was unfair of them," she heard St. Vincent complain, "to say they
+were only going to have one more try.  Otherwise I should not have
+turned back.  Yet they can't make it--absolutely impossible."
+
+"Yes . . .  No . . .  Yes!  They're turning back," she announced.  "But
+listen!  What is that?"
+
+A hoarse rumble, like distant thunder, rose from the midst of the ice.
+She sprang to her feet.  "Gregory, the river can't be breaking!"
+
+"No, no; surely not.  See, it is gone."  The noise which had come from
+above had died away downstream.
+
+"But there!  There!"
+
+Another rumble, hoarser and more ominous than before, lifted itself and
+hushed the robins and the squirrels.  When abreast of them, it sounded
+like a railroad train on a distant trestle.  A third rumble, which
+approached a roar and was of greater duration, began from above and
+passed by.
+
+"Oh, why don't they hurry!"
+
+The two specks had stopped, evidently in conversation.  She ran the
+glasses hastily up and down the river.  Though another roar had risen,
+she could make out no commotion.  The ice lay still and motionless.
+The robins resumed their singing, and the squirrels were chattering
+with spiteful glee.
+
+"Don't fear, Frona."  St. Vincent put his arm about her protectingly.
+"If there is any danger, they know it better than we, and they are
+taking their time."
+
+"I never saw a big river break up," she confessed, and resigned herself
+to the waiting.
+
+The roars rose and fell sporadically, but there were no other signs of
+disruption, and gradually the two men, with frequent duckings, worked
+inshore.  The water was streaming from them and they were shivering
+severely as they came up the bank.
+
+"At last!" Frona had both her father's hands in hers.  "I thought you
+would never come back."
+
+"There, there.  Run and get dinner," Jacob Welse laughed.  "There was
+no danger."
+
+"But what was it?"
+
+"Stewart River's broken and sending its ice down under the Yukon ice.
+We could hear the grinding plainly out there."
+
+"Ah!  And it was terrible! terrible!" cried the baron.  "And that poor,
+poor man, we cannot save him!"
+
+"Yes, we can.  We'll have a try with the dogs after dinner.  Hurry,
+Frona."
+
+But the dogs were a failure.  Jacob Welse picked out the leaders as the
+more intelligent, and with grub-packs on them drove them out from the
+bank.  They could not grasp what was demanded of them.  Whenever they
+tried to return they were driven back with sticks and clods and
+imprecations.  This only bewildered them, and they retreated out of
+range, whence they raised their wet, cold paws and whined pitifully to
+the shore.
+
+"If they could only make it once, they would understand, and then it
+would go like clock-work.  Ah!  Would you?  Go on!  Chook, Miriam!
+Chook!  The thing is to get the first one across."
+
+Jacob Welse finally succeeded in getting Miriam, lead-dog to Frona's
+team, to take the trail left by him and the baron.  The dog went on
+bravely, scrambling over, floundering through, and sometimes swimming;
+but when she had gained the farthest point reached by them, she sat
+down helplessly.  Later on, she cut back to the shore at a tangent,
+landing on the deserted island above; and an hour afterwards trotted
+into camp minus the grub-pack.  Then the two dogs, hovering just out of
+range, compromised matters by devouring each other's burdens; after
+which the attempt was given over and they were called in.
+
+During the afternoon the noise increased in frequency, and by nightfall
+was continuous, but by morning it had ceased utterly.  The river had
+risen eight feet, and in many places was running over its crust.  Much
+crackling and splitting were going on, and fissures leaping into life
+and multiplying in all directions.
+
+"The under-tow ice has jammed below among the islands," Jacob Welse
+explained.  "That's what caused the rise.  Then, again, it has jammed
+at the mouth of the Stewart and is backing up.  When that breaks
+through, it will go down underneath and stick on the lower jam."
+
+"And then? and then?"  The baron exulted.
+
+"La Bijou will swim again."
+
+As the light grew stronger, they searched for the man across the river.
+He had not moved, but in response to their rifle-shots waved feebly.
+
+"Nothing for it till the river breaks, baron, and then a dash with La
+Bijou.  St. Vincent, you had better bring your blankets up and sleep
+here to-night.  We'll need three paddles, and I think we can get
+McPherson."
+
+"No need," the correspondent hastened to reply.  "The back-channel is
+like adamant, and I'll be up by daybreak."
+
+"But I?  Why not?"  Baron Courbertin demanded.  Frona laughed.
+"Remember, we haven't given you your first lessons yet."
+
+"And there'll hardly be time to-morrow," Jacob Welse added.  "When she
+goes, she goes with a rush.  St. Vincent, McPherson, and I will have to
+make the crew, I'm afraid.  Sorry, baron.  Stay with us another year
+and you'll be fit."
+
+But Baron Courbertin was inconsolable, and sulked for a full half-hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+"Awake!  You dreamers, wake!"
+
+Frona was out of her sleeping-furs at Del Bishop's first call; but ere
+she had slipped a skirt on and bare feet into moccasins, her father,
+beyond the blanket-curtain, had thrown back the flaps of the tent and
+stumbled out.
+
+The river was up.  In the chill gray light she could see the ice
+rubbing softly against the very crest of the bank; it even topped it in
+places, and the huge cakes worked inshore many feet.  A hundred yards
+out the white field merged into the dim dawn and the gray sky.  Subdued
+splits and splutters whispered from out the obscureness, and a gentle
+grinding could be heard.
+
+"When will it go?" she asked of Del.
+
+"Not a bit too lively for us.  See there!"  He pointed with his toe to
+the water lapping out from under the ice and creeping greedily towards
+them.  "A foot rise every ten minutes."
+
+"Danger?" he scoffed.  "Not on your life.  It's got to go.  Them
+islands"--waving his hand indefinitely down river--"can't hold up under
+more pressure.  If they don't let go the ice, the ice'll scour them
+clean out of the bed of the Yukon.  Sure!  But I've got to be chasin'
+back.  Lower ground down our way.  Fifteen inches on the cabin floor,
+and McPherson and Corliss hustlin' perishables into the bunks."
+
+"Tell McPherson to be ready for a call," Jacob Welse shouted after him.
+And then to Frona, "Now's the time for St. Vincent to cross the
+back-channel."
+
+The baron, shivering barefooted, pulled out his watch.  "Ten minutes to
+three," he chattered.
+
+"Hadn't you better go back and get your moccasins?" Frona asked.
+"There will be time."
+
+"And miss the magnificence?  Hark!"
+
+From nowhere in particular a brisk crackling arose, then died away.
+The ice was in motion.  Slowly, very slowly, it proceeded down stream.
+There was no commotion, no ear-splitting thunder, no splendid display
+of force; simply a silent flood of white, an orderly procession of
+tight-packed ice--packed so closely that not a drop of water was in
+evidence.  It was there, somewhere, down underneath; but it had to be
+taken on faith.  There was a dull hum or muffled grating, but so low in
+pitch that the ear strained to catch it.
+
+"Ah!  Where is the magnificence?  It is a fake!"
+
+The baron shook his fists angrily at the river, and Jacob Welse's thick
+brows seemed to draw down in order to hide the grim smile in his eyes.
+
+"Ha! ha!  I laugh!  I snap my fingers!  See!  I defy!"
+
+As the challenge left his lips.  Baron Courbertin stepped upon a cake
+which rubbed lightly past at his feet.  So unexpected was it, that when
+Jacob Welse reached after him he was gone.
+
+The ice was picking up in momentum, and the hum growing louder and more
+threatening.  Balancing gracefully, like a circus-rider, the Frenchman
+whirled away along the rim of the bank.  Fifty precarious feet he rode,
+his mount becoming more unstable every instant, and he leaped neatly to
+the shore.  He came back laughing, and received for his pains two or
+three of the choicest phrases Jacob Welse could select from the
+essentially masculine portion of his vocabulary.
+
+"And for why?" Courbertin demanded, stung to the quick.
+
+"For why?" Jacob Welse mimicked wrathfully, pointing into the sleek
+stream sliding by.
+
+A great cake had driven its nose into the bed of the river thirty feet
+below and was struggling to up-end.  All the frigid flood behind
+crinkled and bent back like so much paper.  Then the stalled cake
+turned completely over and thrust its muddy nose skyward.  But the
+squeeze caught it, while cake mounted cake at its back, and its fifty
+feet of muck and gouge were hurled into the air.  It crashed upon the
+moving mass beneath, and flying fragments landed at the feet of those
+that watched.  Caught broadside in a chaos of pressures, it crumbled
+into scattered pieces and disappeared.
+
+"God!"  The baron spoke the word reverently and with awe.
+
+Frona caught his hand on the one side and her father's on the other.
+The ice was now leaping past in feverish haste.  Somewhere below a
+heavy cake butted into the bank, and the ground swayed under their
+feet.  Another followed it, nearer the surface, and as they sprang
+back, upreared mightily, and, with a ton or so of soil on its broad
+back, bowled insolently onward.  And yet another, reaching inshore like
+a huge hand, ripped three careless pines out by the roots and bore them
+away.
+
+Day had broken, and the driving white gorged the Yukon from shore to
+shore.  What of the pressure of pent water behind, the speed of the
+flood had become dizzying.  Down all its length the bank was being
+gashed and gouged, and the island was jarring and shaking to its
+foundations.
+
+"Oh, great!  Great!"  Frona sprang up and down between the men.  "Where
+is your fake, baron?"
+
+"Ah!" He shook his head.  "Ah!  I was wrong.  I am miserable.  But the
+magnificence!  Look!"
+
+He pointed down to the bunch of islands which obstructed the bend.
+There the mile-wide stream divided and subdivided again,--which was
+well for water, but not so well for packed ice.  The islands drove
+their wedged heads into the frozen flood and tossed the cakes high into
+the air.  But cake pressed upon cake and shelved out of the water, out
+and up, sliding and grinding and climbing, and still more cakes from
+behind, till hillocks and mountains of ice upreared and crashed among
+the trees.
+
+"A likely place for a jam," Jacob Welse said.  "Get the glasses,
+Frona."  He gazed through them long and steadily.  "It's growing,
+spreading out.  A cake at the right time and the right place . . ."
+
+"But the river is falling!" Frona cried.
+
+The ice had dropped six feet below the top of the bank, and the Baron
+Courbertin marked it with a stick.
+
+"Our man's still there, but he doesn't move."
+
+It was clear day, and the sun was breaking forth in the north-east.
+They took turn about with the glasses in gazing across the river.
+
+"Look!  Is it not marvellous?"  Courbertin pointed to the mark he had
+made.  The water had dropped another foot.  "Ah!  Too bad! too bad!
+The jam; there will be none!"
+
+Jacob Welse regarded him gravely.
+
+"Ah!  There will be?" he asked, picking up hope.
+
+Frona looked inquiringly at her father.
+
+"Jams are not always nice," he said, with a short laugh.  "It all
+depends where they take place and where you happen to be."
+
+"But the river!  Look!  It falls; I can see it before my eyes."
+
+"It is not too late."  He swept the island-studded bend and saw the
+ice-mountains larger and reaching out one to the other.  "Go into the
+tent, Courbertin, and put on the pair of moccasins you'll find by the
+stove.  Go on.  You won't miss anything.  And you, Frona, start the
+fire and get the coffee under way."
+
+Half an hour after, though the river had fallen twenty feet, they found
+the ice still pounding along.
+
+"Now the fun begins.  Here, take a squint, you hot-headed Gaul.  The
+left-hand channel, man.  Now she takes it!"
+
+Courbertin saw the left-hand channel close, and then a great white
+barrier heave up and travel from island to island.  The ice before them
+slowed down and came to rest.  Then followed the instant rise of the
+river.  Up it came in a swift rush, as though nothing short of the sky
+could stop it.  As when they were first awakened, the cakes rubbed and
+slid inshore over the crest of the bank, the muddy water creeping in
+advance and marking the way.
+
+"Mon Dieu!  But this is not nice!"
+
+"But magnificent, baron," Frona teased.  "In the meanwhile you are
+getting your feet wet."
+
+He retreated out of the water, and in time, for a small avalanche of
+cakes rattled down upon the place he had just left.  The rising water
+had forced the ice up till it stood breast-high above the island like a
+wall.
+
+"But it will go down soon when the jam breaks.  See, even now it comes
+up not so swift.   It has broken."
+
+Frona was watching the barrier.  "No, it hasn't," she denied.
+
+"But the water no longer rises like a race-horse."
+
+"Nor does it stop rising."
+
+He was puzzled for the nonce.  Then his face brightened.  "Ah!  I have
+it!  Above, somewhere, there is another jam.  Most excellent, is it
+not?"
+
+She caught his excited hand in hers and detained him.  "But, listen.
+Suppose the upper jam breaks and the lower jam holds?"
+
+He looked at her steadily till he grasped the full import.  His face
+flushed, and with a quick intake of the breath he straightened up and
+threw back his head.  He made a sweeping gesture as though to include
+the island.  "Then you, and I, the tent, the boats, cabins, trees,
+everything, and La Bijou!  Pouf! and all are gone, to the devil!"
+
+Frona shook her head.  "It is too bad."
+
+"Bad?  Pardon.  Magnificent!"
+
+"No, no, baron; not that.  But that you are not an Anglo-Saxon.  The
+race could well be proud of you."
+
+"And you, Frona, would you not glorify the French!"
+
+"At it again, eh?  Throwing bouquets at yourselves."  Del Bishop
+grinned at them, and made to depart as quickly as he had come.  "But
+twist yourselves.  Some sick men in a cabin down here.  Got to get 'em
+out.  You're needed.  And don't be all day about it," he shouted over
+his shoulder as he disappeared among the trees.
+
+The river was still rising, though more slowly, and as soon as they
+left the high ground they were splashing along ankle-deep in the water.
+Winding in and out among the trees, they came upon a boat which had
+been hauled out the previous fall.  And three _chechaquos_, who had
+managed to get into the country thus far over the ice, had piled
+themselves into it, also their tent, sleds, and dogs.  But the boat was
+perilously near the ice-gorge, which growled and wrestled and
+over-topped it a bare dozen feet away.
+
+"Come!  Get out of this, you fools!" Jacob Welse shouted as he went
+past.
+
+Del Bishop had told them to "get the hell out of there" when he ran by,
+and they could not understand.  One of them turned up an unheeding,
+terrified face.  Another lay prone and listless across the thwarts as
+though bereft of strength; while the third, with the face of a clerk,
+rocked back and forth and moaned monotonously, "My God!  My God!"
+
+The baron stopped long enough to shake him.  "Damn!" he cried.  "Your
+legs, man!--not God, but your legs!  Ah! ah!--hump yourself!  Yes,
+hump!  Get a move on!  Twist!  Get back from the bank!  The woods, the
+trees, anywhere!"
+
+He tried to drag him out, but the man struck at him savagely and held
+back.
+
+"How one collects the vernacular," he confided proudly to Frona as they
+hurried on.  "Twist!  It is a strong word, and suitable."
+
+"You should travel with Del," she laughed.  "He'd increase your stock
+in no time."
+
+"You don't say so."
+
+"Yes, but I do."
+
+"Ah!  Your idioms.  I shall never learn."  And he shook his head
+despairingly with both his hands.
+
+They came out in a clearing, where a cabin stood close to the river.
+On its flat earth-roof two sick men, swathed in blankets, were lying,
+while Bishop, Corliss, and Jacob Welse were splashing about inside the
+cabin after the clothes-bags and general outfit.  The mean depth of the
+flood was a couple of feet, but the floor of the cabin had been dug out
+for purposes of warmth, and there the water was to the waist.
+
+"Keep the tobacco dry," one of the sick men said feebly from the roof.
+
+"Tobacco, hell!" his companion advised.  "Look out for the flour.  And
+the sugar," he added, as an afterthought.
+
+"That's 'cause Bill he don't smoke, miss," the first man explained.
+"But keep an eye on it, won't you?" he pleaded.
+
+"Here.  Now shut up." Del tossed the canister beside him, and the man
+clutched it as though it were a sack of nuggets.
+
+"Can I be of any use?" she asked, looking up at them.
+
+"Nope.  Scurvy.  Nothing'll do 'em any good but God's country and raw
+potatoes."  The pocket-miner regarded her for a moment.  "What are you
+doing here, anyway?  Go on back to high ground."
+
+But with a groan and a crash, the ice-wall bulged in.  A fifty-ton cake
+ended over, splashing them with muddy water, and settled down before
+the door.  A smaller cake drove against the out-jutting corner-logs and
+the cabin reeled.  Courbertin and Jacob Welse were inside.
+
+"After you," Frona heard the baron, and then her father's short amused
+laugh; and the gallant Frenchman came out last, squeezing his way
+between the cake and the logs.
+
+"Say, Bill, if that there lower jam holds, we're goners;" the man with
+the canister called to his partner.
+
+"Ay, that it will," came the answer.  "Below Nulato I saw Bixbie Island
+swept clean as my old mother's kitchen floor."
+
+The men came hastily together about Frona.
+
+"This won't do.  We've got to carry them over to your shack, Corliss."
+As he spoke, Jacob Welse clambered nimbly up the cabin and gazed down
+at the big barrier.  "Where's McPherson?" he asked.
+
+"Petrified astride the ridge-pole this last hour."
+
+Jacob Welse waved his arm.  "It's breaking!  There she goes!"
+
+"No kitchen floor this time.  Bill, with my respects to your old
+woman," called he of the tobacco.
+
+"Ay," answered the imperturbable Bill.
+
+The whole river seemed to pick itself up and start down the stream.
+With the increasing motion the ice-wall broke in a hundred places, and
+from up and down the shore came the rending and crashing of uprooted
+trees.
+
+Corliss and Bishop laid hold of Bill and started off to McPherson's,
+and Jacob Welse and the baron were just sliding his mate over the
+eaves, when a huge block of ice rammed in and smote the cabin squarely.
+Frona saw it, and cried a warning, but the tiered logs were overthrown
+like a house of cards.  She saw Courbertin and the sick man hurled
+clear of the wreckage, and her father go down with it.  She sprang to
+the spot, but he did not rise.  She pulled at him to get his mouth
+above water, but at full stretch his head, barely showed.  Then she let
+go and felt about with her hands till she found his right arm jammed
+between the logs.  These she could not move, but she thrust between
+them one of the roof-poles which had underlaid the dirt and moss.  It
+was a rude handspike and hardly equal to the work, for when she threw
+her weight upon the free end it bent and crackled.  Heedful of the
+warning, she came in a couple of feet and swung upon it tentatively and
+carefully till something gave and Jacob Welse shoved his muddy face
+into the air.
+
+He drew half a dozen great breaths, and burst out, "But that tastes
+good!"  And then, throwing a quick glance about him,  Frona, Del Bishop
+is a most veracious man."
+
+"Why?" she asked, perplexedly.
+
+"Because he said you'd do, you know."
+
+He kissed her, and they both spat the mud from their lips, laughing.
+Courbertin floundered round a corner of the wreckage.
+
+"Never was there such a man!" he cried, gleefully.  "He is mad, crazy!
+There is no appeasement.  His skull is cracked by the fall, and his
+tobacco is gone.  It is chiefly the tobacco which is lamentable."
+
+But his skull was not cracked, for it was merely a slit of the scalp of
+five inches or so.
+
+"You'll have to wait till the others come back.  I can't carry." Jacob
+Welse pointed to his right arm, which hung dead.  "Only wrenched," he
+explained.  "No bones broken."
+
+The baron struck an extravagant attitude and pointed down at Frona's
+foot.  "Ah!  the water, it is gone, and there, a jewel of the flood, a
+pearl of price!"
+
+Her well-worn moccasins had gone rotten from the soaking, and a little
+white toe peeped out at the world of slime.
+
+"Then I am indeed wealthy, baron; for I have nine others."
+
+"And who shall deny? who shall deny?" he cried, fervently.
+
+"What a ridiculous, foolish, lovable fellow it is!"
+
+"I kiss your hand."  And he knelt gallantly in the muck.
+
+She jerked her hand away, and, burying it with its mate in his curly
+mop, shook his head back and forth.  "What shall I do with him, father?"
+
+Jacob Welse shrugged his shoulders and laughed; and she turned
+Courbertin's face up and kissed him on the lips.  And Jacob Welse knew
+that his was the larger share in that manifest joy.
+
+
+The river, fallen to its winter level, was pounding its ice-glut
+steadily along.  But in falling it had rimmed the shore with a
+twenty-foot wall of stranded floes.  The great blocks were spilled
+inland among the thrown and standing trees and the slime-coated flowers
+and grasses like the titanic vomit of some Northland monster.  The sun
+was not idle, and the steaming thaw washed the mud and foulness from
+the bergs till they blazed like heaped diamonds in the brightness, or
+shimmered opalescent-blue.  Yet they were reared hazardously one on
+another, and ever and anon flashing towers and rainbow minarets
+crumbled thunderously into the flood.  By one of the gaps so made lay
+La Bijou, and about it, saving _chechaquos_ and sick men, were grouped
+the denizens of Split-up.
+
+"Na, na, lad; twa men'll be a plenty."  Tommy McPherson sought about
+him with his eyes for corroboration.  "Gin ye gat three i' the canoe
+'twill be ower comfortable."
+
+"It must be a dash or nothing," Corliss spoke up.  "We need three men,
+Tommy, and you know it."
+
+"Na, na; twa's a plenty, I'm tellin' ye."
+
+"But I'm afraid we'll have to do with two."
+
+The Scotch-Canadian evinced his satisfaction openly.  "Mair'd be a
+bother; an' I doot not ye'll mak' it all richt, lad."
+
+"And you'll make one of those two, Tommy," Corliss went on, inexorably.
+
+"Na; there's ithers a plenty wi'oot coontin' me."
+
+"No, there's not.  Courbertin doesn't know the first thing.  St.
+Vincent evidently cannot cross the slough.  Mr. Welse's arm puts him
+out of it.  So it's only you and I, Tommy."
+
+"I'll not be inqueesitive, but yon son of Anak's a likely mon.  He maun
+pit oop a guid stroke."  While the Scot did not lose much love for the
+truculent pocket-miner, he was well aware of his grit, and seized the
+chance to save himself by shoving the other into the breach.
+
+Del Bishop stepped into the centre of the little circle, paused, and
+looked every man in the eyes before he spoke.
+
+"Is there a man here'll say I'm a coward?" he demanded without preface.
+Again he looked each one in the eyes.  "Or is there a man who'll even
+hint that I ever did a curlike act?"  And yet again he searched the
+circle.  "Well and good.  I hate the water, but I've never been afraid
+of it.  I don't know how to swim, yet I've been over the side more
+times than it's good to remember.  I can't pull an oar without batting
+my back on the bottom of the boat.  As for steering--well, authorities
+say there's thirty-two points to the compass, but there's at least
+thirty more when I get started.  And as sure as God made little apples,
+I don't know my elbow from my knee about a paddle.  I've capsized damn
+near every canoe I ever set foot in.  I've gone right through the
+bottom of two.  I've turned turtle in the Canyon and been pulled out
+below the White Horse.  I can only keep stroke with one man, and that
+man's yours truly.  But, gentlemen, if the call comes, I'll take my
+place in La Bijou and take her to hell if she don't turn over on the
+way."
+
+Baron Courbertin threw his arms about him, crying, "As sure as God made
+little apples, thou art a man!"
+
+Tommy's face was white, and he sought refuge in speech from the silence
+which settled down.  "I'll deny I lift a guid paddle, nor that my wind
+is fair; but gin ye gang a tithe the way the next jam'll be on us.  For
+my pairt I conseeder it ay rash.  Bide a wee till the river's clear,
+say I."
+
+"It's no go, Tommy," Jacob Welse admonished.  "You can't cash excuses
+here."
+
+"But, mon!  It doesna need discreemeenation--"
+
+"That'll do!" from Corliss.  "You're coming."
+
+"I'll naething o' the sort.  I'll--"
+
+"Shut up!"  Del had come into the world with lungs of leather and
+larynx of brass, and when he thus jerked out the stops the Scotsman
+quailed and shrank down.
+
+"Oyez!  Oyez!"  In contrast to Del's siren tones, Frona's were purest
+silver as they rippled down-island through the trees.  "Oyez!  Oyez!
+Open water!  Open water!  And wait a minute.  I'll be with you."
+
+Three miles up-stream, where the Yukon curved grandly in from the west,
+a bit of water appeared.  It seemed too marvellous for belief, after
+the granite winter; but McPherson, untouched of imagination, began a
+crafty retreat.
+
+"Bide a wee, bide a wee," he protested, when collared by the
+pocket-miner.  "A've forgot my pipe."
+
+"Then you'll bide with us, Tommy," Del sneered.  "And I'd let you have
+a draw of mine if your own wasn't sticking out of your pocket."
+
+"'Twas the baccy I'd in mind."
+
+"Then dig into this."  He shoved his pouch into McPherson's shaking
+hands.  "You'd better shed your coat.  Here!  I'll help you.  And
+private, Tommy, if you don't act the man, I won't do a thing to you.
+Sure."
+
+Corliss had stripped his heavy flannel shirt for freedom; and it was
+plain, when Frona joined them, that she also had been shedding.  Jacket
+and skirt were gone, and her underskirt of dark cloth ceased midway
+below the knee.
+
+"You'll do," Del commended.
+
+Jacob Welse looked at her anxiously, and went over to where she was
+testing the grips of the several paddles.  "You're not--?" he began.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"You're a guid girl," McPherson broke in.  "Now, a've a wumman to home,
+to say naething o' three bairns--"
+
+"All ready!"  Corliss lifted the bow of La Bijou and looked back.
+
+The turbid water lashed by on the heels of the ice-run.  Courbertin
+took the stern in the steep descent, and Del marshalled Tommy's
+reluctant rear.  A flat floe, dipping into the water at a slight
+incline, served as the embarking-stage.
+
+"Into the bow with you, Tommy!"
+
+The Scotsman groaned, felt Bishop breathe heavily at his back, and
+obeyed; Frona meeting his weight by slipping into the stern.
+
+"I can steer," she assured Corliss, who for the first time was aware
+that she was coming.
+
+He glanced up to Jacob Welse, as though for consent, and received it.
+
+"Hit 'er up!  Hit 'er up!" Del urged impatiently.  "You're burnin'
+daylight!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+La Bijou was a perfect expression of all that was dainty and delicate
+in the boat-builder's soul.  Light as an egg-shell, and as fragile, her
+three-eighths-inch skin offered no protection from a driving chunk of
+ice as small as a man's head.  Nor, though the water was open, did she
+find a clear way, for the river was full of scattered floes which had
+crumbled down from the rim-ice.  And here, at once, through skilful
+handling, Corliss took to himself confidence in Frona.
+
+It was a great picture: the river rushing blackly between its
+crystalline walls; beyond, the green woods stretching upward to touch
+the cloud-flecked summer sky; and over all, like a furnace blast, the
+hot sun beating down.  A great picture, but somehow Corliss's mind
+turned to his mother and her perennial tea, the soft carpets, the prim
+New England maid-servants, the canaries singing in the wide windows,
+and he wondered if she could understand.  And when he thought of the
+woman behind him, and felt the dip and lift, dip and lift, of her
+paddle, his mother's women came back to him, one by one, and passed in
+long review,--pale, glimmering ghosts, he thought, caricatures of the
+stock which had replenished the earth, and which would continue to
+replenish the earth.
+
+La Bijou skirted a pivoting floe, darted into a nipping channel, and
+shot out into the open with the walls grinding together behind.  Tommy
+groaned.
+
+"Well done!" Corliss encouraged.
+
+"The fule wumman!" came the backward snarl.  "Why couldna she bide a
+bit?"
+
+Frona caught his words and flung a laugh defiantly.  Vance darted a
+glance over his shoulder to her, and her smile was witchery.  Her cap,
+perched precariously, was sliding off, while her flying hair, aglint in
+the sunshine, framed her face as he had seen it framed on the Dyea
+Trail.
+
+"How I should like to sing, if it weren't for saving one's breath.  Say
+the 'Song of the Sword,' or the 'Anchor Chanty.'"
+
+"Or the 'First Chanty,'" Corliss answered.  "'Mine was the woman,
+darkling I found her,'" he hummed, significantly.
+
+She flashed her paddle into the water on the opposite side in order to
+go wide of a jagged cake, and seemed not to hear.  "I could go on this
+way forever."
+
+"And I," Corliss affirmed, warmly.
+
+But she refused to take notice, saying, instead, "Vance, do you know
+I'm glad we're friends?"
+
+"No fault of mine we're not more."
+
+"You're losing your stroke, sir," she reprimanded; and he bent silently
+to the work.
+
+La Bijou was driving against the current at an angle of forty-five
+degrees, and her resultant course was a line at right angles to the
+river.  Thus, she would tap the western bank directly opposite the
+starting-point, where she could work up-stream in the slacker flood.
+But a mile of indented shore, and then a hundred yards of bluffs rising
+precipitously from out a stiff current would still lie between them and
+the man to be rescued.
+
+"Now let us ease up," Corliss advised, as they slipped into an eddy and
+drifted with the back-tide under the great wall of rim-ice.
+
+"Who would think it mid-May?"  She glanced up at the carelessly poised
+cakes.  "Does it seem real to you, Vance?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Nor to me.  I know that I, Frona, in the flesh, am here, in a
+Peterborough, paddling for dear life with two men; year of our Lord
+eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, Alaska, Yukon River; this is water,
+that is ice; my arms are tired, my heart up a few beats, and I am
+sweating,--and yet it seems all a dream.  Just think!  A year ago I was
+in Paris!"  She drew a deep breath and looked out over the water to the
+further shore, where Jacob Welse's tent, like a snowy handkerchief,
+sprawled against the deep green of the forest.  "I do not believe there
+is such a place," she added.  "There is no Paris."
+
+"And I was in London a twelvemonth past," Corliss meditated.  "But I
+have undergone a new incarnation.  London?  There is no London now.  It
+is impossible.  How could there be so many people in the world?  This
+is the world, and we know of fact that there are very few people in it,
+else there could not be so much ice and sea and sky.  Tommy, here, I
+know, thinks fondly of a place he calls Toronto.  He mistakes.  It
+exists only in his mind,--a memory of a former life he knew.  Of
+course, he does not think so.  That is but natural; for he is no
+philosopher, nor does he bother--"
+
+"Wheest, will ye!" Tommy fiercely whispered.  "Your gabble'll bring it
+doon aboot oor heads."
+
+Life is brief in the Northland, and fulfilment ever clutters the heels
+of prophecy.  A premonitory tremor sighed down the air, and the rainbow
+wall swayed above them.  The three paddles gripped the water with
+common accord.  La Bijou leaped out from under.  Broadside after
+broadside flared and crashed, and a thousand frigid tons thundered down
+behind them.  The displaced water surged outward in a foamy, upstanding
+circle, and La Bijou, striving wildly to rise, ducked through the stiff
+overhang of the crest and wallowed, half-full, in the trough.
+
+"Dinna I tell ye, ye gabbling fules!"
+
+"Sit still, and bail!" Corliss checked him sharply.  "Or you'll not
+have the comfort of telling us anything."
+
+He shook his head at Frona, and she winked back; then they both
+chuckled, much like children over an escapade which looks disastrous
+but turns out well.
+
+Creeping timidly under the shadow of the impending avalanches, La Bijou
+slipped noiselessly up the last eddy.  A corner of the bluff rose
+savagely from the river--a monstrous mass of naked rock, scarred and
+battered of the centuries; hating the river that gnawed it ever; hating
+the rain that graved its grim face with unsightly seams; hating the sun
+that refused to mate with it, whereof green life might come forth and
+hide its hideousness.  The whole force of the river hurled in against
+it, waged furious war along its battlements, and caromed off into
+mid-stream again.  Down all its length the stiff waves stood in serried
+rows, and its crevices and water-worn caverns were a-bellow with unseen
+strife.
+
+"Now!  Bend to it!  Your best!"
+
+It was the last order Corliss could give, for in the din they were
+about to enter a man's voice were like a cricket's chirp amid the
+growling of an earthquake.  La Bijou sprang forward, cleared the eddy
+with a bound, and plunged into the thick.  _Dip and lift, dip and
+lift_, the paddles worked with rhythmic strength.  The water rippled
+and tore, and pulled all ways at once; and the fragile shell, unable to
+go all ways at once, shook and quivered with the shock of resistance.
+It veered nervously to the right and left, but Frona held it with a
+hand of steel.  A yard away a fissure in the rock grinned at them.  La
+Bijou leaped and shot ahead, and the water, slipping away underneath,
+kept her always in one place.  Now they surged out from the fissure,
+now in; ahead for half a yard, then back again; and the fissure mocked
+their toil.
+
+Five minutes, each of which sounded a separate eternity, and the
+fissure was past.  Ten minutes, and it was a hundred feet astern.  _Dip
+and lift, dip and lift_, till sky and earth and river were blotted out,
+and consciousness dwindled to a thin line,--a streak of foam, fringed
+on the one hand with sneering rock, on the other with snarling water.
+That thin line summed up all.  Somewhere below was the beginning of
+things; somewhere above, beyond the roar and traffic, was the end of
+things; and for that end they strove.
+
+And still Frona held the egg-shell with a hand of steel.  What they
+gained they held, and fought for more, inch by inch, _dip and lift_;
+and all would have been well but for the flutter of Tommy's soul.  A
+cake of ice, sucked beneath by the current, rose under his paddle with
+a flurry of foam, turned over its toothed edge, and was dragged back
+into the depths.  And in that sight he saw himself, hair streaming
+upward and drowned hands clutching emptiness, going feet first, down
+and down.  He stared, wide-eyed, at the portent, and his poised paddle
+refused to strike.  On the instant the fissure grinned in their faces,
+and the next they were below the bluffs, drifting gently in the eddy.
+
+Frona lay, head thrown back, sobbing at the sun; amidships Corliss
+sprawled panting; and forward, choking and gasping and nerveless, the
+Scotsman drooped his head upon his knees.  La Bijou rubbed softly
+against the rim-ice and came to rest.  The rainbow-wall hung above like
+a fairy pile; the sun, flung backward from innumerable facets, clothed
+it in jewelled splendor.  Silvery streams tinkled down its crystal
+slopes; and in its clear depths seemed to unfold, veil on veil, the
+secrets of life and death and mortal striving,--vistas of
+pale-shimmering azure opening like dream-visions, and promising, down
+there in the great cool heart, infinite rest, infinite cessation and
+rest.
+
+The topmost tower, delicately massive, a score of feet above them,
+swayed to and fro, gently, like the ripple of wheat in light summer
+airs.  But Corliss gazed at it unheeding.  Just to lie there, on the
+marge of the mystery, just to lie there and drink the air in great
+gulps, and do nothing!--he asked no more.  A dervish, whirling on heel
+till all things blur, may grasp the essence of the universe and prove
+the Godhead indivisible; and so a man, plying a paddle, and plying and
+plying, may shake off his limitations and rise above time and space.
+And so Corliss.
+
+But gradually his blood ceased its mad pounding, and the air was no
+longer nectar-sweet, and a sense of things real and pressing came back
+to him.
+
+"We've got to get out of this," he said.  His voice sounded like a
+man's whose throat has been scorched by many and long potations.  It
+frightened him, but he limply lifted a shaking paddle and shoved off.
+
+"Yes; let us start, by all means," Frona said in a dim voice, which
+seemed to come to him from a far distance.
+
+Tommy lifted his head and gazed about.  "A doot we'll juist hae to gie
+it oop."
+
+"Bend to it!"
+
+"Ye'll no try it anither?"
+
+"Bend to it!" Corliss repeated.
+
+"Till your heart bursts, Tommy," Frona added.
+
+Once again they fought up the thin line, and all the world vanished,
+save the streak of foam, and the snarling water, and the grinning
+fissure.  But they passed it, inch by inch, and the broad bend welcomed
+them from above, and only a rocky buttress of implacable hate, around
+whose base howled the tides of an equal hate, stood between.  Then La
+Bijou leaped and throbbed and shook again, and the current slid out
+from under, and they remained ever in one place.  _Dip and lift, dip
+and lift_, through an infinity of time and torture and travail, till
+even the line dimmed and faded and the struggle lost its meaning.
+Their souls became merged in the rhythm of the toil.  Ever lifting,
+ever falling, they seemed to have become great pendulums of time.  And
+before and behind glimmered the eternities, and between the eternities,
+ever lifting, ever falling, they pulsed in vast rhythmical movement.
+They were no longer humans, but rhythms.  They surged in till their
+paddles touched the bitter rock, but they did not know; surged out,
+where chance piloted them unscathed through the lashing ice, but they
+did not see.  Nor did they feel the shock of the smitten waves, nor the
+driving spray that cooled their faces. . .
+
+La Bijou veered out into the stream, and their paddles, flashing
+mechanically in the sunshine, held her to the return angle across the
+river.  As time and matter came back to them, and Split-up Island
+dawned upon their eyes like the foreshore of a new world, they settled
+down to the long easy stroke wherein breath and strength may be
+recovered.
+
+"A third attempt would have been useless," Corliss said, in a dry,
+cracked whisper.
+
+And Frona answered, "Yes; our hearts would have surely broken."
+
+Life, and the pleasant camp-fire, and the quiet rest in the noonday
+shade, came back to Tommy as the shore drew near, and more than all,
+blessed Toronto, its houses that never moved, and its jostling streets.
+Each time his head sank forward and he reached out and clutched the
+water with his paddle, the streets enlarged, as though gazing through a
+telescope and adjusting to a nearer focus.  And each time the paddle
+drove clear and his head was raised, the island bounded forward.  His
+head sank, and the streets were of the size of life; it raised, and
+Jacob Welse and the two men stood on the bank three lengths away.
+
+"Dinna I tell ye!" he shouted to them, triumphantly.
+
+But Frona jerked the canoe parallel with the bank, and he found himself
+gazing at the long up-stream stretch.  He arrested a stroke midway, and
+his paddle clattered in the bottom.
+
+"Pick it up!" Corliss's voice was sharp and relentless.
+
+"I'll do naething o' the kind."  He turned a rebellious face on his
+tormentor, and ground his teeth in anger and disappointment.
+
+The canoe was drifting down with the current, and Frona merely held it
+in place.  Corliss crawled forward on his knees.
+
+"I don't want to hurt you, Tommy," he said in a low, tense voice, "so
+. . .  well, just pick it up, that's a good fellow."
+
+"I'll no."
+
+"Then I shall kill you," Corliss went on, in the same calm, passionless
+way, at the same time drawing his hunting-knife from its sheath.
+
+"And if I dinna?" the Scotsman queried stoutly, though cowering away.
+
+Corliss pressed gently with the knife.  The point of the steel entered
+Tommy's back just where the heart should be, passed slowly through the
+shirt, and bit into the skin.  Nor did it stop there; neither did it
+quicken, but just as slowly held on its way.  He shrank back, quivering.
+
+"There! there! man!  Pit it oop!" he shrieked.  "I maun gie in!"
+
+Frona's face was quite pale, but her eyes were hard, brilliantly hard,
+and she nodded approval.
+
+"We're going to try this side, and shoot across from above," she called
+to her father.  "What?  I can't hear.  Tommy?  Oh, his heart's weak.
+Nothing serious."  She saluted with her paddle.  "We'll be back in no
+time, father mine.  In no time."
+
+Stewart River was wide open, and they ascended it a quarter of a mile
+before they shot its mouth and continued up the Yukon.  But when they
+were well abreast of the man on the opposite bank a new obstacle faced
+them.  A mile above, a wreck of an island clung desperately to the
+river bed.  Its tail dwindled to a sand-spit which bisected the river
+as far down as the impassable bluffs.  Further, a few hundred thousand
+tons of ice had grounded upon the spit and upreared a glittering ridge.
+
+"We'll have to portage," Corliss said, as Frona turned the canoe from
+the bank.
+
+La Bijou darted across the narrower channel to the sand-spit and
+slipped up a little ice ravine, where the walls were less precipitous.
+They landed on an out-jutting cake, which, without support, overhung
+the water for sheer thirty feet.  How far its other end could be buried
+in the mass was matter for conjecture.  They climbed to the summit,
+dragging the canoe after them, and looked out over the dazzle.  Floe
+was piled on floe in titanic confusion.  Huge blocks topped and
+overtopped one another, only to serve as pedestals for great white
+masses, which blazed and scintillated in the sun like monstrous jewels.
+
+"A bonny place for a bit walk," Tommy sneered, "wi' the next jam fair
+to come ony time."  He sat down resolutely.  "No, thank ye kindly, I'll
+no try it."
+
+Frona and Corliss clambered on, the canoe between them.
+
+"The Persians lashed their slaves into battle," she remarked, looking
+back.  "I never understood before.  Hadn't you better go back after
+him?"
+
+Corliss kicked him up, whimpering, and forced him to go on in advance.
+The canoe was an affair of little weight, but its bulk, on the steep
+rises and sharp turns, taxed their strength.  The sun burned down upon
+them.  Its white glare hurt their eyes, the sweat oozed out from every
+pore, and they panted for breath.
+
+"Oh, Vance, do you know . . ."
+
+"What?"  He swept the perspiration from his forehead and flung it from
+him with a quick flirt of the hand.
+
+"I wish I had eaten more breakfast."
+
+He grunted sympathetically.  They had reached the midmost ridge and
+could see the open river, and beyond, quite clearly, the man and his
+signal of distress.  Below, pastoral in its green quiet, lay Split-up
+Island.  They looked up to the broad bend of the Yukon, smiling lazily,
+as though it were not capable at any moment of spewing forth a flood of
+death.  At their feet the ice sloped down into a miniature gorge,
+across which the sun cast a broad shadow.
+
+"Go on, Tommy," Frona bade.  "We're half-way over, and there's water
+down there."
+
+"It's water ye'd be thinkin' on, is it?" he snarled, "and you a-leadin'
+a buddie to his death!"
+
+"I fear you have done some great sin, Tommy," she said, with a
+reproving shake of the head, "or else you would not be so afraid of
+death."  She sighed and picked up her end of the canoe.  "Well, I
+suppose it is natural.  You do not know how to die--"
+
+"No more do I want to die," he broke in fiercely.
+
+"But there come times for all men to die,--times when to die is the
+only thing to do.  Perhaps this is such a time."
+
+Tommy slid carefully over a glistening ledge and dropped his height to
+a broad foothold.  "It's a' vera guid," he grinned up; "but dinna ye
+think a've suffeecient discreemeenation to judge for mysel'?  Why
+should I no sing my ain sang?"
+
+"Because you do not know how.  The strong have ever pitched the key for
+such as you.  It is they that have taught your kind when and how to
+die, and led you to die, and lashed you to die."
+
+"Ye pit it fair," he rejoined.  "And ye do it weel.  It doesna behoove
+me to complain, sic a michty fine job ye're makin' on it."
+
+"You are doing well," Corliss chuckled, as Tommy dropped out of sight
+and landed into the bed of the gorge.  "The cantankerous brute! he'd
+argue on the trail to Judgment."
+
+"Where did you learn to paddle?" she asked.
+
+"College--exercise," he answered, shortly.  "But isn't that fine?
+Look!"
+
+The melting ice had formed a pool in the bottom of the gorge.  Frona
+stretched out full length, and dipped her hot mouth in its coolness.
+And lying as she did, the soles of her dilapidated moccasins, or rather
+the soles of her feet (for moccasins and stockings had gone in shreds),
+were turned upward.  They were very white, and from contact with the
+ice were bruised and cut.  Here and there the blood oozed out, and from
+one of the toes it streamed steadily.
+
+"So wee, and pretty, and salt-like," Tommy gibed.  "One wouldna think
+they could lead a strong man to hell."
+
+"By the way you grumble, they're leading you fast enough," Corliss
+answered angrily.
+
+"Forty mile an hour," Tommy retorted, as he walked away, gloating over
+having the last word.
+
+"One moment.  You've two shirts.  Lend me one."
+
+The Scotsman's face lighted inquisitively, till he comprehended.  Then
+he shook his head and started on again.
+
+Frona scrambled to her feet.  "What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing.  Sit down."
+
+"But what is the matter?"
+
+Corliss put his hands on her shoulders and pressed her back.  "Your
+feet.  You can't go on in such shape.  They're in ribbons.  See!"  He
+brushed the sole of one of them and held up a blood-dripping palm.
+"Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"Oh, they didn't bother--much."
+
+"Give me one of your skirts," he demanded.
+
+"I . . ."  She faltered.  "I only have one."
+
+He looked about him.  Tommy had disappeared among the ice-floes.
+
+"We must be getting on," Frona said, attempting to rise.
+
+But he held her back.  "Not another step till I fix you.  Here goes, so
+shut your eyes."
+
+She obeyed, and when she opened them he was naked to the waist, and his
+undershirt, torn in strips, was being bound about her feet.
+
+"You were in the rear, and I did not know--"
+
+"Don't apologize, pray," she interrupted.  "I could have spoken."
+
+"I'm not; I'm reproaching you.  Now, the other one.  Put it up!"
+
+The nearness to her bred a madness, and he touched his lips lightly to
+the same white little toe that had won the Baron Courbertin a kiss.
+
+Though she did not draw back, her face flushed, and she thrilled as she
+had thrilled once before in her life.  "You take advantage of your own
+goodness," she rebuked him.
+
+"Then I will doubly advantage myself."
+
+"Please don't," she begged.
+
+"And why not?  It is a custom of the sea to broach the spirits as the
+ship prepares to sink.  And since this is a sort of a forlorn hope, you
+know, why not?"
+
+"But . . ."
+
+"But what, Miss Prim?"
+
+"Oh!  Of all things, you know I do not deserve that!  If there were
+nobody else to be considered, why, under the circumstances . . ."
+
+He drew the last knot tight and dropped her foot.  "Damn St. Vincent,
+anyway!  Come on!"
+
+"So would I, were I you," she laughed, taking up her end of the canoe.
+"But how you have changed, Vance.  You are not the same man I met on
+the Dyea Trail.  You hadn't learned to swear, then, among other things."
+
+"No, I'm not the same; for which I thank God and you.  Only I think I
+am honester than you.  I always live up to my philosophy."
+
+"Now confess that's unfair.  You ask too much under the
+circumstances--"
+
+"Only a little toe."
+
+"Or else, I suppose, you just care for me in a kind, big-brotherly way.
+In which case, if you really wish it, you may--"
+
+"Do keep quiet," he broke in, roughly, "or I'll be making a gorgeous
+fool of myself."
+
+"Kiss all my toes," she finished.
+
+He grunted, but did not deign a reply.  The work quickly took their
+breath, and they went on in silence till they descended the last steep
+to where McPherson waited by the open river.
+
+"Del hates St. Vincent," she said boldly.  "Why?"
+
+"Yes, it seems that way."  He glanced back at her curiously.  "And
+wherever he goes, Del lugs an old Russian book, which he can't read but
+which he nevertheless regards, in some sort of way, as St. Vincent's
+Nemesis.  And do you know, Frona, he has such faith in it that I can't
+help catching a little myself.  I don't know whether you'll come to me,
+or whether I'll go to you, but--"
+
+She dropped her end of the canoe and broke out in laughter.  He was
+annoyed, and a hurt spread of blood ruddied his face.
+
+"If I have--" he began.
+
+"Stupid!" she laughed.  "Don't be silly!  And above all don't be
+dignified.  It doesn't exactly become you at the present moment,--your
+hair all tangled, a murderous knife in your belt, and naked to the
+waist like a pirate stripped for battle.  Be fierce, frown, swear,
+anything, but please don't be dignified.  I do wish I had my camera.
+In after years I could say: 'This, my friends, is Corliss, the great
+Arctic explorer, just as he looked at the conclusion of his
+world-famous trip _Through Darkest Alaska_.'"
+
+He pointed an ominous finger at her and said sternly, "Where is your
+skirt?"
+
+She involuntarily looked down.  But its tatterdemalion presence
+relieved her, and her face jerked up scarlet.
+
+"You should be ashamed!"
+
+"Please, please do not be dignified," he laughed.  "Very true, it
+doesn't exactly become you at the present moment.  Now, if I had my
+camera--"
+
+"Do be quiet and go on," she said.  "Tommy is waiting.  I hope the sun
+takes the skin all off your back," she panted vindictively, as they
+slid the canoe down the last shelf and dropped it into the water.
+
+Ten minutes later they climbed the ice-wall, and on and up the bank,
+which was partly a hillside, to where the signal of distress still
+fluttered.  Beneath it, on the ground, lay stretched the man.  He lay
+very quietly, and the fear that they were too late was upon them, when
+he moved his head slightly and moaned.  His rough clothes were in rags,
+and the black, bruised flesh of his feet showed through the remnants of
+his moccasins.  His body was thin and gaunt, without flesh-pads or
+muscles, while the bones seemed ready to break through the
+tight-stretched skin.  As Corliss felt his pulse, his eyes fluttered
+open and stared glassily.  Frona shuddered.
+
+"Man, it's fair gruesome," McPherson muttered, running his hand up a
+shrunken arm.
+
+"You go on to the canoe, Frona," Corliss said.  "Tommy and I will carry
+him down."
+
+But her lips set firmly.  Though the descent was made easier by her
+aid, the man was well shaken by the time they laid him in the bottom of
+the canoe,--so well shaken that some last shreds of consciousness were
+aroused.  He opened his eyes and whispered hoarsely, "Jacob Welse . . .
+despatches . . .  from the Outside."  He plucked feebly at his open
+shirt, and across his emaciated chest they saw the leather strap, to
+which, doubtless, the despatch-pouch was slung.
+
+At either end of the canoe there was room to spare, but amidships
+Corliss was forced to paddle with the man between his knees.  La Bijou
+swung out blithely from the bank.  It was down-stream at last, and
+there was little need for exertion.
+
+Vance's arms and shoulders and back, a bright scarlet, caught Frona's
+attention.  "My hopes are realized," she exulted, reaching out and
+softly stroking a burning arm.  "We shall have to put cold cream on it
+when we get back."
+
+"Go ahead," he encouraged.  "That feels awfully good."
+
+She splashed his hot back with a handful of the ice-cold water from
+over-side.  He caught his breath with a gasp, and shivered.  Tommy
+turned about to look at them.
+
+"It's a guid deed we'll 'a doon this day," he remarked, pleasantly.
+"To gie a hand in distress is guid i' the sight of God."
+
+"Who's afeared ?" Frona laughed.
+
+"Weel," he deliberated, "I was a bit fashed, no doot, but--"
+
+His utterance ceased, and he seemed suddenly to petrify.  His eyes
+fixed themselves in a terrible stare over Frona's shoulder.  And then,
+slowly and dreamily, with the solemnity fitting an invocation of Deity,
+murmured, "Guid Gawd Almichty!"
+
+They whirled their heads about.  A wall of ice was sweeping round the
+bend, and even as they looked the right-hand flank, unable to compass
+the curve, struck the further shore and flung up a ridge of heaving
+mountains.
+
+"Guid Gawd!  Guid Gawd!  Like rats i' the trap!" Tommy jabbed his
+paddle futilely in the water.
+
+"Get the stroke!" Corliss hissed in his ear, and La Bijou sprang away.
+
+Frona steered straight across the current, at almost right angles, for
+Split-up; but when the sandspit, over which they had portaged, crashed
+at the impact of a million tons, Corliss glanced at her anxiously.  She
+smiled and shook her head, at the same time slacking off the course.
+
+"We can't make it," she whispered, looking back at the ice a couple of
+hundred feet away.  "Our only chance is to run before it and work in
+slowly."
+
+She cherished every inward inch jealously, holding the canoe up as
+sharply as she dared and at the same time maintaining a constant
+distance ahead of the ice-rim.
+
+"I canna stand the pace," Tommy whimpered once; but the silence of
+Corliss and Frona seemed ominous, and he kept his paddle going.
+
+At the very fore of the ice was a floe five or six feet thick and a
+couple of acres in extent.  Reaching out in advance of the pack, it
+clove through the water till on either side there formed a bore like
+that of a quick flood-tide in an inland passage.  Tommy caught sight of
+it, and would have collapsed had not Corliss prodded him, between
+strokes, with the point of his paddle.
+
+"We can keep ahead," Frona panted; "but we must get time to make the
+landing?"
+
+"When the chance comes, drive her in, bow on," Corliss counselled; "and
+when she strikes, jump and run for it."
+
+"Climb, rather.  I'm glad my skirt is short."
+
+Repulsed by the bluffs of the left bank, the ice was forced towards the
+right.  The big floe, in advance, drove in upon the precise point of
+Split-up Island.
+
+"If you look back, I'll brain you with the paddle," Corliss threatened.
+
+"Ay," Tommy groaned.
+
+But Corliss looked back, and so did Frona.  The great berg struck the
+land with an earthquake shock.  For fifty feet the soft island was
+demolished.  A score of pines swayed frantically and went down, and
+where they went down rose up a mountain of ice, which rose, and fell,
+and rose again.  Below, and but a few feet away, Del Bishop ran out to
+the bank, and above the roar they could hear faintly his "Hit 'er up!
+Hit 'er up!" Then the ice-rim wrinkled up and he sprang back to escape
+it.
+
+"The first opening," Corliss gasped.
+
+Frona's lips spread apart; she tried to speak but failed, then nodded
+her head that she had heard.  They swung along in rapid rhythm under
+the rainbow-wall, looking for a place where it might be quickly
+cleared.  And down all the length of Split-up Island they raced vainly,
+the shore crashing behind them as they fled.
+
+As they darted across the mouth of the back-channel to Roubeau Island
+they found themselves heading directly for an opening in the rim-ice.
+La Bijou drove into it full tilt, and went half her length out of water
+on a shelving cake.  The three leaped together, but while the two of
+them gripped the canoe to run it up, Tommy, in the lead, strove only to
+save himself.  And he would have succeeded had he not slipped and
+fallen midway in the climb.  He half arose, slipped, and fell again.
+Corliss, hauling on the bow of the canoe, trampled over him.  He
+reached up and clutched the gunwale.  They did not have the strength,
+and this clog brought them at once to a standstill.  Corliss looked
+back and yelled for him to leave go, but he only turned upward a
+piteous face, like that of a drowning man, and clutched more tightly.
+Behind them the ice was thundering.  The first flurry of coming
+destruction was upon them.  They endeavored desperately to drag up the
+canoe, but the added burden was too much, and they fell on their knees.
+The sick man sat up suddenly and laughed wildly.  "Blood of my soul!"
+he ejaculated, and laughed again.
+
+Roubeau Island swayed to the first shock, and the ice was rocking under
+their feet.  Frona seized a paddle and smashed the Scotsman's knuckles;
+and the instant he loosed his grip, Corliss carried the canoe up in a
+mad rush, Frona clinging on and helping from behind.  The rainbow-wall
+curled up like a scroll, and in the convolutions of the scroll, like a
+bee in the many folds of a magnificent orchid, Tommy disappeared.
+
+They fell, breathless, on the earth.  But a monstrous cake shoved up
+from the jam and balanced above them.  Frona tried to struggle to her
+feet, but sank on her knees; and it remained for Corliss to snatch her
+and the canoe out from underneath.  Again they fell, this time under
+the trees, the sun sifting down upon them through the green pine
+needles, the robins singing overhead, and a colony of crickets chirping
+in the warmth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Frona woke, slowly, as though from a long dream.  She was lying where
+she had fallen, across Corliss's legs, while he, on his back, faced the
+hot sun without concern.  She crawled up to him.  He was breathing
+regularly, with closed eyes, which opened to meet hers.  He smiled, and
+she sank down again.  Then he rolled over on his side, and they looked
+at each other.
+
+"Vance."
+
+"Yes."
+
+She reached out her hand; his closed upon it, and their eyelids
+fluttered and drooped down.  The river still rumbled en, somewhere in
+the infinite distance, but it came to them like the murmur of a world
+forgotten.  A soft languor encompassed them.  The golden sunshine
+dripped down upon them through the living green, and all the life of
+the warm earth seemed singing.  And quiet was very good.  Fifteen long
+minutes they drowsed, and woke again.
+
+Frona sat up.  "I--I was afraid," she said.
+
+"Not you."
+
+"Afraid that I might be afraid," she amended, fumbling with her hair.
+
+"Leave it down.  The day merits it."
+
+She complied, with a toss of the head which circled it with a nimbus of
+rippling yellow.
+
+"Tommy's gone," Corliss mused, the race with the ice coming slowly back.
+
+"Yes," she answered.  "I rapped him on the knuckles.  It was terrible.
+But the chance is we've a better man in the canoe, and we must care for
+him at once.  Hello!  Look there!"  Through the trees, not a score of
+feet away, she saw the wall of a large cabin.  "Nobody in sight.  It
+must be deserted, or else they're visiting, whoever they are.  You look
+to our man, Vance,--I'm more presentable,--and I'll go and see."
+
+She skirted the cabin, which was a large one for the Yukon country, and
+came around to where it fronted on the river.  The door stood open,
+and, as she paused to knock, the whole interior flashed upon her in an
+astounding picture,--a cumulative picture, or series of pictures, as it
+were.  For first she was aware of a crowd of men, and of some great
+common purpose upon which all were seriously bent.  At her knock they
+instinctively divided, so that a lane opened up, flanked by their
+pressed bodies, to the far end of the room.  And there, in the long
+bunks on either side, sat two grave rows of men.  And midway between,
+against the wall, was a table.  This table seemed the centre of
+interest.  Fresh from the sun-dazzle, the light within was dim and
+murky, but she managed to make out a bearded American sitting by the
+table and hammering it with a heavy caulking-mallet.  And on the
+opposite side sat St. Vincent.  She had time to note his worn and
+haggard face, before a man of Scandinavian appearance slouched up to
+the table.
+
+The man with the mallet raised his right hand and said glibly, "You do
+most solemnly swear that what you are about to give before the
+court--"  He abruptly stopped and glowered at the man before him.
+"Take off your hat!" he roared, and a snicker went up from the crowd as
+the man obeyed.
+
+Then he of the mallet began again.  "You do most solemnly swear that
+what you are about to give before the court shall be the truth, the
+whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"
+
+The Scandinavian nodded and dropped his hand.
+
+"One moment, gentlemen."  Frona advanced up the lane, which closed
+behind her.
+
+St. Vincent sprang to his feet and stretched out his arms to her.
+"Frona," he cried, "oh, Frona, I am innocent!"
+
+It struck her like a blow, the unexpectedness of it, and for the
+instant, in the sickly light, she was conscious only of the ring of
+white faces, each face set with eyes that burned.  Innocent of what?
+she thought, and as she looked at St. Vincent, arms still extended, she
+was aware, in a vague, troubled way, of something distasteful.
+Innocent of what?  He might have had more reserve.  He might have
+waited till he was charged.  She did not know that he was charged with
+anything.
+
+"Friend of the prisoner," the man with the mallet said authoritatively.
+"Bring a stool for'ard, some of you."
+
+"One moment . . ."  She staggered against the table and rested a hand
+on it.  "I do not understand.  This is all new . . ."  But her eyes
+happened to come to rest on her feet, wrapped in dirty rags, and she
+knew that she was clad in a short and tattered skirt, that her arm
+peeped forth through a rent in her sleeve, and that her hair was down
+and flying.  Her cheek and neck on one side seemed coated with some
+curious substance.  She brushed it with her hand, and caked mud rattled
+to the floor.
+
+"That will do," the man said, not unkindly.  "Sit down.  We're in the
+same box.  We do not understand.  But take my word for it, we're here
+to find out.  So sit down."
+
+She raised her hand.  "One moment--"
+
+"Sit down!" he thundered.  "The court cannot be disturbed."
+
+A hum went up from the crowd, words of dissent, and the man pounded the
+table for silence.  But Frona resolutely kept her feet.
+
+When the noise had subsided, she addressed the man in the chair.  "Mr.
+Chairman: I take it that this is a miners' meeting."  (The man nodded.)
+"Then, having an equal voice in the managing of this community's
+affairs, I demand to be heard.  It is important that I should be heard."
+
+"But you are out of order.  Miss--er--"
+
+"Welse!" half a dozen voices prompted.
+
+"Miss Welse," he went on, an added respect marking his demeanor, "it
+grieves me to inform you that you are out of order.  You had best sit
+down."
+
+"I will not," she answered.  "I rise to a question of privilege, and if
+I am not heard, I shall appeal to the meeting."
+
+She swept the crowd with her eyes, and cries went up that she be given
+a fair show.  The chairman yielded and motioned her to go on.
+
+"Mr. Chairman and men: I do not know the business you have at present
+before you, but I do know that I have more important business to place
+before you.  Just outside this cabin is a man probably dying from
+starvation.  We have brought him from across the river.  We should not
+have bothered you, but we were unable to make our own island.  This man
+I speak of needs immediate attention."
+
+"A couple of you nearest the door go out and look after him," the
+chairman ordered.  "And you, Doc Holiday, go along and see what you can
+do."
+
+"Ask for a recess," St. Vincent whispered.
+
+Frona nodded her head.  "And, Mr. Chairman, I make a motion for a
+recess until the man is cared for."
+
+Cries of "No recess!" and "Go on with the business!" greeted the
+putting of it, and the motion was lost.
+
+"Now, Gregory," with a smile and salutation as she took the stool
+beside him, "what is it?"
+
+He gripped her hand tightly.  "Don't believe them, Frona.  They are
+trying to"--with a gulping swallow--"to kill me."
+
+"Why?  Do be calm.  Tell me."
+
+"Why, last night," he began hurriedly, but broke off to listen to the
+Scandinavian previously sworn, who was speaking with ponderous slowness.
+
+"I wake wide open quick," he was saying.  "I coom to the door.  I there
+hear one shot more."
+
+He was interrupted by a warm-complexioned man, clad in faded mackinaws.
+"What did you think?" he asked.
+
+"Eh?" the witness queried, his face dark and troubled with perplexity.
+
+"When you came to the door, what was your first thought?"
+
+"A-w-w," the man sighed, his face clearing and infinite comprehension
+sounding in his voice.  "I have no moccasins.  I t'ink pretty damn
+cold."  His satisfied expression changed to naive surprise when an
+outburst of laughter greeted his statement, but he went on stolidly.
+"One more shot I hear, and I run down the trail."
+
+Then Corliss pressed in through the crowd to Frona, and she lost what
+the man was saying.
+
+"What's up?" the engineer was asking.  "Anything serious?  Can I be of
+any use?"
+
+"Yes, yes."  She caught his hand gratefully.  "Get over the
+back-channel somehow and tell my father to come.  Tell him that Gregory
+St. Vincent is in trouble; that he is charged with--  What are you
+charged with, Gregory?" she asked, turning to him.
+
+"Murder."
+
+"Murder?" from Corliss.
+
+"Yes, yes.  Say that he is charged with murder; that I am here; and
+that I need him.  And tell him to bring me some clothes.  And,
+Vance,"--with a pressure of the hand and swift upward look,--"don't
+take any . . . any big chances, but do try to make it."
+
+"Oh, I'll make it all right."  He tossed his head confidently and
+proceeded to elbow his way towards the door.
+
+"Who is helping you in your defence?" she asked St. Vincent.
+
+He shook his head.  "No.  They wanted to appoint some one,--a renegade
+lawyer from the States, Bill Brown,--but I declined him.  He's taken
+the other side, now.  It's lynch law, you know, and their minds are
+made up.  They're bound to get me."
+
+"I wish there were time to hear your side."
+
+"But, Frona, I am innocent.  I--"
+
+"S-sh!"  She laid her hand on his arm to hush him, and turned her
+attention to the witness.
+
+"So the noospaper feller, he fight like anything; but Pierre and me, we
+pull him into the shack.  He cry and stand in one place--"
+
+"Who cried?" interrupted the prosecuting lawyer.
+
+"Him.   That feller there."  The Scandinavian pointed directly at St.
+Vincent.  "And I make a light.  The slush-lamp I find spilt over most
+everything, but I have a candle in my pocket.  It is good practice to
+carry a candle in the pocket," he affirmed gravely.  "And Borg he lay
+on the floor dead.  And the squaw say he did it, and then she die, too."
+
+"Said who did it?"
+
+Again his accusing finger singled out St. Vincent.  "Him.  That feller
+there."
+
+"Did she?" Frona whispered.
+
+"Yes," St. Vincent whispered back, "she did.  But I cannot imagine what
+prompted her.  She must have been out of her head."
+
+The warm-faced man in the faded mackinaws then put the witness through
+a searching examination, which Frona followed closely, but which
+elicited little new.
+
+"You have the right to cross-examine the witness," the chairman
+informed St. Vincent.  "Any questions you want to ask?"
+
+The correspondent shook his head.
+
+"Go on," Frona urged.
+
+"What's the use?" he asked, hopelessly.  "I'm fore-doomed.  The verdict
+was reached before the trial began."
+
+"One moment, please."  Frona's sharp command arrested the retiring
+witness.  "You do not know of your own knowledge who committed this
+murder?"
+
+The Scandinavian gazed at her with a bovine expression on his leaden
+features, as though waiting for her question to percolate to his
+understanding.
+
+"You did not see who did it?" she asked again.
+
+"Aw, yes.  That feller there," accusative finger to the fore.  "She say
+he did."
+
+There was a general smile at this.
+
+"But you did not see it?"
+
+"I hear some shooting."
+
+"But you did not see who did the shooting?"
+
+"Aw, no; but she said--"
+
+"That will do, thank you," she said sweetly, and the man retired.
+
+The prosecution consulted its notes.  "Pierre La Flitche!" was called
+out.
+
+A slender, swart-skinned man, lithe of figure and graceful, stepped
+forward to the open space before the table.  He was darkly handsome,
+with a quick, eloquent eye which roved frankly everywhere.  It rested
+for a moment on Frona, open and honest in its admiration, and she
+smiled and half-nodded, for she liked him at first glance, and it
+seemed as though they had met of old time.  He smiled pleasantly back,
+the smooth upper lip curling brightly and showing beautiful teeth,
+immaculately white.
+
+In answer to the stereotyped preliminaries he stated that his name was
+that of his father's, a descendant of the _coureurs du bois_.  His
+mother--with a shrug of the shoulders and flash of teeth--was a
+_breed_.  He was born somewhere in the Barrens, on a hunting trip, he
+did not know where.  Ah, _oui_, men called him an old-timer.  He had
+come into the country in the days of Jack McQuestion, across the
+Rockies from the Great Slave.
+
+On being told to go ahead with what he knew of the matter in hand, he
+deliberated a moment, as though casting about for the best departure.
+
+"In the spring it is good to sleep with the open door," he began, his
+words sounding clear and flute-like and marked by haunting memories of
+the accents his forbears put into the tongue.  "And so I sleep last
+night.  But I sleep like the cat.  The fall of the leaf, the breath of
+the wind, and my ears whisper to me, whisper, whisper, all the night
+long.  So, the first shot," with a quick snap of the fingers, "and I am
+awake, just like that, and I am at the door."
+
+St. Vincent leaned forward to Frona.  "It was not the first shot."
+
+She nodded, with her eyes still bent on La Flitche, who gallantly
+waited.
+
+"Then two more shot," he went on, "quick, together, boom-boom, just
+like that.  'Borg's shack,' I say to myself, and run down the trail.  I
+think Borg kill Bella, which was bad.  Bella very fine girl," he
+confided with one of his irresistible smiles.  "I like Bella.  So I
+run.  And John he run from his cabin like a fat cow, with great noise.
+'What the matter?' he say; and I say, 'I don't know.'  And then
+something come, wheugh! out of the dark, just like that, and knock John
+down, and knock me down.  We grab everywhere all at once.  It is a man.
+He is in undress.  He fight.  He cry, 'Oh!  Oh!  Oh!' just like that.
+We hold him tight, and bime-by pretty quick, he stop.  Then we get up,
+and I say, 'Come along back.'"
+
+"Who was the man?"
+
+La Flitche turned partly, and rested his eyes on St. Vincent.
+
+"Go on."
+
+"So?  The man he will not go back; but John and I say yes, and he go."
+
+"Did he say anything?"
+
+"I ask him what the matter; but he cry, he . . .  he sob, _huh-tsch_,
+_huh-tsch_, just like that."
+
+"Did you see anything peculiar about him?"
+
+La Flitche's brows drew up interrogatively.
+
+^Anything uncommon, out of the ordinary?"
+
+"Ah, _oui_; blood on the hands."  Disregarding the murmur in the room,
+he went on, his facile play of feature and gesture giving dramatic
+value to the recital.  "John make a light, and Bella groan, like the
+hair-seal when you shoot him in the body, just like that when you shoot
+him in the body under the flipper.  And Borg lay over in the corner.  I
+look.  He no breathe 'tall.
+
+"Then Bella open her eyes, and I look in her eyes, and I know she know
+me, La Flitche.  'Who did it, Bella?' I ask.  And she roll her head on
+the floor and whisper, so low, so slow, 'Him dead?'  I know she mean
+Borg, and I say yes.  Then she lift up on one elbow, and look about
+quick, in big hurry, and when she see Vincent she look no more, only
+she look at Vincent all the time.  Then she point at him, just like
+that."  Suiting the action to the word, La Flitche turned and thrust a
+wavering finger at the prisoner.  "And she say, 'Him, him, him.'  And I
+say, 'Bella, who did it?'  And she say, 'Him, him, him.  St. Vincha,
+him do it.'  And then"--La Flitche's head felt limply forward on his
+chest, and came back naturally erect, as he finished, with a flash of
+teeth, "Dead."
+
+The warm-faced man, Bill Brown, put the quarter-breed through the
+customary direct examination, which served to strengthen his testimony
+and to bring out the fact that a terrible struggle must have taken
+place in the killing of Borg.  The heavy table was smashed, the stool
+and the bunk-board splintered, and the stove over-thrown.  "Never did I
+see anything like it," La Flitche concluded his description of the
+wreck.  "No, never."
+
+Brown turned him over to Frona with a bow, which a smile of hers paid
+for in full.  She did not deem it unwise to cultivate cordiality with
+the lawyer.  What she was working for was time--time for her father to
+come, time to be closeted with St. Vincent and learn all the details of
+what really had occurred.  So she put questions, questions,
+interminable questions, to La Flitche.  Twice only did anything of
+moment crop up.
+
+"You spoke of the first shot, Mr. La Flitche.  Now, the walls of a log
+cabin are quite thick.  Had your door been closed, do you think you
+could have heard that first shot?"
+
+He shook his head, though his dark eyes told her he divined the point
+she was endeavoring to establish.
+
+"And had the door of Borg's cabin been closed, would you have heard?"
+
+Again he shook his head.
+
+"Then, Mr. La Flitche, when you say the first shot, you do not mean
+necessarily the first shot fired, but rather the first shot you heard
+fired?"
+
+He nodded, and though she had scored her point she could not see that
+it had any material bearing after all.
+
+Again she worked up craftily to another and stronger climax, though she
+felt all the time that La Flitche fathomed her.
+
+"You say it was very dark, Mr. La Flitche?"
+
+"Ah, oui; quite dark."
+
+"How dark?  How did you know it was John you met?"
+
+"John make much noise when he run.  I know that kind of noise."
+
+"Could you see him so as to know that it was he?"
+
+"Ah, no."
+
+"Then, Mr. La Flitche," she demanded, triumphantly, "will you please
+state how you knew there was blood on the hands of Mr. St. Vincent?"
+
+His lip lifted in a dazzling smile, and he paused a moment.  "How?  I
+feel it warm on his hands.  And my nose--ah, the smoke of the hunter
+camp long way off, the hole where the rabbit hide, the track of the
+moose which has gone before, does not my nose tell me?"  He flung his
+head back, and with tense face, eyes closed, nostrils quivering and
+dilated, he simulated the quiescence of all the senses save one and the
+concentration of his whole being upon that one.  Then his eyes
+fluttered partly open and he regarded her dreamily.  "I smell the blood
+on his hands, the warm blood, the hot blood on his hands."
+
+"And by gad he can do it!" some man exclaimed.
+
+And so convinced was Frona that she glanced involuntarily at St.
+Vincent's hands, and saw there the rusty-brown stains on the cuffs of
+his flannel shirt.
+
+As La Flitche left the stand, Bill Brown came over to her and shook
+hands.  "No more than proper I should know the lawyer for the defence,"
+he said, good-naturedly, running over his notes for the next witness.
+
+"But don't you think it is rather unfair to me?" she asked, brightly.
+"I have not had time to prepare my case.  I know nothing about it
+except what I have gleaned from your two witnesses.  Don't you think,
+Mr. Brown," her voice rippling along in persuasive little notes, "don't
+you think it would be advisable to adjourn the meeting until to-morrow?"
+
+"Hum," he deliberated, looking at his watch.
+
+"Wouldn't be a bad idea.  It's five o'clock, anyway, and the men ought
+to be cooking their suppers."
+
+She thanked him, as some women can, without speech; yet, as he looked
+down into her face and eyes, he experienced a subtler and greater
+satisfaction than if she had spoken.
+
+He stepped to his old position and addressed the room.  "On
+consultation of the defence and the prosecution, and upon consideration
+of the lateness of the hour and the impossibility of finishing the
+trial within a reasonable limit, I--hum--I take the liberty of moving
+an adjournment until eight o'clock to-morrow morning."
+
+"The ayes have it," the chairman proclaimed, coming down from his place
+and proceeding to build the fire, for he was a part-owner of the cabin
+and cook for his crowd.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+Frona turned to St. Vincent as the last of the crowd filed out.  He
+clutched her hands spasmodically, like a drowning man.
+
+"Do believe me, Frona.  Promise me."
+
+Her face flushed.  "You are excited," she said, "or you would not say
+such things.  Not that I blame you," she relented.  "I hardly imagine
+the situation can be anything else but exciting."
+
+"Yes, and well I know it," he answered, bitterly.  "I am acting like a
+fool, and I can't help it.  The strain has been terrible.  And as
+though the horror of Borg's end were not enough, to be considered the
+murderer, and haled up for mob justice!  Forgive me, Frona.  I am
+beside myself.  Of course, I know that you will believe me."
+
+"Then tell me, Gregory."
+
+"In the first place, the woman, Bella, lied.  She must have been crazed
+to make that dying statement when I fought as I did for her and Borg.
+That is the only explanation--"
+
+"Begin at the beginning," she interrupted.  "Remember, I know nothing."
+
+He settled himself more comfortably on the stool, and rolled a
+cigarette as he took up the history of the previous night.
+
+"It must have been about one in the morning when I was awakened by the
+lighting of the slush-lamp.  I thought it was Borg; wondered what he
+was prowling about for, and was on the verge of dropping off to sleep,
+when, though I do not know what prompted me, I opened my eyes.  Two
+strange men were in the cabin.  Both wore masks and fur caps with the
+flaps pulled down, so that I could see nothing of their faces save the
+glistening of the eyes through the eye-slits.
+
+"I had no first thought, unless it was that danger threatened.  I lay
+quietly for a second and deliberated.  Borg had borrowed my pistol, and
+I was actually unarmed.  My rifle was by the door.  I decided to make a
+rush for it.  But no sooner had I struck the floor than one of the men
+turned on me, at the same time firing his revolver.  That was the first
+shot, and the one La Flitche did not hear.  It was in the struggle
+afterwards that the door was burst open, which enabled him to hear the
+last three.
+
+"Well; I was so close to the man, and my leap out of the bunk was so
+unexpected, that he missed me.  The next moment we grappled and rolled
+on the floor.  Of course, Borg was aroused, and the second man turned
+his attention to him and Bella.  It was this second man who did the
+killing, for my man, naturally, had his hands full.  You heard the
+testimony.  From the way the cabin was wrecked, you can picture the
+struggle.  We rolled and tossed about and fought till stools, table,
+shelves--everything was smashed.
+
+"Oh, Frona, it was terrible!  Borg fighting for life, Bella helping
+him, though wounded and groaning, and I unable to aid.  But finally, in
+a very short while, I began to conquer the man with whom I was
+struggling.  I had got him down on his back, pinioned his arms with my
+knees, and was slowly throttling him, when the other man finished his
+work and turned on me also.  What could I do?  Two to one, and winded!
+So I was thrown into the corner, and they made their escape.  I confess
+that I must have been badly rattled by that time, for as soon as I
+caught my breath I took out after them, and without a weapon.  Then I
+collided with La Flitche and John, and--and you know the rest.  Only,"
+he knit his brows in puzzlement, "only, I cannot understand why Bella
+should accuse me."
+
+He looked at her appealingly, and, though she pressed his hand
+sympathetically, she remained silent, weighing pro and con what she had
+heard.
+
+She shook her head slowly.  "It's a bad case, and the thing is to
+convince them--"
+
+"But, my God, Frona, I am innocent!  I have not been a saint, perhaps,
+but my hands are clean from blood."
+
+"But remember, Gregory," she said, gently, "I am not to judge you.
+Unhappily, it rests with the men of this miners' meeting, and the
+problem is: how are they to be convinced of your innocence?  The two
+main points are against you,--Bella's dying words and the blood on your
+sleeve."
+
+"The place was areek with blood," St. Vincent cried passionately,
+springing to his feet.  "I tell you it was areek!  How could I avoid
+floundering in it, fighting as I was for life?  Can you not take my
+word--"
+
+"There, there, Gregory.  Sit down.  You are truly beside yourself.  If
+your case rested with me, you know you would go free and clean.  But
+these men,--you know what mob rule is,--how are we to persuade them to
+let you go?  Don't you see?  You have no witnesses.  A dying woman's
+words are more sacred than a living man's.  Can you show cause for the
+woman to die with a lie on her lips?  Had she any reason to hate you?
+Had you done her or her husband an injury?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Certainly, to us the thing is inexplicable; but the miners need no
+explanation.  To them it is obvious.  It rests with us to disprove the
+obvious.  Can we do it?"
+
+The correspondent sank down despondently, with a collapsing of the
+chest and a drooping forward of the shoulders.  "Then am I indeed lost."
+
+"No, it's not so bad as that.  You shall not be hanged.  Trust me for
+that."
+
+"But what can you do?" he asked, despairingly.  "They have usurped the
+law, have made themselves the law."
+
+"In the first place, the river has broken.  That means everything.  The
+Governor and the territorial judges may be expected in at any moment
+with a detachment of police at their backs.  And they're certain to
+stop here.  And, furthermore, we may be able to do something ourselves.
+The river is open, and if it comes to the worst, escape would be
+another way out; and escape is the last thing they would dream of."
+
+"No, no; impossible.  What are you and I against the many?"
+
+"But there's my father and Baron Courbertin.  Four determined people,
+acting together, may perform miracles, Gregory, dear.  Trust me, it
+shall come out well."
+
+She kissed him and ran her hand through his hair, but the worried look
+did not depart.
+
+Jacob Welse crossed over the back-channel long before dark, and with
+him came Del, the baron, and Corliss.  While Frona retired to change
+her clothes in one of the smaller cabins, which the masculine owners
+readily turned over to her, her father saw to the welfare of the
+mail-carrier.  The despatches were of serious import, so serious that
+long after Jacob Welse had read and re-read them his face was dark and
+clouded; but he put the anxiety from him when he returned to Frona.
+St. Vincent, who was confined in an adjoining cabin, was permitted to
+see them.
+
+"It looks bad," Jacob Welse said, on parting for the night.  "But rest
+assured, St. Vincent, bad or not, you'll not be stretched up so long as
+I've a hand to play in the rumpus.  I am certain you did not kill Borg,
+and there's my fist on it."
+
+"A long day," Corliss remarked, as he walked back with Frona to her
+cabin.
+
+"And a longer to-morrow," she answered, wearily.  "And I'm so sleepy."
+
+"You're a brave little woman, and I'm proud of you."  It was ten
+o'clock, and he looked out through the dim twilight to the ghostly ice
+drifting steadily by.  "And in this trouble," he went on, "depend upon
+me in any way."
+
+"In any way?" she queried, with a catch in her voice.
+
+"If I were a hero of the melodrama I'd say; 'To the death!' but as I'm
+not; I'll just repeat, in any way."
+
+"You are good to me, Vance.  I can never repay--"
+
+"Tut! tut!  I do not put myself on sale.  Love is service, I believe."
+
+She looked at him for a long time, but while her face betrayed soft
+wonder, at heart she was troubled, she knew not why, and the events of
+the day, and of all the days since she had known him, came fluttering
+through her mind.
+
+"Do you believe in a white friendship?" she asked at last.  "For I do
+hope that such a bond may hold us always.  A bright, white friendship,
+a comradeship, as it were?"  And as she asked, she was aware that the
+phrase did not quite express what she felt and would desire.  And when
+he shook his head, she experienced a glad little inexplicable thrill.
+
+"A comradeship?" he questioned.  "When you know I love you?"
+
+"Yes," she affirmed in a low voice.
+
+"I am afraid, after all, that your knowledge of man is very limited.
+Believe me, we are not made of such clay.  A comradeship?  A coming in
+out of the cold to sit by your fire?  Good.  But a coming in when
+another man sits with you by your fire?  No.  Comradeship would demand
+that I delight in your delights, and yet, do you think for a moment
+that I could see you with another man's child in your arms, a child
+which might have been mine; with that other man looking out at me
+through the child's eyes, laughing at me through its mouth?  I say, do
+you think I could delight in your delights?  No, no; love cannot
+shackle itself with white friendships."
+
+She put her hand on his arm.
+
+"Do you think I am wrong?" he asked, bewildered by the strange look in
+her face.
+
+She was sobbing quietly.
+
+"You are tired and overwrought.  So there, good-night.  You must get to
+bed."
+
+"No, don't go, not yet."  And she arrested him.  "No, no; I am foolish.
+As you say, I am tired.  But listen, Vance.  There is much to be done.
+We must plan to-morrow's work.  Come inside.  Father and Baron
+Courbertin are together, and if the worst comes, we four must do big
+things."
+
+"Spectacular," Jacob Welse commented, when Frona had briefly outlined
+the course of action and assigned them their parts.  "But its very
+unexpectedness ought to carry it through."
+
+"A _coup d'etat_!" was the Baron's verdict.  "Magnificent!  Ah!  I feel
+warm all over at the thought.  'Hands up!' I cry, thus, and very fierce.
+
+"And if they do not hold up their hands?" he appealed to Jacob Welse.
+
+"Then shoot.  Never bluff when you're behind a gun, Courbertin.  It's
+held by good authorities to be unhealthy."
+
+"And you are to take charge of La Bijou, Vance," Frona said.  "Father
+thinks there will be little ice to-morrow if it doesn't jam to-night.
+All you've to do is to have the canoe by the bank just before the door.
+Of course, you won't know what is happening until St. Vincent comes
+running.  Then in with him, and away you go--Dawson!  So I'll say
+good-night and good-by now, for I may not have the opportunity in the
+morning."
+
+"And keep the left-hand channel till you're past the bend," Jacob Welse
+counselled him; "then take the cut-offs to the right and follow the
+swiftest water.  Now off with you and into your blankets.  It's seventy
+miles to Dawson, and you'll have to make it at one clip."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+Jacob Welse was given due respect when he arose at the convening of the
+miners' meeting and denounced the proceedings.  While such meetings had
+performed a legitimate function in the past, he contended, when there
+was no law in the land, that time was now beyond recall; for law was
+now established, and it was just law.  The Queen's government had shown
+itself fit to cope with the situation, and for them to usurp its powers
+was to step backward into the night out of which they had come.
+Further, no lighter word than "criminal" could characterize such
+conduct.  And yet further, he promised them, in set, sober terms, if
+anything serious were the outcome, to take an active part in the
+prosecution of every one of them.  At the conclusion of his speech he
+made a motion to hold the prisoner for the territorial court and to
+adjourn, but was voted down without discussion.
+
+"Don't you see," St. Vincent said to Frona, "there is no hope?"
+
+"But there is.  Listen!"  And she swiftly outlined the plot of the
+night before.
+
+He followed her in a half-hearted way, too crushed to partake of her
+enthusiasm.  "It's madness to attempt it," he objected, when she had
+done.
+
+"And it looks very much like hanging not to attempt it," she answered a
+little spiritedly.  "Surely you will make a fight?"
+
+"Surely," he replied, hollowly.
+
+The first witnesses were two Swedes, who told of the wash-tub incident,
+when Borg had given way to one of his fits of anger.   Trivial as the
+incident was, in the light of subsequent events it at once became
+serious.  It opened the way for the imagination into a vast familiar
+field.  It was not so much what was said as what was left unsaid.  Men
+born of women, the rudest of them, knew life well enough to be aware of
+its significance,--a vulgar common happening, capable of but one
+interpretation.  Heads were wagged knowingly in the course of the
+testimony, and whispered comments went the rounds.
+
+Half a dozen witnesses followed in rapid succession, all of whom had
+closely examined the scene of the crime and gone over the island
+carefully, and all of whom were agreed that there was not the slightest
+trace to be found of the two men mentioned by the prisoner in his
+preliminary statement.
+
+To Frona's surprise, Del Bishop went upon the stand.  She knew he
+disliked St. Vincent, but could not imagine any evidence he could
+possess which would bear upon the case.
+
+Being sworn, and age and nationality ascertained, Bill Brown asked him
+his business.
+
+"Pocket-miner," he challenged back, sweeping the assemblage with an
+aggressive glance.
+
+Now, it happens that a very small class of men follow pocketing, and
+that a very large class of men, miners, too, disbelieve utterly in any
+such method or obtaining gold.
+
+"Pocket-miner!" sneered a red-shirted, patriarchal-looking man, a man
+who had washed his first pan in the Californian diggings in the early
+fifties.
+
+"Yep," Del affirmed.
+
+"Now, look here, young feller," his interlocutor continued, "d'ye mean
+to tell me you ever struck it in such-fangled way?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"Don't believe it," with a contemptuous shrug.
+
+Del swallowed fast and raised his head with a jerk.  "Mr. Chairman, I
+rise to make a statement.  I won't interfere with the dignity of the
+court, but I just wish to simply and distinctly state that after the
+meeting's over I'm going to punch the head of every man that gets gay.
+Understand?"
+
+"You're out of order," the chairman replied, rapping the table with the
+caulking-mallet.
+
+"And your head, too," Del cried, turning upon him.  "Damn poor order
+you preserve.  Pocketing's got nothing to do with this here trial, and
+why don't you shut such fool questions out?  I'll take care of you
+afterwards, you potwolloper!"
+
+"You will, will you?" The chairman grew red in the face, dropped the
+mallet, and sprang to his feet.
+
+Del stepped forward to meet him, but Bill Brown sprang in between and
+held them apart.
+
+"Order, gentlemen, order," he begged.  "This is no time for unseemly
+exhibitions.  And remember there are ladies present."
+
+The two men grunted and subsided, and Bill Brown asked, "Mr. Bishop, we
+understand that you are well acquainted with the prisoner.  Will you
+please tell the court what you know of his general character?"
+
+Del broadened into a smile.  "Well, in the first place, he's an
+extremely quarrelsome disposition--"
+
+"Hold!  I won't have it!"  The prisoner was on his feet, trembling with
+anger.  "You shall not swear my life away in such fashion!  To bring a
+madman, whom I have only met once in my life, to testify as to my
+character!"
+
+The pocket-miner turned to him.  "So you don't know me, eh, Gregory St.
+Vincent?"
+
+"No," St.  Vincent replied, coldly, "I do not know you, my man."
+
+"Don't you man me!" Del shouted, hotly.
+
+But St. Vincent ignored him, turning to the crowd.
+
+"I never saw the fellow but once before, and then for a few brief
+moments in Dawson."
+
+"You'll remember before I'm done," Del sneered; "so hold your hush and
+let me say my little say.  I come into the country with him way back in
+'84."
+
+St. Vincent regarded him with sudden interest.
+
+"Yep, Mr. Gregory St. Vincent.  I see you begin to recollect.  I
+sported whiskers and my name was Brown, Joe Brown, in them days."
+
+He grinned vindictively, and the correspondent seemed to lose all
+interest.
+
+"Is it true, Gregory?" Frona whispered.
+
+"I begin to recognize," he muttered, slowly.  "I don't know . . . no,
+folly!  The man must have died."
+
+"You say in '84, Mr. Bishop?" Bill Brown prompted.
+
+"Yep, in '84.  He was a newspaper-man, bound round the world by way of
+Alaska and Siberia.  I'd run away from a whaler at Sitka,--that squares
+it with Brown,--and I engaged with him for forty a month and found.
+Well, he quarrelled with me--"
+
+A snicker, beginning from nowhere in particular, but passing on from
+man to man and swelling in volume, greeted this statement.  Even Frona
+and Del himself were forced to smile, and the only sober face was the
+prisoner's.
+
+"But he quarrelled with Old Andy at Dyea, and with Chief George of the
+Chilcoots, and the Factor at Pelly, and so on down the line.  He got us
+into no end of trouble, and 'specially woman-trouble.  He was always
+monkeying around--"
+
+"Mr.  Chairman, I object."  Frona stood up, her face quite calm and
+blood under control.  "There is no necessity for bringing in the amours
+of Mr. St. Vincent.  They have no bearing whatsoever upon the case;
+and, further, none of the men of this meeting are clean enough to be
+prompted by the right motive in conducting such an inquiry.  So I
+demand that the prosecution at least confine itself to relevant
+testimony."
+
+Bill Brown came up smugly complacent and smiling.  "Mr. Chairman, we
+willingly accede to the request made by the defence.  Whatever we have
+brought out has been relevant and material.  Whatever we intend to
+bring out shall be relevant and material.  Mr. Bishop is our star
+witness, and his testimony is to the point.  It must be taken into
+consideration that we nave no direct evidence as to the murder of John
+Borg.  We can bring no eye-witnesses into court.  Whatever we have is
+circumstantial.  It is incumbent upon us to show cause.  To show cause
+it is necessary to go into the character of the accused.  This we
+intend to do.  We intend to show his adulterous and lustful nature,
+which has culminated in a dastardly deed and jeopardized his neck.  We
+intend to show that the truth is not in him; that he is a liar beyond
+price; that no word he may speak upon the stand need be accepted by a
+jury of his peers.  We intend to show all this, and to weave it
+together, thread by thread, till we have a rope long enough and strong
+enough to hang him with before the day is done.  So I respectfully
+submit, Mr. Chairman, that the witness be allowed to proceed."
+
+The chairman decided against Frona, and her appeal to the meeting was
+voted down.  Bill Brown nodded to Del to resume.
+
+"As I was saying, he got us into no end of trouble.  Now, I've been
+mixed up with water all my life,--never can get away from it, it
+seems,--and the more I'm mixed the less I know about it.  St. Vincent
+knew this, too, and him a clever hand at the paddle; yet he left me to
+run the Box Canyon alone while he walked around.  Result: I was turned
+over, lost half the outfit and all the tobacco, and then he put the
+blame on me besides.  Right after that he got tangled up with the Lake
+Le Barge Sticks, and both of us came near croaking."
+
+"And why was that?" Bill Brown interjected.
+
+"All along of a pretty squaw that looked too kindly at him.  After we
+got clear, I lectured him on women in general and squaws in particular,
+and he promised to behave.  Then we had a hot time with the Little
+Salmons.  He was cuter this time, and I didn't know for keeps, but I
+guessed.  He said it was the medicine man who got horstile; but
+nothing'll stir up a medicine man quicker'n women, and the facts
+pointed that way.  When I talked it over with him in a fatherly way he
+got wrathy, and I had to take him out on the bank and give him a
+threshing.  Then he got sulky, and didn't brighten up till we ran into
+the mouth of the Reindeer River, where a camp of Siwashes were fishing
+salmon.  But he had it in for me all the time, only I didn't know
+it,--was ready any time to give me the double cross.
+
+"Now, there's no denying he's got a taking way with women.  All he has
+to do is to whistle 'em up like dogs.  Most remarkable faculty, that.
+There was the wickedest, prettiest squaw among the Reindeers.  Never
+saw her beat, excepting Bella.  Well, I guess he whistled her up, for
+he delayed in the camp longer than was necessary.  Being partial to
+women--"
+
+"That will do, Mr. Bishop," interrupted the chairman, who, from
+profitless watching of Frona's immobile face, had turned to her hand,
+the nervous twitching and clinching of which revealed what her face had
+hidden.  "That will do, Mr. Bishop.  I think we have had enough of
+squaws."
+
+"Pray do not temper the testimony," Frona chirruped, sweetly.  "It
+seems very important."
+
+"Do you know what I am going to say next?" Del demanded hotly of the
+chairman.  "You don't, eh?  Then shut up.  I'm running this particular
+sideshow."
+
+Bill Brown sprang in to avert hostilities, but the chairman restrained
+himself, and Bishop went on.
+
+"I'd been done with the whole shooting-match, squaws and all, if you
+hadn't broke me off.  Well, as I said, he had it in for me, and the
+first thing I didn't know, he'd hit me on the head with a rifle-stock,
+bundled the squaw into the canoe, and pulled out.  You all know what
+the Yukon country was in '84.  And there I was, without an outfit, left
+alone, a thousand miles from anywhere.  I got out all right, though
+there's no need of telling how, and so did he.  You've all heard of his
+adventures in Siberia.  Well," with an impressive pause, "I happen to
+know a thing or two myself."
+
+He shoved a hand into the big pocket of his mackinaw jacket and pulled
+out a dingy leather-bound volume of venerable appearance.
+
+"I got this from Pete Whipple's old woman,--Whipple of Eldorado.  It
+concerns her grand-uncle or great-grand-uncle, I don't know which; and
+if there's anybody here can read Russian, why, it'll go into the
+details of that Siberian trip.  But as there's no one here that can--"
+
+"Courbertin!  He can read it!" some one called in the crowd.
+
+A way was made for the Frenchman forthwith, and he was pushed and
+shoved, protestingly, to the front.
+
+"Savve the lingo?" Del demanded.
+
+"Yes; but so poorly, so miserable," Courbertin demurred.  "It is a long
+time.  I forget."
+
+"Go ahead.  We won't criticise."
+
+"No, but--"
+
+"Go ahead!" the chairman commanded.
+
+Del thrust the book into his hands, opened at the yellow title-page.
+"I've been itching to get my paws on some buck like you for months and
+months," he assured him, gleefully.  "And now I've got you, you can't
+shake me, Charley.  So fire away."
+
+Courbertin began hesitatingly: "'_The Journal of Father Yakontsk,
+Comprising an Account in Brief of his Life in the Benedictine Monastery
+at Obidorsky, and in Full of his Marvellous Adventures in East Siberia
+among the Deer Men_.'"
+
+The baron looked up for instructions.
+
+"Tell us when it was printed," Del ordered him.
+
+"In Warsaw, 1807."
+
+The pocket-miner turned triumphantly to the room.  "Did you hear that?
+Just keep track of it.  1807, remember!"
+
+The baron took up the opening paragraph.  "'_It was because of
+Tamerlane_,'" he commenced, unconsciously putting his translation into
+a construction with which he was already familiar.
+
+At his first words Frona turned white, and she remained white
+throughout the reading.  Once she stole a glance at her father, and was
+glad that he was looking straight before him, for she did not feel able
+to meet his gaze just them.  On the other hand, though she knew St.
+Vincent was eying her narrowly, she took no notice of him, and all he
+could see was a white face devoid of expression.
+
+"'_When Tamerlane swept with fire and sword over Eastern Asia_,'"
+Courbertin read slowly, "'_states were disrupted, cities overthrown,
+and tribes scattered like--like star-dust.  A vast people was hurled
+broadcast over the land.  Fleeing before the conquerors_,'--no,
+no,--'_before the mad lust of the conquerors, these refugees swung far
+into Siberia, circling, circling to the north and east and fringing the
+rim of the polar basin with a spray of Mongol tribes_.'"
+
+"Skip a few pages," Bill Brown advised, "and read here and there.  We
+haven't got all night."
+
+Courbertin complied.  "'_The coast people are Eskimo stock, merry of
+nature and not offensive.  They call themselves the Oukilion, or the
+Sea Men.  From them I bought dogs and food.  But they are subject to
+the Chow Chuen, who live in the interior and are known as the Deer Men.
+The Chow Chuen are a fierce and savage race.  When I left the coast
+they fell upon me, took from me my goods, and made me a slave_.'"  He
+ran over a few pages.  "'_I worked my way to a seat among the head men,
+but I was no nearer my freedom.  My wisdom was of too great value to
+them for me to depart. . .  Old Pi-Une was a great chief, and it was
+decreed that I should marry his daughter Ilswunga.  Ilswunga was a
+filthy creature.  She would not bathe, and her ways were not good . . .
+I did marry Ilswunga, but she was a wife to me only in name.  Then did
+she complain to her father, the old Pi-Une, and he was very wroth.  And
+dissension was sown among the tribes; but in the end I became mightier
+than ever, what of my cunning and resource; and Ilswunga made no more
+complaint, for I taught her games with cards which she might play by
+herself, and other things_.'"
+
+"Is that enough?" Courbertin asked.
+
+"Yes, that will do," Bill Brown answered.  "But one moment.  Please
+state again the date of publication."
+
+"1807, in Warsaw."
+
+"Hold on, baron," Del Bishop spoke up.  "Now that you're on the stand,
+I've got a question or so to slap into you."  He turned to the
+court-room.  "Gentlemen, you've all heard somewhat of the prisoner's
+experiences in Siberia.  You've caught on to the remarkable sameness
+between them and those published by Father Yakontsk nearly a hundred
+years ago.  And you have concluded that there's been some wholesale
+cribbing somewhere.  I propose to show you that it's more than
+cribbing.  The prisoner gave me the shake on the Reindeer River in '88.
+Fall of '88 he was at St. Michael's on his way to Siberia.  '89 and '90
+he was, by his talk, cutting up antics in Siberia.  '91 he come back to
+the world, working the conquering-hero graft in 'Frisco.  Now let's see
+if the Frenchman can make us wise.
+
+"You were in Japan?" he asked.
+
+Courbertin, who had followed the dates, made a quick calculation, and
+could but illy conceal his surprise.  He looked appealingly to Frona,
+but she did not help him.  "Yes," he said, finally.
+
+"And you met the prisoner there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What year was it?"
+
+There was a general craning forward to catch the answer.
+
+"1889," and it came unwillingly.
+
+"Now, how can that be, baron?" Del asked in a wheedling tone.  "The
+prisoner was in Siberia at that time."
+
+Courbertin shrugged his shoulders that it was no concern of his, and
+came off the stand.  An impromptu recess was taken by the court-room
+for several minutes, wherein there was much whispering and shaking of
+heads.
+
+"It is all a lie."  St. Vincent leaned close to Frona's ear, but she
+did not hear.
+
+"Appearances are against me, but I can explain it all."
+
+But she did not move a muscle, and he was called to the stand by the
+chairman.  She turned to her father, and the tears rushed up into her
+eyes when he rested his hand on hers.
+
+"Do you care to pull out?" he asked after a momentary hesitation.
+
+She shook her head, and St. Vincent began to speak.  It was the same
+story he had told her, though told now a little more fully, and in
+nowise did it conflict with the evidence of La Flitche and John.  He
+acknowledged the wash-tub incident, caused, he explained, by an act of
+simple courtesy on his part and by John Borg's unreasoning anger.  He
+acknowledged that Bella had been killed by his own pistol, but stated
+that the pistol had been borrowed by Borg several days previously and
+not returned.  Concerning Bella's accusation he could say nothing.  He
+could not see why she should die with a lie on her lips.  He had never
+in the slightest way incurred her displeasure, so even revenge could
+not be advanced.  It was inexplicable.  As for the testimony of Bishop,
+he did not care to discuss it.  It was a tissue of falsehood cunningly
+interwoven with truth.  It was true the man had gone into Alaska with
+him in 1888, but his version of the things which happened there was
+maliciously untrue.  Regarding the baron, there was a slight mistake in
+the dates, that was all.
+
+In questioning him.  Bill Brown brought out one little surprise.  From
+the prisoner's story, he had made a hard fight against the two
+mysterious men.  "If," Brown asked, "such were the case, how can you
+explain away the fact that you came out of the struggle unmarked?  On
+examination of the body of John Borg, many bruises and contusions were
+noticeable.  How is it, if you put up such a stiff fight, that you
+escaped being battered?"
+
+St. Vincent did not know, though he confessed to feeling stiff and sore
+all over.  And it did not matter, anyway.  He had killed neither Borg
+nor his wife, that much he did know.
+
+Frona prefaced her argument to the meeting with a pithy discourse on
+the sacredness of human life, the weaknesses and dangers of
+circumstantial evidence, and the rights of the accused wherever doubt
+arose.  Then she plunged into the evidence, stripping off the
+superfluous and striving to confine herself to facts.  In the first
+place, she denied that a motive for the deed had been shown.  As it
+was, the introduction of such evidence was an insult to their
+intelligence, and she had sufficient faith in their manhood and
+perspicacity to know that such puerility would not sway them in the
+verdict they were to give.
+
+And, on the other hand, in dealing with the particular points at issue,
+she denied that any intimacy had been shown to have existed between
+Bella and St. Vincent; and she denied, further, that it had been shown
+that any intimacy had been attempted on the part of St. Vincent.
+Viewed honestly, the wash-tub incident--the only evidence brought
+forward--was a laughable little affair, portraying how the simple
+courtesy of a gentleman might be misunderstood by a mad boor of a
+husband.  She left it to their common sense; they were not fools.
+
+They had striven to prove the prisoner bad-tempered.  She did not need
+to prove anything of the sort concerning John Borg.  They all knew his
+terrible fits of anger; they all knew that his temper was proverbial in
+the community; that it had prevented him having friends and had made
+him many enemies.  Was it not very probable, therefore, that the masked
+men were two such enemies?  As to what particular motive actuated these
+two men, she could not say; but it rested with them, the judges, to
+know whether in all Alaska there were or were not two men whom John
+Borg could have given cause sufficient for them to take his life.
+
+Witness had testified that no traces had been found of these two men;
+but the witness had not testified that no traces had been found of St.
+Vincent, Pierre La Flitche, or John the Swede.  And there was no need
+for them so to testify.  Everybody knew that no foot-marks were left
+when St. Vincent ran up the trail, and when he came back with La
+Flitche and the other man.  Everybody knew the condition of the trail,
+that it was a hard-packed groove in the ground, on which a soft
+moccasin could leave no impression; and that had the ice not gone down
+the river, no traces would have been left by the murderers in passing
+from and to the mainland.
+
+At this juncture La Flitche nodded his head in approbation, and she
+went on.
+
+Capital had been made out of the blood on St. Vincent's hands.  If they
+chose to examine the moccasins at that moment on the feet of Mr. La
+Flitche, they would also find blood.  That did not argue that Mr. La
+Flitche had been a party to the shedding of the blood.
+
+Mr. Brown had drawn attention to the fact that the prisoner had not
+been bruised or marked in the savage encounter which had taken place.
+She thanked him for having done so.  John Borg's body showed that it
+had been roughly used.  He was a larger, stronger, heavier man than St.
+Vincent.  If, as charged, St. Vincent had committed the murder, and
+necessarily, therefore, engaged in a struggle severe enough to bruise
+John Borg, how was it that he had come out unharmed?  That was a point
+worthy of consideration.
+
+Another one was, why did he run down the trail?  It was inconceivable,
+if he had committed the murder, that he should, without dressing or
+preparation for escape, run towards the other cabins.  It was, however,
+easily conceivable that he should take up the pursuit of the real
+murderers, and in the darkness--exhausted, breathless, and certainly
+somewhat excited--run blindly down the trail.
+
+Her summing up was a strong piece of synthesis; and when she had done,
+the meeting applauded her roundly.  But she was angry and hurt, for she
+knew the demonstration was for her sex rather than for her cause and
+the work she had done.
+
+Bill Brown, somewhat of a shyster, and his ear ever cocked to the
+crowd, was not above taking advantage when opportunity offered, and
+when it did not offer, to dogmatize artfully.  In this his native humor
+was a strong factor, and when he had finished with the mysterious
+masked men they were as exploded sun-myths,--which phrase he promptly
+applied to them.
+
+They could not have got off the island.  The condition of the ice for
+the three or four hours preceding the break-up would not have permitted
+it.  The prisoner had implicated none of the residents of the island,
+while every one of them, with the exception of the prisoner, had been
+accounted for elsewhere.  Possibly the prisoner was excited when he ran
+down the trail into the arms of La Flitche and John the Swede.  One
+should have thought, however, that he had grown used to such things in
+Siberia.  But that was immaterial; the facts were that he was
+undoubtedly in an abnormal state of excitement, that he was
+hysterically excited, and that a murderer under such circumstances
+would take little account of where he ran.  Such things had happened
+before.  Many a man had butted into his own retribution.
+
+In the matter of the relations of Borg, Bella, and St. Vincent, he made
+a strong appeal to the instinctive prejudices of his listeners, and for
+the time being abandoned matter-of-fact reasoning for all-potent
+sentimental platitudes.  He granted that circumstantial evidence never
+proved anything absolutely.  It was not necessary it should.  Beyond
+the shadow of a reasonable doubt was all that was required.  That this
+had been done, he went on to review the testimony.
+
+"And, finally," he said, "you can't get around Bella's last words.  We
+know nothing of our own direct knowledge.  We've been feeling around in
+the dark, clutching at little things, and trying to figure it all out.
+But, gentlemen," he paused to search the faces of his listeners, "Bella
+knew the truth.  Hers is no circumstantial evidence.  With quick,
+anguished breath, and life-blood ebbing from her, and eyeballs glazing,
+she spoke the truth.  With dark night coming on, and the death-rattle
+in her throat, she raised herself weakly and pointed a shaking finger
+at the accused, thus, and she said, 'Him, him, him.  St. Vincha, him do
+it.'"
+
+With Bill Brown's finger still boring into him, St. Vincent struggled
+to his feet.  His face looked old and gray, and he looked about him
+speechlessly.  "Funk!  Funk!" was whispered back and forth, and not so
+softly but what he heard.  He moistened his lips repeatedly, and his
+tongue fought for articulation.  "It is as I have said," he succeeded,
+finally.  "I did not do it.  Before God, I did not do it!"  He stared
+fixedly at John the Swede, waiting the while on his laggard thought.
+"I . . .  I did not do it . . .  I did not . . .  I . . .  I did not."
+
+He seemed to have become lost in some supreme meditation wherein John
+the Swede figured largely, and as Frona caught him by the hand and
+pulled him gently down, some man cried out, "Secret ballot!"
+
+But Bill Brown was on his feet at once.  "No!  I say no!  An open
+ballot!  We are men, and as men are not afraid to put ourselves on
+record."
+
+A chorus of approval greeted him, and the open ballot began.  Man after
+man, called upon by name, spoke the one word, "Guilty."
+
+Baron Courbertin came forward and whispered to Frona.  She nodded her
+head and smiled, and he edged his way back, taking up a position by the
+door.  He voted "Not guilty" when his turn came, as did Frona and Jacob
+Welse.  Pierre La Flitche wavered a moment, looking keenly at Frona and
+St. Vincent, then spoke up, clear and flute-like, "Guilty."
+
+As the chairman arose, Jacob Welse casually walked over to the opposite
+side of the table and stood with his back to the stove.  Courbertin,
+who had missed nothing, pulled a pickle-keg out from the wall and
+stepped upon it.
+
+The chairman cleared his throat and rapped for order.  "Gentlemen," he
+announced, "the prisoner--"
+
+"Hands up!" Jacob Welse commanded peremptorily, and a fraction of a
+second after him came the shrill "Hands up, gentlemen!" of Courbertin.
+
+Front and rear they commanded the crowd with their revolvers.  Every
+hand was in the air, the chairman's having gone up still grasping the
+mallet.  There was no disturbance.  Each stood or sat in the same
+posture as when the command went forth.  Their eyes, playing here and
+there among the central figures, always returned to Jacob Welse.
+
+St. Vincent sat as one dumfounded.  Frona thrust a revolver into his
+hand, but his limp fingers refused to close on it.
+
+"Come, Gregory," she entreated.  "Quick!  Corliss is waiting with the
+canoe.  Come!"
+
+She shook him, and he managed to grip the weapon.  Then she pulled and
+tugged, as when awakening a heavy sleeper, till he was on his feet.
+But his face was livid, his eyes like a somnambulist's, and he was
+afflicted as with a palsy.  Still holding him, she took a step backward
+for him to come on.  He ventured it with a shaking knee.  There was no
+sound save the heavy breathing of many men.  A man coughed slightly and
+cleared his throat.  It was disquieting, and all eyes centred upon him
+rebukingly.  The man became embarrassed, and shifted his weight
+uneasily to the other leg.  Then the heavy breathing settled down again.
+
+St. Vincent took another step, but his fingers relaxed and the revolver
+fell with a loud noise to the floor.  He made no effort to recover it.
+Frona stooped hurriedly, but Pierre La Flitche had set his foot upon
+it.  She looked up and saw his hands above his head and his eyes fixed
+absently on Jacob Welse.  She pushed at his leg, and the muscles were
+tense and hard, giving the lie to the indifference on his face.  St.
+Vincent looked down helplessly, as though he could not understand.
+
+But this delay drew the attention of Jacob Welse, and, as he tried to
+make out the cause, the chairman found his chance.  Without crooking,
+his right arm swept out and down, the heavy caulking-mallet leaping
+from his hand.  It spanned the short distance and smote Jacob Welse
+below the ear.  His revolver went off as he fell, and John the Swede
+grunted and clapped a hand to his thigh.
+
+Simultaneous with this the baron was overcome.  Del Bishop, with hands
+still above his head and eyes fixed innocently before him, had simply
+kicked the pickle-keg out from under the Frenchman and brought him to
+the floor.  His bullet, however, sped harmlessly through the roof.  La
+Flitche seized Frona in his arms.  St. Vincent, suddenly awakening,
+sprang for the door, but was tripped up by the breed's ready foot.
+
+The chairman pounded the table with his fist and concluded his broken
+sentence, "Gentlemen, the prisoner is found guilty as charged."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+Frona had gone at once to her father's side, but he was already
+recovering.  Courbertin was brought forward with a scratched face,
+sprained wrist, and an insubordinate tongue.  To prevent discussion and
+to save time, Bill Brown claimed the floor.
+
+"Mr. Chairman, while we condemn the attempt on the part of Jacob Welse,
+Frona Welse, and Baron Courbertin to rescue the prisoner and thwart
+justice, we cannot, under the circumstances, but sympathize with them.
+There is no need that I should go further into this matter.  You all
+know, and doubtless, under a like situation, would have done the same.
+And so, in order that we may expeditiously finish the business, I make
+a motion to disarm the three prisoners and let them go."
+
+The motion was carried, and the two men searched for weapons.  Frona
+was saved this by giving her word that she was no longer armed.  The
+meeting then resolved itself into a hanging committee, and began to
+file out of the cabin.
+
+"Sorry I had to do it," the chairman said, half-apologetically,
+half-defiantly.
+
+Jacob Welse smiled.  "You took your chance," he answered, "and I can't
+blame you.  I only wish I'd got you, though."
+
+Excited voices arose from across the cabin.  "Here, you!  Leggo!" "Step
+on his fingers, Tim!"  "Break that grip!"  "Ouch!  Ow!"  "Pry his mouth
+open!"
+
+Frona saw a knot of struggling men about St. Vincent, and ran over.  He
+had thrown himself down on the floor and, tooth and nail, was fighting
+like a madman.  Tim Dugan, a stalwart Celt, had come to close quarters
+with him, and St. Vincent's teeth were sunk in the man's arm.
+
+"Smash 'm, Tim!  Smash 'm!"
+
+"How can I, ye fule?  Get a pry on his mouth, will ye?"
+
+"One moment, please."  The men made way for her, drawing back and
+leaving St. Vincent and Tim.
+
+Frona knelt down by him.  "Leave go, Gregory.  Do leave go."
+
+He looked up at her, and his eyes did not seem human.  He breathed
+stertorously, and in his throat were the queer little gasping noises of
+one overwrought.
+
+"It is I, Gregory."  She brushed her hand soothingly across his brow.
+"Don't you understand?  It is I, Frona.  Do leave go."
+
+His whole body slowly relaxed, and a peaceful expression grew upon his
+face.  His jaw dropped, and the man's arm was withdrawn.
+
+"Now listen, Gregory.  Though you are to die--"
+
+"But I cannot!  I cannot!" he groaned.  "You said that I could trust to
+you, that all would come well."
+
+She thought of the chance which had been given, but said nothing.
+
+"Oh, Frona!  Frona!" He sobbed and buried his face in her lap.
+
+"At least you can be a man.  It is all that remains."
+
+"Come on!" Tim Dugan commanded.  "Sorry to bother ye, miss, but we've
+got to fetch 'm along.  Drag 'm out, you fellys!  Catch 'm by the legs,
+Blackey, and you, too, Johnson."
+
+St. Vincent's body stiffened at the words, the rational gleam went out
+of his eyes, and his fingers closed spasmodically on Frona's.  She
+looked entreaty at the men, and they hesitated.
+
+"Give me a minute with him," she begged, "just a minute."
+
+"He ain't worth it," Dugan sneered, after they had drawn apart.  "Look
+at 'm."
+
+"It's a damned shame," corroborated Blackey, squinting sidewise at
+Frona whispering in St. Vincent's ear, the while her hand wandered
+caressingly through his hair.
+
+What she said they did not hear, but she got him on his feet and led
+him forward.  He walked as a dead man might walk, and when he entered
+the open air gazed forth wonderingly upon the muddy sweep of the Yukon.
+The crowd had formed by the bank, about a pine tree.  A boy, engaged in
+running a rope over one of the branches, finished his task and slid
+down the trunk to the ground.  He looked quickly at the palms of his
+hands and blew upon them, and a laugh went up.  A couple of wolf-dogs,
+on the outskirts, bristled up to each other and bared their fangs.  Men
+encouraged them.  They closed in and rolled over, but were kicked aside
+to make room for St. Vincent.
+
+Corliss came up the bank to Frona.  "What's up?" he whispered.  "Is it
+off?"
+
+She tried to speak, but swallowed and nodded her head.
+
+"This way, Gregory."  She touched his arm and guided him to the box
+beneath the rope.
+
+Corliss, keeping step with them, looked over the crowd speculatively
+and felt into his jacket-pocket.  "Can I do anything?" he asked,
+gnawing his under lip impatiently.  "Whatever you say goes, Frona.  I
+can stand them off."
+
+She looked at him, aware of pleasure in the sight.  She knew he would
+dare it, but she knew also that it would be unfair.  St. Vincent had
+had his chance, and it was not right that further sacrifice should be
+made.  "No, Vance.  It is too late.  Nothing can be done."
+
+"At least let me try," he persisted.
+
+"No; it is not our fault that our plan failed, and . . . and . . ." Her
+eyes filled.  "Please do not ask it of me."
+
+"Then let me take you away.  You cannot remain here."
+
+"I must," she answered, simply, and turned to St. Vincent, who seemed
+dreaming.
+
+Blackey was tying the hangman's knot in the rope's end, preparatory to
+slipping the noose over St. Vincent's head.
+
+"Kiss me, Gregory," she said, her hand on his arm.
+
+He started at the touch, and saw all eager eyes centred upon him, and
+the yellow noose, just shaped, in the hands of the hangman.  He threw
+up his arms, as though to ward it off, and cried loudly, "No! no!  Let
+me confess!  Let me tell the truth, then you'll believe me!"
+
+Bill Brown and the chairman shoved Blackey back, and the crowd gathered
+in.  Cries and protestations rose from its midst.  "No, you don't," a
+boy's shrill voice made itself heard.  "I'm not going to go.  I climbed
+the tree and made the rope fast, and I've got a right to stay."
+"You're only a kid," replied a man's voice, "and it ain't good for
+you."  "I don't care, and I'm not a kid.  I'm--I'm used to such things.
+And, anyway, I climbed the tree.  Look at my hands."  "Of course he can
+stay," other voices took up the trouble.  "Leave him alone, Curley."
+"You ain't the whole thing."  A laugh greeted this, and things quieted
+down.
+
+"Silence!" the chairman called, and then to St. Vincent, "Go ahead,
+you, and don't take all day about it."
+
+"Give us a chance to hear!" the crowd broke out again.  "Put 'm on the
+box!  Put 'm on the box!"
+
+St. Vincent was helped up, and began with eager volubility.
+
+"I didn't do it, but I saw it done.  There weren't two men--only one.
+He did it, and Bella helped him."
+
+A wave of laughter drowned him out.
+
+"Not so fast," Bill Brown cautioned him.  "Kindly explain how Bella
+helped this man kill herself.  Begin at the beginning."
+
+"That night, before he turned in, Borg set his burglar alarm--"
+
+"Burglar alarm?"
+
+"That's what I called it,--a tin bread-pan attached to the latch so the
+door couldn't open without tumbling it down.  He set it every night, as
+though he were afraid of what might happen,--the very thing which did
+happen, for that matter.  On the night of the murder I awoke with the
+feeling that some one was moving around.  The slush-lamp was burning
+low, and I saw Bella at the door.  Borg was snoring; I could hear him
+plainly.  Bella was taking down the bread-pan, and she exercised great
+care about it.  Then she opened the door, and an Indian came in softly.
+He had no mask, and I should know him if ever I see him again, for a
+scar ran along the forehead and down over one eye."
+
+"I suppose you sprang out of bed and gave the alarm?"
+
+"No, I didn't," St. Vincent answered, with a defiant toss of the head,
+as though he might as well get the worst over with.  "I just lay there
+and waited."
+
+"What did you think?"
+
+"That Bella was in collusion with the Indian, and that Borg was to be
+murdered.  It came to me at once."
+
+"And you did nothing?"
+
+"Nothing."  His voice sank, and his eyes dropped to Frona, leaning
+against the box beneath him and steadying it.  She did not seem to be
+affected.  "Bella came over to me, but I closed my eyes and breathed
+regularly.  She held the slush-lamp to me, but I played sleep naturally
+enough to fool her.  Then I heard a snort of sudden awakening and
+alarm, and a cry, and I looked out.  The Indian was hacking at Borg
+with a knife, and Borg was warding off with his arms and trying to
+grapple him.  When they did grapple, Bella crept up from behind and
+threw her arm in a strangle-hold about her husband's neck.  She put her
+knee into the small of his back, and bent him backward and, with the
+Indian helping, threw him to the floor."
+
+"And what did you do?"
+
+"I watched."
+
+"Had you a revolver?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The one you previously said John Borg had borrowed?"
+
+"Yes; but I watched."
+
+"Did John Borg call for help?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Can you give his words?"
+
+"He called, 'St. Vincent!  Oh, St. Vincent!  Oh, my God!  Oh, St.
+Vincent, help me!'"  He shuddered at the recollection, and added, "It
+was terrible."
+
+"I should say so," Brown grunted.  "And you?"
+
+"I watched," was the dogged reply, while a groan went up from the
+crowd.  "Borg shook clear of them, however, and got on his legs.  He
+hurled Bella across the cabin with a back-sweep of the arm and turned
+upon the Indian.  Then they fought.  The Indian had dropped the knife,
+and the sound of Borg's blows was sickening.  I thought he would surely
+beat the Indian to death.  That was when the furniture was smashed.
+They rolled and snarled and struggled like wild beasts.  I wondered the
+Indian's chest did not cave in under some of Borg's blows.  But Bella
+got the knife and stabbed her husband repeatedly about the body.  The
+Indian had clinched with him, and his arms were not free; so he kicked
+out at her sideways.  He must have broken her legs, for she cried out
+and fell down, and though she tried, she never stood up again.  Then he
+went down, with the Indian under him, across the stove."
+
+"Did he call any more for help?"
+
+"He begged me to come to him."
+
+"And?"
+
+"I watched.  He managed to get clear of the Indian and staggered over
+to me.  He was streaming blood, and I could see he was very weak.
+'Give me your gun,' he said; 'quick, give me it.'  He felt around
+blindly.  Then his mind seemed to clear a bit, and he reached across me
+to the holster hanging on the wall and took the pistol.  The Indian
+came at him with the knife again, but he did not try to defend himself.
+Instead, he went on towards Bella, with the Indian still hanging to him
+and hacking at him.  The Indian seemed to bother and irritate him, and
+he shoved him away.  He knelt down and turned Bella's face up to the
+light; but his own face was covered with blood and he could not see.
+So he stopped long enough to brush the blood from his eyes.  He
+appeared to look in order to make sure.  Then he put the revolver to
+her breast and fired.
+
+"The Indian went wild at this, and rushed at him with the knife, at the
+same time knocking the pistol out of his hand.  It was then the shelf
+with the slush-lamp was knocked down.  They continued to fight in the
+darkness, and there were more shots fired, though I do not know by
+whom.  I crawled out of the bunk, but they struck against me in their
+struggles, and I fell over Bella.  That's when the blood got on my
+hands.  As I ran out the door, more shots were fired.  Then I met La
+Flitche and John, and . . . and you know the rest.  This is the truth I
+have told you, I swear it!"
+
+He looked down at Frona.  She was steadying the box, and her face was
+composed.  He looked out over the crowd and saw unbelief.  Many were
+laughing.
+
+"Why did you not tell this story at first?" Bill Brown demanded.
+
+"Because . . . because . . ."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Because I might have helped."
+
+There was more laughter at this, and Bill Brown turned away from him.
+"Gentlemen, you have heard this pipe dream.  It is a wilder fairy story
+than his first.  At the beginning of the trial we promised to show that
+the truth was not in him.  That we succeeded, your verdict is ample
+testimony.  But that he should likewise succeed, and more brilliantly,
+we did not expect.  That he has, you cannot doubt.  What do you think
+of him?  Lie upon lie he has given us; he has been proven a chronic
+liar; are you to believe this last and fearfully impossible lie?
+Gentlemen, I can only ask that you reaffirm your judgment.  And to
+those who may doubt his mendacity,--surely there are but few,--let me
+state, that if his story is true; if he broke salt with this man, John
+Borg, and lay in his blankets while murder was done; if he did hear,
+unmoved, the voice of the man calling to him for help; if he did lie
+there and watch that carnival of butchery without his manhood prompting
+him,--let me state, gentlemen, I say, let me state that he is none the
+less deserveful of hanging.  We cannot make a mistake.  What shall it
+be?"
+
+"Death!"  "String him up!"  "Stretch 'm!" were the cries.
+
+But the crowd suddenly turned its attention to the river, and even
+Blackey refrained from his official task.  A large raft, worked by a
+sweep at either end, was slipping past the tail of Split-up Island,
+close to the shore.  When it was at their feet, its nose was slewed
+into the bank, and while its free end swung into the stream to make the
+consequent circle, a snubbing-rope was flung ashore and several turns
+taken about the tree under which St. Vincent stood.  A cargo of
+moose-meat, red and raw, cut into quarters, peeped from beneath a cool
+covering of spruce boughs.  And because of this, the two men on the
+raft looked up to those on the bank with pride in their eyes.
+
+"Tryin' to make Dawson with it," one of them explained, "and the sun's
+all-fired hot."
+
+"Nope," said his comrade, in reply to a query, "don't care to stop and
+trade.  It's worth a dollar and a half a pound down below, and we're
+hustlin' to get there.  But we've got some pieces of a man we want to
+leave with you."  He turned and pointed to a loose heap of blankets
+which slightly disclosed the form of a man beneath.  "We gathered him
+in this mornin', 'bout thirty mile up the Stewart, I should judge."
+
+"Stands in need of doctorin'," the other man spoke up, "and the meat's
+spoilin', and we ain't got time for nothin'."  "Beggar don't have
+anythin' to say.  Don't savve the burro."  "Looks as he might have been
+mixin' things with a grizzly or somethin',--all battered and gouged.
+Injured internally, from the looks of it.  Where'll you have him?"
+
+Frona, standing by St. Vincent, saw the injured man borne over the
+crest of the bank and through the crowd.  A bronzed hand drooped down
+and a bronzed face showed from out the blankets.  The bearers halted
+near them while a decision could be reached as to where he should be
+carried.  Frona felt a sudden fierce grip on her arm.
+
+"Look! look!"  St. Vincent was leaning forward and pointing wildly at
+the injured man.  "Look!  That scar!"
+
+The Indian opened his eyes and a grin of recognition distorted his face.
+
+"It is he!  It is he!"  St. Vincent, trembling with eagerness, turned
+upon the crowd.  "I call you all to witness!  That is the man who
+killed John Borg!"
+
+No laughter greeted this, for there was a terrible earnestness in his
+manner.  Bill Brown and the chairman tried to make the Indian talk, but
+could not.  A miner from British Columbia was pressed into service, but
+his Chinook made no impression.  Then La Flitche was called.  The
+handsome breed bent over the man and talked in gutturals which only his
+mother's heredity made possible.  It sounded all one, yet it was
+apparent that he was trying many tongues.  But no response did he draw,
+and he paused disheartened.  As though with sudden recollection, he
+made another attempt.  At once a gleam of intelligence shot across the
+Indian's face, and his larynx vibrated to similar sounds.
+
+"It is the Stick talk of the Upper White," La Flitche stopped long
+enough to explain.
+
+Then, with knit brows and stumbling moments when he sought
+dim-remembered words, he plied the man with questions.  To the rest it
+was like a pantomime,--the meaningless grunts and waving arms and
+facial expressions of puzzlement, surprise, and understanding.  At
+times a passion wrote itself on the face of the Indian, and a sympathy
+on the face of La Flitche.  Again, by look and gesture, St. Vincent was
+referred to, and once a sober, mirthless laugh shaped the mouths of
+them.
+
+"So?  It is good," La Flitche said, when the Indian's head dropped
+back.  "This man make true talk.  He come from White River, way up.  He
+cannot understand.  He surprised very much, so many white men.  He
+never think so many white men in the world.  He die soon.  His name Gow.
+
+"Long time ago, three year, this man John Borg go to this man Gow's
+country.  He hunt, he bring plenty meat to the camp, wherefore White
+River Sticks like him.  Gow have one squaw, Pisk-ku.  Bime-by John Borg
+make preparation to go 'way.  He go to Gow, and he say, 'Give me your
+squaw.  We trade.  For her I give you many things.'  But Gow say no.
+Pisk-ku good squaw.  No woman sew moccasin like she.  She tan
+moose-skin the best, and make the softest leather.  He like Pisk-ku.
+Then John Borg say he don't care; he want Pisk-ku.  Then they have a
+_skookum_ big fight, and Pisk-ku go 'way with John Borg.  She no want
+to go 'way, but she go anyway.  Borg call her 'Bella,' and give her
+plenty good things, but she like Gow all the time."  La Flitche pointed
+to the scar which ran down the forehead and past the eye of the Indian.
+"John Borg he do that."
+
+"Long time Gow pretty near die.  Then he get well, but his head sick.
+He don't know nobody.  Don't know his father, his mother, or anything.
+Just like a little baby.  Just like that.  Then one day, quick, click!
+something snap, and his head get well all at once.  He know his father
+and mother, he remember Pisk-ku, he remember everything.  His father
+say John Borg go down river.  Then Gow go down river.  Spring-time, ice
+very bad.  He very much afraid, so many white men, and when he come to
+this place he travel by night.  Nobody see him 'tall, but he see
+everybody.  He like a cat, see in the dark.  Somehow, he come straight
+to John Borg's cabin.  He do not know how this was, except that the
+work he had to do was good work."
+
+St. Vincent pressed Frona's hand, but she shook her fingers clear and
+withdrew a step.
+
+"He see Pisk-ku feed the dogs, and he have talk with her.  That night
+he come and she open the door.  Then you know that which was done.  St.
+Vincent do nothing, Borg kill Bella.  Gow kill Borg.  Borg kill Gow,
+for Gow die pretty quick.  Borg have strong arm.  Gow sick inside, all
+smashed up.  Gow no care; Pisk-ku dead.
+
+"After that he go 'cross ice to the land.  I tell him all you people
+say it cannot be; no man can cross the ice at that time.  He laugh, and
+say that it is, and what is, must be.  Anyway, he have very hard time,
+but he get 'cross all right.  He very sick inside.  Bime-by he cannot
+walk; he crawl.  Long time he come to Stewart River.  Can go no more,
+so he lay down to die.  Two white men find him and bring him to this
+place.  He don't care.  He die anyway."
+
+La Flitche finished abruptly, but nobody spoke.  Then he added, "I
+think Gow damn good man."
+
+Frona came up to Jacob Welse.  "Take me away, father," she said.  "I am
+so tired."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+Next morning, Jacob Welse, for all of the Company and his millions in
+mines, chopped up the day's supply of firewood, lighted a cigar, and
+went down the island in search of Baron Courbertin.  Frona finished the
+breakfast dishes, hung out the robes to air, and fed the dogs.  Then
+she took a worn Wordsworth from her clothes-bag, and, out by the bank,
+settled herself comfortably in a seat formed by two uprooted pines.
+But she did no more than open the book; for her eyes strayed out and
+over the Yukon to the eddy below the bluffs, and the bend above, and
+the tail of the spit which lay in the midst of the river.  The rescue
+and the race were still fresh with her, though there were strange
+lapses, here and there, of which she remembered little.  The struggle
+by the fissure was immeasurable; she knew not how long it lasted; and
+the race down Split-up to Roubeau Island was a thing of which her
+reason convinced her, but of which she recollected nothing.
+
+The whim seized her, and she followed Corliss through the three days'
+events, but she tacitly avoided the figure of another man whom she
+would not name.  Something terrible was connected therewith, she knew,
+which must be faced sooner or later; but she preferred to put that
+moment away from her.  She was stiff and sore of mind as well as of
+body, and will and action were for the time being distasteful.  It was
+more pleasant, even, to dwell on Tommy, on Tommy of the bitter tongue
+and craven heart; and she made a note that the wife and children in
+Toronto should not be forgotten when the Northland paid its dividends
+to the Welse.
+
+The crackle of a foot on a dead willow-twig roused her, and her eyes
+met St. Vincent's.
+
+"You have not congratulated me upon my escape," he began, breezily.
+"But you must have been dead-tired last night.  I know I was.  And you
+had that hard pull on the river besides."
+
+He watched her furtively, trying to catch some cue as to her attitude
+and mood.
+
+"You're a heroine, that's what you are, Frona," he began again, with
+exuberance.  "And not only did you save the mail-man, but by the delay
+you wrought in the trial you saved me.  If one more witness had gone on
+the stand that first day, I should have been duly hanged before Gow put
+in an appearance.  Fine chap, Gow.  Too bad he's going to die."
+
+"I am glad that I could be of help," she replied, wondering the while
+what she could say.
+
+"And of course I am to be congratulated--"
+
+"Your trial is hardly a thing for congratulation," she spoke up
+quickly, looking him straight in the eyes for the moment.  "I am glad
+that it came out as it did, but surely you cannot expect me to
+congratulate you."
+
+"O-o-o," with long-drawn inflection.  "So that's where it pinches."  He
+smiled good-humoredly, and moved as though to sit down, but she made no
+room for him, and he remained standing.  "I can certainly explain.  If
+there have been women--"
+
+Frona had been clinching her hand nervously, but at the word burst out
+in laughter.
+
+"Women?" she queried.  "Women?" she repeated.  "Do not be ridiculous,
+Gregory."
+
+"After the way you stood by me through the trial," he began,
+reproachfully, "I thought--"
+
+"Oh, you do not understand," she said, hopelessly.  "You do not
+understand.  Look at me, Gregory, and see if I can make you understand.
+Your presence is painful to me.  Your kisses hurt me.  The memory of
+them still burns my cheek, and my lips feel unclean.  And why?  Because
+of women, which you may explain away?  How little do you understand!
+But shall I tell you?"
+
+Voices of men came to her from down the river-bank, and the splashing
+of water.  She glanced quickly and saw Del Bishop guiding a poling-boat
+against the current, and Corliss on the bank, bending to the tow-rope.
+
+"Shall I tell you why, Gregory St. Vincent?" she said again.  "Tell you
+why your kisses have cheapened me?  Because you broke the faith of food
+and blanket.  Because you broke salt with a man, and then watched that
+man fight unequally for life without lifting your hand.  Why, I had
+rather you had died in defending him; the memory of you would have been
+good.  Yes, I had rather you had killed him yourself.  At least, it
+would have shown there was blood in your body."
+
+"So this is what you would call love?" he began, scornfully, his
+fretting, fuming devil beginning to rouse.  "A fair-weather love,
+truly.  But, Lord, how we men learn!"
+
+"I had thought you were well lessoned," she retorted; "what of the
+other women?"
+
+"But what do you intend to do?" he demanded, taking no notice.  "I am
+not an easy man to cross.  You cannot throw me over with impunity.  I
+shall not stand for it, I warn you.  You have dared do things in this
+country which would blacken you were they known.  I have ears.  I have
+not been asleep.  You will find it no child's play to explain away
+things which you may declare most innocent."
+
+She looked at him with a smile which carried pity in its cold mirth,
+and it goaded him.
+
+"I am down, a thing to make a jest upon, a thing to pity, but I promise
+you that I can drag you with me.  My kisses have cheapened you, eh?
+Then how must you have felt at Happy Camp on the Dyea Trail?"
+
+As though in answer, Corliss swung down upon them with the tow-rope.
+
+Frona beckoned a greeting to him.  "Vance," she said, "the mail-carrier
+has brought important news to father, so important that he must go
+outside.  He starts this afternoon with Baron Courbertin in La Bijou.
+Will you take me down to Dawson?  I should like to go at once, to-day.
+
+"He . . . he suggested you," she added shyly, indicating St. Vincent.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14654 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14654 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14654)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Daughter of the Snows, by Jack London
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: A Daughter of the Snows
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Release Date: January 10, 2005  [eBook #14654]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS
+
+by
+
+JACK LONDON
+
+Author of _The Son of The Wolf_, _The Call of the Wild_,
+_The People of the Abyss_, etc.
+
+With Illustrations by Frederick C. Yohn
+
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers--New York
+
+1902
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"All ready, Miss Welse, though I'm sorry we can't spare one of the
+steamer's boats."
+
+Frona Welse arose with alacrity and came to the first officer's side.
+
+"We're so busy," he explained, "and gold-rushers are such perishable
+freight, at least--"
+
+"I understand," she interrupted, "and I, too, am behaving as though I
+were perishable.  And I am sorry for the trouble I am giving you,
+but--but--"  She turned quickly and pointed to the shore.  "Do you
+see that big log-house?  Between the clump of pines and the river?  I
+was born there."
+
+"Guess I'd be in a hurry myself," he muttered, sympathetically, as he
+piloted her along the crowded deck.
+
+Everybody was in everybody else's way; nor was there one who failed to
+proclaim it at the top of his lungs.  A thousand gold-seekers were
+clamoring for the immediate landing of their outfits.  Each hatchway
+gaped wide open, and from the lower depths the shrieking donkey-engines
+were hurrying the misassorted outfits skyward.  On either side of the
+steamer, rows of scows received the flying cargo, and on each of these
+scows a sweating mob of men charged the descending slings and heaved
+bales and boxes about in frantic search.  Men waved shipping receipts
+and shouted over the steamer-rails to them.  Sometimes two and three
+identified the same article, and war arose.  The "two-circle" and the
+"circle-and-dot" brands caused endless jangling, while every whipsaw
+discovered a dozen claimants.
+
+"The purser insists that he is going mad," the first officer said, as
+he helped Frona Welse down the gangway to the landing stage, "and the
+freight clerks have turned the cargo over to the passengers and quit
+work.  But we're not so unlucky as the Star of Bethlehem," he reassured
+her, pointing to a steamship at anchor a quarter of a mile away.  "Half
+of her passengers have pack-horses for Skaguay and White Pass, and the
+other half are bound over the Chilcoot.  So they've mutinied and
+everything's at a standstill."
+
+"Hey, you!" he cried, beckoning to a Whitehall which hovered discreetly
+on the outer rim of the floating confusion.
+
+A tiny launch, pulling heroically at a huge tow-barge, attempted to
+pass between; but the boatman shot nervily across her bow, and just as
+he was clear, unfortunately, caught a crab.  This slewed the boat
+around and brought it to a stop.
+
+"Watch out!" the first officer shouted.
+
+A pair of seventy-foot canoes, loaded with outfits, gold-rushers, and
+Indians, and under full sail, drove down from the counter direction.
+One of them veered sharply towards the landing stage, but the other
+pinched the Whitehall against the barge.  The boatman had unshipped his
+oars in time, but his small craft groaned under the pressure and
+threatened to collapse.  Whereat he came to his feet, and in short,
+nervous phrases consigned all canoe-men and launch-captains to eternal
+perdition.  A man on the barge leaned over from above and baptized him
+with crisp and crackling oaths, while the whites and Indians in the
+canoe laughed derisively.
+
+"Aw, g'wan!" one of them shouted.  "Why don't yeh learn to row?"
+
+The boatman's fist landed on the point of his critic's jaw and dropped
+him stunned upon the heaped merchandise.  Not content with this summary
+act he proceeded to follow his fist into the other craft.  The miner
+nearest him tugged vigorously at a revolver which had jammed in its
+shiny leather holster, while his brother argonauts, laughing, waited
+the outcome.  But the canoe was under way again, and the Indian
+helmsman drove the point of his paddle into the boatman's chest and
+hurled him backward into the bottom of the Whitehall.
+
+When the flood of oaths and blasphemy was at full tide, and violent
+assault and quick death seemed most imminent, the first officer had
+stolen a glance at the girl by his side.  He had expected to find a
+shocked and frightened maiden countenance, and was not at all prepared
+for the flushed and deeply interested face which met his eyes.
+
+"I am sorry," he began.
+
+But she broke in, as though annoyed by the interruption, "No, no; not
+at all.  I am enjoying it every bit.  Though I am glad that man's
+revolver stuck.  If it had not--"
+
+"We might have been delayed in getting ashore." The first officer
+laughed, and therein displayed his tact.
+
+"That man is a robber," he went on, indicating the boatman, who had now
+shoved his oars into the water and was pulling alongside.  "He agreed
+to charge only twenty dollars for putting you ashore.  Said he'd have
+made it twenty-five had it been a man.  He's a pirate, mark me, and he
+will surely hang some day.  Twenty dollars for a half-hour's work!
+Think of it!"
+
+"Easy, sport!  Easy!" cautioned the fellow in question, at the same
+time making an awkward landing and dropping one of his oars over-side.
+"You've no call to be flingin' names about," he added, defiantly,
+wringing out his shirt-sleeve, wet from rescue of the oar.
+
+"You've got good ears, my man," began the first officer.
+
+"And a quick fist," the other snapped in.
+
+"And a ready tongue."
+
+"Need it in my business.  No gettin' 'long without it among you
+sea-sharks.  Pirate, am I?  And you with a thousand passengers packed
+like sardines!  Charge 'em double first-class passage, feed 'em
+steerage grub, and bunk 'em worse 'n pigs!  Pirate, eh!  Me?"
+
+A red-faced man thrust his head over the rail above and began to bellow
+lustily.
+
+"I want my stock landed!  Come up here, Mr. Thurston!  Now!  Right
+away!  Fifty cayuses of | mine eating their heads off in this dirty
+kennel of yours, and it'll be a sick time you'll have if you don't
+hustle them ashore as fast as God'll let you!  I'm losing a thousand
+dollars a day, and I won't stand it!  Do you hear?  I won't stand it!
+You've robbed me right and left from the time you cleared dock in
+Seattle, and by the hinges of hell I won't stand it any more!  I'll
+break this company as sure as my name's Thad Ferguson!  D'ye hear my
+spiel?  I'm Thad Ferguson, and you can't come and see me any too quick
+for your health!  D'ye hear?"
+
+"Pirate; eh?" the boatman soliloquized.  "Who?  Me?"
+
+Mr. Thurston waved his hand appeasingly at the red-faced man, and
+turned to the girl.  "I'd like to go ashore with you, and as far as the
+store, but you see how busy we are.  Good-by, and a lucky trip to you.
+I'll tell off a couple of men at once and break out your baggage.  Have
+it up at the store to-morrow morning, sharp."
+
+She took his hand lightly and stepped aboard.  Her weight gave the
+leaky boat a sudden lurch, and the water hurtled across the bottom
+boards to her shoe-tops: but she took it coolly enough, settling
+herself in the stern-sheets and tucking her feet under her.
+
+"Hold on!" the officer cried.  "This will never do, Miss Welse.  Come
+on back, and I'll get one of our boats over as soon as I can."
+
+"I'll see you in--in heaven first," retorted the boatman, shoving off.
+"Let go!" he threatened.
+
+Mr. Thurston gripped tight hold of the gunwale, and as reward for his
+chivalry had his knuckles rapped sharply by the oar-blade.  Then he
+forgot himself, and Miss Welse also, and swore, and swore fervently.
+
+"I dare say our farewell might have been more dignified," she called
+back to him, her laughter rippling across the water.
+
+"Jove!" he muttered, doffing his cap gallantly.  "There is a _woman_!"
+And a sudden hunger seized him, and a yearning to see himself mirrored
+always in the gray eyes of Frona Welse.  He was not analytical; he did
+not know why; but he knew that with her he could travel to the end of
+the earth.  He felt a distaste for his profession, and a temptation to
+throw it all over and strike out for the Klondike whither she was
+going; then he glanced up the beetling side of the ship, saw the red
+face of Thad Ferguson, and forgot the dream he had for an instant
+dreamed.
+
+
+Splash!  A handful of water from his strenuous oar struck her full in
+the face.  "Hope you don't mind it, miss," he apologized.  "I'm doin'
+the best I know how, which ain't much."
+
+"So it seems," she answered, good-naturedly.
+
+"Not that I love the sea," bitterly; "but I've got to turn a few honest
+dollars somehow, and this seemed the likeliest way.  I oughter 'a ben
+in Klondike by now, if I'd had any luck at all.  Tell you how it was.
+I lost my outfit on Windy Arm, half-way in, after packin' it clean
+across the Pass--"
+
+Zip!  Splash!  She shook the water from her eyes, squirming the while
+as some of it ran down her warm back.
+
+"You'll do," he encouraged her.  "You're the right stuff for this
+country.  Goin' all the way in?"
+
+She nodded cheerfully.
+
+"Then you'll do.  But as I was sayin', after I lost my outfit I hit
+back for the coast, bein' broke, to hustle up another one.  That's why
+I'm chargin' high-pressure rates.  And I hope you don't feel sore at
+what I made you pay.  I'm no worse than the rest, miss, sure.  I had to
+dig up a hundred for this old tub, which ain't worth ten down in the
+States.  Same kind of prices everywhere.  Over on the Skaguay Trail
+horseshoe nails is just as good as a quarter any day.  A man goes up to
+the bar and calls for a whiskey.  Whiskey's half a dollar.  Well, he
+drinks his whiskey, plunks down two horseshoe nails, and it's O.K.  No
+kick comin' on horseshoe nails.  They use 'em to make change."
+
+"You must be a brave man to venture into the country again after such
+an experience.  Won't you tell me your name?  We may meet on the
+Inside."
+
+"Who?  Me?  Oh, I'm Del Bishop, pocket-miner; and if ever we run across
+each other, remember I'd give you the last shirt--I mean, remember my
+last bit of grub is yours."
+
+"Thank you," she answered with a sweet smile; for she was a woman who
+loved the things which rose straight from the heart.
+
+He stopped rowing long enough to fish about in the water around his
+feet for an old cornbeef can.
+
+"You'd better do some bailin'," he ordered, tossing her the can.
+"She's leakin' worse since that squeeze."
+
+Frona smiled mentally, tucked up her skirts, and bent to the work.  At
+every dip, like great billows heaving along the sky-line, the
+glacier-fretted mountains rose and fell.  Sometimes she rested her back
+and watched the teeming beach towards which they were heading, and
+again, the land-locked arm of the sea in which a score or so of great
+steamships lay at anchor.  From each of these, to the shore and back
+again, flowed a steady stream of scows, launches, canoes, and all sorts
+of smaller craft.  Man, the mighty toiler, reacting upon a hostile
+environment, she thought, going back in memory to the masters whose
+wisdom she had shared in lecture-room and midnight study.  She was a
+ripened child of the age, and fairly understood the physical world and
+the workings thereof.  And she had a love for the world, and a deep
+respect.
+
+For some time Del Bishop had only punctuated the silence with splashes
+from his oars; but a thought struck him.
+
+"You haven't told me your name," he suggested, with complacent delicacy.
+
+"My name is Welse," she answered.  "Frona Welse."
+
+A great awe manifested itself in his face, and grew to a greater and
+greater awe.  "You--are--Frona--Welse?" he enunciated slowly.  "Jacob
+Welse ain't your old man, is he?"
+
+"Yes; I am Jacob Welse's daughter, at your service."
+
+He puckered his lips in a long low whistle of understanding and stopped
+rowing.  "Just you climb back into the stern and take your feet out of
+that water," he commanded.  "And gimme holt that can."
+
+"Am I not bailing satisfactorily?" she demanded, indignantly.
+
+"Yep.  You're doin' all right; but, but, you are--are--"
+
+"Just what I was before you knew who I was.  Now you go on
+rowing,--that's your share of the work; and I'll take care of mine."
+
+"Oh, you'll do!" he murmured ecstatically, bending afresh to the oars.
+"And Jacob Welse is your old man?  I oughter 'a known it, sure!"
+
+When they reached the sand-spit, crowded with heterogeneous piles of
+merchandise and buzzing with men, she stopped long enough to shake
+hands with her ferryman.  And though such a proceeding on the part of
+his feminine patrons was certainly unusual, Del Bishop squared it
+easily with the fact that she was Jacob Welse's daughter.
+
+"Remember, my last bit of grub is yours," he reassured her, still
+holding her hand.
+
+"And your last shirt, too; don't forget."
+
+"Well, you're a--a--a crackerjack!" he exploded with a final squeeze.
+"Sure!"
+
+Her short skirt did not block the free movement of her limbs, and she
+discovered with pleasurable surprise that the quick tripping step of
+the city pavement had departed from her, and that she was swinging off
+in the long easy stride which is born of the trail and which comes only
+after much travail and endeavor.  More than one gold-rusher, shooting
+keen glances at her ankles and gray-gaitered calves, affirmed Del
+Bishop's judgment.  And more than one glanced up at her face, and
+glanced again; for her gaze was frank, with the frankness of
+comradeship; and in her eyes there was always a smiling light, just
+trembling on the verge of dawn; and did the onlooker smile, her eyes
+smiled also.  And the smiling light was protean-mooded,--merry,
+sympathetic, joyous, quizzical,--the complement of whatsoever kindled
+it.  And sometimes the light spread over all her face, till the smile
+prefigured by it was realized.  But it was always in frank and open
+comradeship.
+
+And there was much to cause her to smile as she hurried through the
+crowd, across the sand-spit, and over the flat towards the log-building
+she had pointed out to Mr. Thurston.  Time had rolled back, and
+locomotion and transportation were once again in the most primitive
+stages.  Men who had never carried more than parcels in all their lives
+had now become bearers of burdens.  They no longer walked upright under
+the sun, but stooped the body forward and bowed the head to the earth.
+Every back had become a pack-saddle, and the strap-galls were beginning
+to form.  They staggered beneath the unwonted effort, and legs became
+drunken with weariness and titubated in divers directions till the
+sunlight darkened and bearer and burden fell by the way.  Other men,
+exulting secretly, piled their goods on two-wheeled go-carts and pulled
+out blithely enough, only to stall at the first spot where the great
+round boulders invaded the trail.  Whereat they generalized anew upon
+the principles of Alaskan travel, discarded the go-cart, or trundled it
+back to the beach and sold it at fabulous price to the last man landed.
+Tenderfeet, with ten pounds of Colt's revolvers, cartridges, and
+hunting-knives belted about them, wandered valiantly up the trail, and
+crept back softly, shedding revolvers, cartridges, and knives in
+despairing showers.  And so, in gasping and bitter sweat, these sons of
+Adam suffered for Adam's sin.
+
+Frona felt vaguely disturbed by this great throbbing rush of gold-mad
+men, and the old scene with its clustering associations seemed blotted
+out by these toiling aliens.  Even the old landmarks appeared strangely
+unfamiliar.  It was the same, yet not the same.  Here, on the grassy
+flat, where she had played as a child and shrunk back at the sound of
+her voice echoing from glacier to glacier, ten thousand men tramped
+ceaselessly up and down, grinding the tender herbage into the soil and
+mocking the stony silence.  And just up the trail were ten thousand men
+who had passed by, and over the Chilcoot were ten thousand more.  And
+behind, all down the island-studded Alaskan coast, even to the Horn,
+were yet ten thousand more, harnessers of wind and steam, hasteners
+from the ends of the earth.  The Dyea River as of old roared
+turbulently down to the sea; but its ancient banks were gored by the
+feet of many men, and these men labored in surging rows at the dripping
+tow-lines, and the deep-laden boats followed them as they fought their
+upward way.  And the will of man strove with the will of the water, and
+the men laughed at the old Dyea River and gored its banks deeper for
+the men who were to follow.
+
+The doorway of the store, through which she had once run out and in,
+and where she had looked with awe at the unusual sight of a stray
+trapper or fur-trader, was now packed with a clamorous throng of men.
+Where of old one letter waiting a claimant was a thing of wonder, she
+now saw, by peering through the window, the mail heaped up from floor
+to ceiling.  And it was for this mail the men were clamoring so
+insistently.  Before the store, by the scales, was another crowd.  An
+Indian threw his pack upon the scales, the white owner jotted down the
+weight in a note-book, and another pack was thrown on.  Each pack was
+in the straps, ready for the packer's back and the precarious journey
+over the Chilcoot.  Frona edged in closer.  She was interested in
+freights.  She remembered in her day when the solitary prospector or
+trader had his outfit packed over for six cents,--one hundred and
+twenty dollars a ton.
+
+The tenderfoot who was weighing up consulted his guide-book.  "Eight
+cents," he said to the Indian.  Whereupon the Indians laughed
+scornfully and chorused, "Forty cents!"  A pained expression came into
+his face, and he looked about him anxiously.  The sympathetic light in
+Frona's eyes caught him, and he regarded her with intent blankness.  In
+reality he was busy reducing a three-ton outfit to terms of cash at
+forty dollars per hundred-weight.  "Twenty-four hundred dollars for
+thirty miles!" he cried.  "What can I do?"
+
+Frona shrugged her shoulders.  "You'd better pay them the forty cents,"
+she advised, "else they will take off their straps."
+
+The man thanked her, but instead of taking heed went on with his
+haggling.  One of the Indians stepped up and proceeded to unfasten his
+pack-straps.  The tenderfoot wavered, but just as he was about to give
+in, the packers jumped the price on him to forty-five cents.  He smiled
+after a sickly fashion, and nodded his head in token of surrender.  But
+another Indian joined the group and began whispering excitedly.  A
+cheer went up, and before the man could realize it they had jerked off
+their straps and departed, spreading the news as they went that freight
+to Lake Linderman was fifty cents.
+
+Of a sudden, the crowd before the store was perceptibly agitated.  Its
+members whispered excitedly one to another, and all their eyes were
+focussed upon three men approaching from up the trail.  The trio were
+ordinary-looking creatures, ill-clad and even ragged.  In a more stable
+community their apprehension by the village constable and arrest for
+vagrancy would have been immediate.  "French Louis," the tenderfeet
+whispered and passed the word along.  "Owns three Eldorado claims in a
+block," the man next to Frona confided to her.  "Worth ten millions at
+the very least."  French Louis, striding a little in advance of his
+companions, did not look it.  He had parted company with his hat
+somewhere along the route, and a frayed silk kerchief was wrapped
+carelessly about his head.  And for all his ten millions, he carried
+his own travelling pack on his broad shoulders.  "And that one, the one
+with the beard, that's Swiftwater Bill, another of the Eldorado kings."
+
+"How do you know?" Frona asked, doubtingly.
+
+"Know!" the man exclaimed.  "Know!  Why his picture has been in all the
+papers for the last six weeks.  See!" He unfolded a newspaper.  "And a
+pretty good likeness, too.  I've looked at it so much I'd know his mug
+among a thousand."
+
+"Then who is the third one?" she queried, tacitly accepting him as a
+fount of authority.
+
+Her informant lifted himself on his toes to see better.  "I don't
+know," he confessed sorrowfully, then tapped the shoulder of the man
+next to him.  "Who is the lean, smooth-faced one?  The one with the
+blue shirt and the patch on his knee?"
+
+Just then Frona uttered a glad little cry and darted forward.  "Matt!"
+she cried.  "Matt McCarthy!"
+
+The man with the patch shook her hand heartily, though he did not know
+her and distrust was plain in his eyes.
+
+"Oh, you don't remember me!" she chattered.  "And don't you dare say
+you do!  If there weren't so many looking, I'd hug you, you old bear!
+
+"And so Big Bear went home to the Little Bears," she recited, solemnly.
+"And the Little Bears were very hungry.  And Big Bear said, 'Guess what
+I have got, my children.'  And one Little Bear guessed berries, and one
+Little Bear guessed salmon, and t'other Little Bear guessed porcupine.
+Then Big Bear laughed 'Whoof!  Whoof!' and said, '_A Nice Big Fat
+Man_!'"
+
+As he listened, recollection avowed itself in his face, and, when she
+had finished, his eyes wrinkled up and he laughed a peculiar, laughable
+silent laugh.
+
+"Sure, an' it's well I know ye," he explained; "but for the life iv me
+I can't put me finger on ye."
+
+She pointed into the store and watched him anxiously.
+
+"Now I have ye!"  He drew back and looked her up and down, and his
+expression changed to disappointment.  "It cuddent be.  I mistook ye.
+Ye cud niver a-lived in that shanty," thrusting a thumb in the
+direction of the store.
+
+Frona nodded her head vigorously.
+
+"Thin it's yer ownself afther all?  The little motherless darlin', with
+the goold hair I combed the knots out iv many's the time?  The little
+witch that run barefoot an' barelegged over all the place?"
+
+"Yes, yes," she corroborated, gleefully.
+
+"The little divil that stole the dog-team an' wint over the Pass in the
+dead o' winter for to see where the world come to an ind on the ither
+side, just because old Matt McCarthy was afther tellin' her fairy
+stories?"
+
+"O Matt, dear old Matt!  Remember the time I went swimming with the
+Siwash girls from the Indian camp?"
+
+"An' I dragged ye out by the hair o' yer head?"
+
+"And lost one of your new rubber boots?"
+
+"Ah, an' sure an' I do.  And a most shockin' an' immodest affair it
+was!  An' the boots was worth tin dollars over yer father's counter."
+
+"And then you went away, over the Pass, to the Inside, and we never
+heard a word of you.  Everybody thought you dead."
+
+"Well I recollect the day.  An' ye cried in me arms an' wuddent kiss
+yer old Matt good-by.  But ye did in the ind," he exclaimed,
+triumphantly, "whin ye saw I was goin' to lave ye for sure.  What a wee
+thing ye were!"
+
+"I was only eight."
+
+"An' 'tis twelve year agone.  Twelve year I've spint on the Inside,
+with niver a trip out.  Ye must be twinty now?"
+
+"And almost as big as you," Frona affirmed.
+
+"A likely woman ye've grown into, tall, an' shapely, an' all that."  He
+looked her over critically.  "But ye cud 'a' stood a bit more flesh,
+I'm thinkin'."
+
+"No, no," she denied.  "Not at twenty, Matt, not at twenty.  Feel my
+arm, you'll see."  She doubled that member till the biceps knotted.
+
+"'Tis muscle," he admitted, passing his hand admiringly over the
+swelling bunch; "just as though ye'd been workin' hard for yer livin'."
+
+"Oh, I can swing clubs, and box, and fence," she cried, successively
+striking the typical postures; "and swim, and make high dives, chin a
+bar twenty times, and--and walk on my hands.  There!"
+
+"Is that what ye've been doin'?  I thought ye wint away for
+book-larnin'," he commented, dryly.
+
+"But they have new ways of teaching, now, Matt, and they don't turn you
+out with your head crammed--"
+
+"An' yer legs that spindly they can't carry it all!  Well, an' I
+forgive ye yer muscle."
+
+"But how about yourself, Matt?" Frona asked.  "How has the world been
+to you these twelve years?"
+
+"Behold!"  He spread his legs apart, threw his head back, and his chest
+out.  "Ye now behold Mister Matthew McCarthy, a king iv the noble
+Eldorado Dynasty by the strength iv his own right arm.  Me possessions
+is limitless.  I have more dust in wan minute than iver I saw in all me
+life before.  Me intintion for makin' this trip to the States is to
+look up me ancestors.  I have a firm belafe that they wance existed.
+Ye may find nuggets in the Klondike, but niver good whiskey.  'Tis
+likewise me intintion to have wan drink iv the rate stuff before I die.
+Afther that 'tis me sworn resolve to return to the superveeshion iv me
+Klondike properties.  Indade, and I'm an Eldorado king; an' if ye'll be
+wantin' the lind iv a tidy bit, it's meself that'll loan it ye."
+
+"The same old, old Matt, who never grows old," Frona laughed.
+
+"An' it's yerself is the thrue Welse, for all yer prize-fighter's
+muscles an' yer philosopher's brains.  But let's wander inside on the
+heels of Louis an' Swiftwater.  Andy's still tindin' store, I'm told,
+an' we'll see if I still linger in the pages iv his mimory."
+
+"And I, also." Frona seized him by the hand.  It was a bad habit she
+had of seizing the hands of those she loved.  "It's ten years since I
+went away."
+
+The Irishman forged his way through the crowd like a pile-driver, and
+Frona followed easily in the lee of his bulk.  The tenderfeet watched
+them reverently, for to them they were as Northland divinities.  The
+buzz of conversation rose again.
+
+"Who's the girl?" somebody asked.  And just as Frona passed inside the
+door she caught the opening of the answer: "Jacob Welse's daughter.
+Never heard of Jacob Welse?  Where have you been keeping yourself?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+She came out of the wood of glistening birch, and with the first fires
+of the sun blazoning her unbound hair raced lightly across the
+dew-dripping meadow.  The earth was fat with excessive moisture and
+soft to her feet, while the dank vegetation slapped against her knees
+and cast off flashing sprays of liquid diamonds.  The flush of the
+morning was in her cheek, and its fire in her eyes, and she was aglow
+with youth and love.  For she had nursed at the breast of nature,--in
+forfeit of a mother,--and she loved the old trees and the creeping
+green things with a passionate love; and the dim murmur of growing life
+was a gladness to her ears, and the damp earth-smells were sweet to her
+nostrils.
+
+Where the upper-reach of the meadow vanished in a dark and narrow
+forest aisle, amid clean-stemmed dandelions and color-bursting
+buttercups, she came upon a bunch of great Alaskan violets.  Throwing
+herself at full length, she buried her face in the fragrant coolness,
+and with her hands drew the purple heads in circling splendor about her
+own.  And she was not ashamed.  She had wandered away amid the
+complexities and smirch and withering heats of the great world, and she
+had returned, simple, and clean, and wholesome.  And she was glad of
+it, as she lay there, slipping back to the old days, when the universe
+began and ended at the sky-line, and when she journeyed over the Pass
+to behold the Abyss.
+
+It was a primitive life, that of her childhood, with few conventions,
+but such as there were, stern ones.  And they might be epitomized, as
+she had read somewhere in her later years, as "the faith of food and
+blanket."  This faith had her father kept, she thought, remembering
+that his name sounded well on the lips of men.  And this was the faith
+she had learned,--the faith she had carried with her across the Abyss
+and into the world, where men had wandered away from the old truths and
+made themselves selfish dogmas and casuistries of the subtlest kinds;
+the faith she had brought back with her, still fresh, and young, and
+joyous.  And it was all so simple, she had contended; why should not
+their faith be as her faith--_the faith of food and blanket_?  The
+faith of trail and hunting camp?  The faith with which strong clean men
+faced the quick danger and sudden death by field and flood?  Why not?
+The faith of Jacob Welse?  Of Matt McCarthy?  Of the Indian boys she
+had played with?  Of the Indian girls she had led to Amazonian war?  Of
+the very wolf-dogs straining in the harnesses and running with her
+across the snow?  It was healthy, it was real, it was good, she
+thought, and she was glad.
+
+The rich notes of a robin saluted her from the birch wood, and opened
+her ears to the day.  A partridge boomed afar in the forest, and a
+tree-squirrel launched unerringly into space above her head, and went
+on, from limb to limb and tree to tree, scolding graciously the while.
+From the hidden river rose the shouts of the toiling adventurers,
+already parted from sleep and fighting their way towards the Pole.
+
+Frona arose, shook back her hair, and took instinctively the old path
+between the trees to the camp of Chief George and the Dyea tribesmen.
+She came upon a boy, breech-clouted and bare, like a copper god.  He
+was gathering wood, and looked at her keenly over his bronze shoulder.
+She bade him good-morning, blithely, in the Dyea tongue; but he shook
+his head, and laughed insultingly, and paused in his work to hurl
+shameful words after her.  She did not understand, for this was not the
+old way, and when she passed a great and glowering Sitkan buck she kept
+her tongue between her teeth.  At the fringe of the forest, the camp
+confronted her.  And she was startled.  It was not the old camp of a
+score or more of lodges clustering and huddling together in the open as
+though for company, but a mighty camp.  It began at the very forest,
+and flowed in and out among the scattered tree-clumps on the flat, and
+spilled over and down to the river bank where the long canoes were
+lined up ten and twelve deep.  It was a gathering of the tribes, like
+unto none in all the past, and a thousand miles of coast made up the
+tally.  They were all strange Indians, with wives and chattels and
+dogs.  She rubbed shoulders with Juneau and Wrangel men, and was
+jostled by wild-eyed Sticks from over the Passes, fierce Chilcats, and
+Queen Charlotte Islanders.  And the looks they cast upon her were black
+and frowning, save--and far worse--where the merrier souls leered
+patronizingly into her face and chuckled unmentionable things.
+
+She was not frightened by this insolence, but angered; for it hurt her,
+and embittered the pleasurable home-coming.  Yet she quickly grasped
+the significance of it: the old patriarchal status of her father's time
+had passed away, and civilization, in a scorching blast, had swept down
+upon this people in a day.  Glancing under the raised flaps of a tent,
+she saw haggard-faced bucks squatting in a circle on the floor.  By the
+door a heap of broken bottles advertised the vigils of the night.  A
+white man, low of visage and shrewd, was dealing cards about, and gold
+and silver coins leaped into heaping bets upon the blanket board.  A
+few steps farther on she heard the cluttering whirl of a wheel of
+fortune, and saw the Indians, men and women, chancing eagerly their
+sweat-earned wages for the gaudy prizes of the game.  And from tepee
+and lodge rose the cracked and crazy strains of cheap music-boxes.
+
+An old squaw, peeling a willow pole in the sunshine of an open doorway,
+raised her head and uttered a shrill cry.
+
+"Hee-Hee!  Tenas Hee-Hee!" she muttered as well and as excitedly as her
+toothless gums would permit.
+
+Frona thrilled at the cry.  Tenas Hee-Hee!  Little Laughter!  Her name
+of the long gone Indian past!  She turned and went over to the old
+woman.
+
+"And hast thou so soon forgotten, Tenas Hee-Hee?" she mumbled.  "And
+thine eyes so young and sharp!  Not so soon does Neepoosa forget."
+
+"It is thou, Neepoosa?" Frona cried, her tongue halting from the disuse
+of years.
+
+"Ay, it is Neepoosa," the old woman replied, drawing her inside the
+tent, and despatching a boy, hot-footed, on some errand.  They sat down
+together on the floor, and she patted Frona's hand lovingly, peering,
+meanwhile, blear-eyed and misty, into her face.  "Ay, it is Neepoosa,
+grown old quickly after the manner of our women.  Neepoosa, who dandled
+thee in her arms when thou wast a child.  Neepoosa, who gave thee thy
+name, Tenas Hee-Hee.  Who fought for thee with Death when thou wast
+ailing; and gathered growing things from the woods and grasses of the
+earth and made of them tea, and gave thee to drink.  But I mark little
+change, for I knew thee at once.  It was thy very shadow on the ground
+that made me lift my head.  A little change, mayhap.  Tall thou art,
+and like a slender willow in thy grace, and the sun has kissed thy
+cheeks more lightly of the years; but there is the old hair, flying
+wild and of the color of the brown seaweed floating on the tide, and
+the mouth, quick to laugh and loth to cry.  And the eyes are as clear
+and true as in the days when Neepoosa chid thee for wrong-doing, and
+thou wouldst not put false words upon thy tongue.  Ai!  Ai!  Not as
+thou art the other women who come now into the land!"
+
+"And why is a white woman without honor among you?" Frona demanded.
+"Your men say evil things to me in the camp, and as I came through the
+woods, even the boys.  Not in the old days, when I played with them,
+was this shame so."
+
+"Ai!  Ai!" Neepoosa made answer.  "It is so.  But do not blame them.
+Pour not thine anger upon their heads.  For it is true it is the fault
+of thy women who come into the land these days.  They can point to no
+man and say, 'That is my man.'  And it is not good that women should he
+thus.  And they look upon all men, bold-eyed and shameless, and their
+tongues are unclean, and their hearts bad.  Wherefore are thy women
+without honor among us.  As for the boys, they are but boys.  And the
+men; how should they know?"
+
+The tent-flaps were poked aside and an old man came in.  He grunted to
+Frona and sat down.  Only a certain eager alertness showed the delight
+he took in her presence.
+
+"So Tenas Hee-Hee has come back in these bad days," he vouchsafed in a
+shrill, quavering voice.
+
+"And why bad days, Muskim?" Frona asked.  "Do not the women wear
+brighter colors?  Are not the bellies fuller with flour and bacon and
+white man's grub?  Do not the young men contrive great wealth what of
+their pack-straps and paddles?  And art thou not remembered with the
+ancient offerings of meat and fish and blanket?  Why bad days, Muskim?"
+
+"True," he replied in his fine, priestly way, a reminiscent flash of
+the old fire lighting his eyes.  "It is very true.  The women wear
+brighter colors.  But they have found favor, in the eyes of thy white
+men, and they look no more upon the young men of their own blood.
+Wherefore the tribe does not increase, nor do the little children
+longer clutter the way of our feet.  It is so.  The bellies are fuller
+with the white man's grub; but also are they fuller with the white
+man's bad whiskey.  Nor could it be otherwise that the young men
+contrive great wealth; but they sit by night over the cards, and it
+passes from them, and they speak harsh words one to another, and in
+anger blows are struck, and there is bad blood between them.  As for
+old Muskim, there are few offerings of meat and fish and blanket.  For
+the young women have turned aside from the old paths, nor do the young
+men longer honor the old totems and the old gods.  So these are bad
+days, Tenas Hee-Hee, and they behold old Muskim go down in sorrow to
+the grave."
+
+"Ai!  Ai!  It is so!" wailed Neepoosa.
+
+"Because of the madness of thy people have my people become mad,"
+Muskim continued.  "They come over the salt sea like the waves of the
+sea, thy people, and they go--ah! who knoweth where?"
+
+"Ai!  Who knoweth where?" Neepoosa lamented, rocking slowly back and
+forth.
+
+"Ever they go towards the frost and cold; and ever do they come, more
+people, wave upon wave!"
+
+"Ai!  Ai!  Into the frost and cold!  It is a long way, and dark and
+cold!"  She shivered, then laid a sudden hand on Frona's arm.  "And
+thou goest?"
+
+Frona nodded.
+
+"And Tenas Hee-Hee goest!  Ai!  Ai!  Ai!"
+
+The tent-flap lifted, and Matt McCarthy peered in.  "It's yerself,
+Frona, is it?  With breakfast waitin' this half-hour on ye, an' old
+Andy fumin' an' frettin' like the old woman he is.  Good-mornin' to ye,
+Neepoosa," he addressed Frona's companions, "an' to ye, Muskim, though,
+belike ye've little mimory iv me face."
+
+The old couple grunted salutation and remained stolidly silent.
+
+"But hurry with ye, girl," turning back to Frona.  "Me steamer starts
+by mid-day, an' it's little I'll see iv ye at the best.  An' likewise
+there's Andy an' the breakfast pipin' hot, both iv them."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Frona waved her hand to Andy and swung out on the trail.  Fastened
+tightly to her back were her camera and a small travelling satchel.  In
+addition, she carried for alpenstock the willow pole of Neepoosa.  Her
+dress was of the mountaineering sort, short-skirted and scant, allowing
+the greatest play with the least material, and withal gray of color and
+modest.
+
+Her outfit, on the backs of a dozen Indians and in charge of Del
+Bishop, had got under way hours before.  The previous day, on her
+return with Matt McCarthy from the Siwash camp, she had found Del
+Bishop at the store waiting her.  His business was quickly transacted,
+for the proposition he made was terse and to the point.  She was going
+into the country.  He was intending to go in.  She would need somebody.
+If she had not picked any one yet, why he was just the man.  He had
+forgotten to tell her the day he took her ashore that he had been in
+the country years before and knew all about it.  True, he hated the
+water, and it was mainly a water journey; but he was not afraid of it.
+He was afraid of nothing.  Further, he would fight for her at the drop
+of the hat.  As for pay, when they got to Dawson, a good word from her
+to Jacob Welse, and a year's outfit would be his.  No, no; no
+grub-stake about it, no strings on him!  He would pay for the outfit
+later on when his sack was dusted.  What did she think about it,
+anyway?  And Frona did think about it, for ere she had finished
+breakfast he was out hustling the packers together.
+
+She found herself making better speed than the majority of her fellows,
+who were heavily laden and had to rest their packs every few hundred
+yards.  Yet she found herself hard put to keep the pace of a bunch of
+Scandinavians ahead of her.  They were huge strapping blond-haired
+giants, each striding along with a hundred pounds on his back, and all
+harnessed to a go-cart which carried fully six hundred more.  Their
+faces were as laughing suns, and the joy of life was in them.  The toil
+seemed child's play and slipped from them lightly.  They joked with one
+another, and with the passers-by, in a meaningless tongue, and their
+great chests rumbled with cavern-echoing laughs.  Men stood aside for
+them, and looked after them enviously; for they took the rises of the
+trail on the run, and rattled down the counter slopes, and ground the
+iron-rimmed wheels harshly over the rocks.  Plunging through a dark
+stretch of woods, they came out upon the river at the ford.  A drowned
+man lay on his back on the sand-bar, staring upward, unblinking, at the
+sun.  A man, in irritated tones, was questioning over and over,
+"Where's his pardner?  Ain't he got a pardner?"  Two more men had
+thrown off their packs and were coolly taking an inventory of the dead
+man's possessions.  One called aloud the various articles, while the
+other checked them off on a piece of dirty wrapping-paper.  Letters and
+receipts, wet and pulpy, strewed the sand.  A few gold coins were
+heaped carelessly on a white handkerchief.  Other men, crossing back
+and forth in canoes and skiffs, took no notice.
+
+The Scandinavians glanced at the sight, and their faces sobered for a
+moment.  "Where's his pardner?  Ain't he got a pardner?" the irritated
+man demanded of them.  They shook their heads.  They did not understand
+English.  They stepped into the water and splashed onward.  Some one
+called warningly from the opposite bank, whereat they stood still and
+conferred together.  Then they started on again.  The two men taking
+the inventory turned to watch.  The current rose nigh to their hips,
+but it was swift and they staggered, while now and again the cart
+slipped sideways with the stream.  The worst was over, and Frona found
+herself holding her breath.  The water had sunk to the knees of the two
+foremost men, when a strap snapped on one nearest the cart.  His pack
+swung suddenly to the side, overbalancing him.  At the same instant the
+man next to him slipped, and each jerked the other under.  The next two
+were whipped off their feet, while the cart, turning over, swept from
+the bottom of the ford into the deep water.  The two men who had almost
+emerged threw themselves backward on the pull-ropes.  The effort was
+heroic, but giants though they were, the task was too great and they
+were dragged, inch by inch, downward and under.
+
+Their packs held them to the bottom, save him whose strap had broken.
+This one struck out, not to the shore, but down the stream, striving to
+keep up with his comrades.  A couple of hundred feet below, the rapid
+dashed over a toothed-reef of rocks, and here, a minute later, they
+appeared.  The cart, still loaded, showed first, smashing a wheel and
+turning over and over into the next plunge.  The men followed in a
+miserable tangle.  They were beaten against the submerged rocks and
+swept on, all but one.  Frona, in a canoe (a dozen canoes were already
+in pursuit), saw him grip the rock with bleeding fingers.  She saw his
+white face and the agony of the effort; but his hold relaxed and he was
+jerked away, just as his free comrade, swimming mightily, was reaching
+for him.  Hidden from sight, they took the next plunge, showing for a
+second, still struggling, at the shallow foot of the rapid.
+
+A canoe picked up the swimming man, but the rest disappeared in a long
+stretch of swift, deep water.  For a quarter of an hour the canoes
+plied fruitlessly about, then found the dead men gently grounded in an
+eddy.  A tow-rope was requisitioned from an up-coming boat, and a pair
+of horses from a pack-train on the bank, and the ghastly jetsam hauled
+ashore.  Frona looked at the five young giants lying in the mud,
+broken-boned, limp, uncaring.  They were still harnessed to the cart,
+and the poor worthless packs still clung to their backs, The sixth sat
+in the midst, dry-eyed and stunned.  A dozen feet away the steady flood
+of life flowed by and Frona melted into it and went on.
+
+
+The dark spruce-shrouded mountains drew close together in the Dyea
+Canyon, and the feet of men churned the wet sunless earth into mire and
+bog-hole.  And when they had done this they sought new paths, till
+there were many paths.  And on such a path Frona came upon a man spread
+carelessly in the mud.  He lay on his side, legs apart and one arm
+buried beneath him, pinned down by a bulky pack.  His cheek was
+pillowed restfully in the ooze, and on his face there was an expression
+of content.  He brightened when he saw her, and his eyes twinkled
+cheerily.
+
+"'Bout time you hove along," he greeted her.  "Been waitin' an hour on
+you as it is."
+
+"That's it," as Frona bent over him.  "Just unbuckle that strap.  The
+pesky thing!  'Twas just out o' my reach all the time."
+
+"Are you hurt?" she asked.
+
+He slipped out of his straps, shook himself, and felt the twisted arm.
+"Nope.  Sound as a dollar, thank you.  And no kick to register,
+either."  He reached over and wiped his muddy hands on a low-bowed
+spruce.  "Just my luck; but I got a good rest, so what's the good of
+makin' a beef about it?  You see, I tripped on that little root there,
+and slip! slump! slam! and slush!--there I was, down and out, and the
+buckle just out o' reach.  And there I lay for a blasted hour,
+everybody hitting the lower path."
+
+"But why didn't you call out to them?"
+
+"And make 'em climb up the hill to me?  Them all tuckered out with
+their own work?  Not on your life!  Wasn't serious enough.  If any
+other man 'd make me climb up just because he'd slipped down, I'd take
+him out o' the mud all right, all right, and punch and punch him back
+into the mud again.  Besides, I knew somebody was bound to come along
+my way after a while."
+
+"Oh, you'll do!" she cried, appropriating Del Bishop's phrase.  "You'll
+do for this country!"
+
+"Yep," he called back, shouldering his pack and starting off at a
+lively clip.  "And, anyway, I got a good rest."
+
+The trail dipped through a precipitous morass to the river's brink.  A
+slender pine-tree spanned the screaming foam and bent midway to touch
+the water.  The surge beat upon the taper trunk and gave it a
+rhythmical swaying motion, while the feet of the packers had worn
+smooth its wave-washed surface.  Eighty feet it stretched in ticklish
+insecurity.  Frona stepped upon it, felt it move beneath her, heard the
+bellowing of the water, saw the mad rush--and shrank back.  She slipped
+the knot of her shoe-laces and pretended great care in the tying
+thereof as a bunch of Indians came out of the woods above and down
+through the mud.  Three or four bucks led the way, followed by many
+squaws, all bending in the head-straps to the heavy packs.  Behind came
+the children burdened according to their years, and in the rear half a
+dozen dogs, tongues lagging out and dragging forward painfully under
+their several loads.
+
+The men glanced at her sideways, and one of them said something in an
+undertone.   Frona could not hear, but the snicker which went down the
+line brought the flush of shame to her brow and told her more forcibly
+than could the words.  Her face was hot, for she sat disgraced in her
+own sight; but she gave no sign.  The leader stood aside, and one by
+one, and never more than one at a time, they made the perilous passage.
+At the bend in the middle their weight forced the tree under, and they
+felt for their footing, up to the ankles in the cold, driving torrent.
+Even the little children made it without hesitancy, and then the dogs
+whining and reluctant but urged on by the man.  When the last had
+crossed over, he turned to Frona.
+
+"Um horse trail," he said, pointing up the mountain side.  "Much better
+you take um horse trail.  More far; much better."
+
+But she shook her head and waited till he reached the farther bank; for
+she felt the call, not only upon her own pride, but upon the pride of
+her race; and it was a greater demand than her demand, just as the race
+was greater than she.  So she put foot upon the log, and, with the eyes
+of the alien people upon her, walked down into the foam-white swirl.
+
+
+She came upon a man weeping by the side of the trail.  His pack,
+clumsily strapped, sprawled on the ground.  He had taken off a shoe,
+and one naked foot showed swollen and blistered.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked, halting before him.
+
+He looked up at her, then down into the depths where the Dyea River cut
+the gloomy darkness with its living silver.  The tears still welled in
+his eyes, and he sniffled.
+
+"What is the matter?" she repeated.  "Can I be of any help?"
+
+"No," he replied.  "How can you help?  My feet are raw, and my back is
+nearly broken, and I am all tired out.  Can you help any of these
+things?"
+
+"Well," judiciously, "I am sure it might be worse.  Think of the men
+who have just landed on the beach.  It will take them ten days or two
+weeks to back-trip their outfits as far as you have already got yours."
+
+"But my partners have left me and gone on," he moaned, a sneaking
+appeal for pity in his voice.  "And I am all alone, and I don't feel
+able to move another step.  And then think of my wife and babies.  I
+left them down in the States.  Oh, if they could only see me now!  I
+can't go back to them, and I can't go on.  It's too much for me.  I
+can't stand it, this working like a horse.  I was not made to work like
+a horse.  I'll die, I know I will, if I do.  Oh, what shall I do?  What
+shall I do?"
+
+"Why did your comrades leave you?"
+
+"Because I was not so strong as they; because I could not pack as much
+or as long.  And they laughed at me and left me."
+
+"Have you ever roughed it?" Frona asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"You look well put up and strong.  Weigh probably one hundred and
+sixty-five?"
+
+"One hundred-and seventy," he corrected.
+
+"You don't look as though you had ever been troubled with sickness.
+Never an invalid?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"And your comrades?  They are miners?"
+
+"Never mining in their lives.  They worked in the same establishment
+with me.  That's what makes it so hard, don't you see!  We'd known one
+another for years!  And to go off and leave me just because I couldn't
+keep up!"
+
+"My friend," and Frona knew she was speaking for the race, "you are
+strong as they.  You can work just as hard as they; pack as much.  But
+you are weak of heart.  This is no place for the weak of heart.  You
+cannot work like a horse because you will not.  Therefore the country
+has no use for you.  The north wants strong men,--strong of soul, not
+body.  The body does not count.  So go back to the States.  We do not
+want you here.  If you come you will die, and what then of| your wife
+and babies?  So sell out your outfit and go back.  You will be home in
+three weeks.  Good-by."
+
+
+She passed through Sheep Camp.  Somewhere above, a mighty glacier,
+under the pent pressure of a subterranean reservoir, had burst asunder
+and hurled a hundred thousand tons of ice and water down the rocky
+gorge.  The trail was yet slippery with the slime of the flood, and men
+were rummaging disconsolately in the rubbish of overthrown tents and
+caches.  But here and there they worked with nervous haste, and the
+stark corpses by the trail-side attested dumbly to their labor.  A few
+hundred yards beyond, the work of the rush went on uninterrupted.  Men
+rested their packs on jutting stones, swapped escapes whilst they
+regained their breath, then stumbled on to their toil again.
+
+
+The mid-day sun beat down upon the stone "Scales."  The forest had
+given up the struggle, and the dizzying heat recoiled from the
+unclothed rock.  On either hand rose the ice-marred ribs of earth,
+naked and strenuous in their nakedness.  Above towered storm-beaten
+Chilcoot.  Up its gaunt and ragged front crawled a slender string of
+men.  But it was an endless string.  It came out of the last fringe of
+dwarfed shrub below, drew a black line across a dazzling stretch of
+ice, and filed past Frona where she ate her lunch by the way.  And it
+went on, up the pitch of the steep, growing fainter and smaller, till
+it squirmed and twisted like a column of ants and vanished over the
+crest of the pass.
+
+Even as she looked, Chilcoot was wrapped in rolling mist and whirling
+cloud, and a storm of sleet and wind roared down upon the toiling
+pigmies.  The light was swept out of the day, and a deep gloom
+prevailed; but Frona knew that somewhere up there, clinging and
+climbing and immortally striving, the long line of ants still twisted
+towards the sky.  And she thrilled at the thought, strong with man's
+ancient love of mastery, and stepped into the line which came out of
+the storm behind and disappeared into the storm before.
+
+She blew through the gap of the pass in a whirlwind of vapor, with hand
+and foot clambered down the volcanic ruin of Chilcoot's mighty father,
+and stood on the bleak edge of the lake which filled the pit of the
+crater.  The lake was angry and white-capped, and though a hundred
+caches were waiting ferriage, no boats were plying back and forth.  A
+rickety skeleton of sticks, in a shell of greased canvas, lay upon the
+rocks.  Frona sought out the owner, a bright-faced young fellow, with
+sharp black eyes and a salient jaw.  Yes, he was the ferryman, but he
+had quit work for the day.  Water too rough for freighting.  He charged
+twenty-five dollars for passengers, but he was not taking passengers
+to-day.  Had he not said it was too rough?  That was why.
+
+"But you will take me, surely?" she asked.
+
+He shook his head and gazed out over the lake.  "At the far end it's
+rougher than you see it here.  Even the big wooden boats won't tackle
+it.  The last that tried, with a gang of packers aboard, was blown over
+on the west shore.  We could see them plainly.  And as there's no trail
+around from there, they'll have to camp it out till the blow is over."
+
+"But they're better off than I am.  My camp outfit is at Happy Camp,
+and I can't very well stay here," Frona smiled winsomely, but there was
+no appeal in the smile; no feminine helplessness throwing itself on the
+strength and chivalry of the male.  "Do reconsider and take me across."
+
+"No."
+
+"I'll give you fifty."
+
+"No, I say."
+
+"But I'm not afraid, you know."
+
+The young fellow's eyes flashed angrily.  He turned upon her suddenly,
+but on second thought did not utter the words forming on his lips.  She
+realized the unintentional slur she had cast, and was about to explain.
+But on second thought she, too, remained silent; for she read him, and
+knew that it was perhaps the only way for her to gain her point.  They
+stood there, bodies inclined to the storm in the manner of seamen on
+sloped decks, unyieldingly looking into each other's eyes.  His hair
+was plastered in wet ringlets on his forehead, while hers, in longer
+wisps, beat furiously about her face.
+
+"Come on, then!"  He flung the boat into the water with an angry jerk,
+and tossed the oars aboard.  "Climb in!  I'll take you, but not for
+your fifty dollars.  You pay the regulation price, and that's all."
+
+A gust of the gale caught the light shell and swept it broadside for a
+score of feet.  The spray drove inboard in a continuous stinging
+shower, and Frona at once fell to work with the bailing-can.
+
+"I hope we're blown ashore," he shouted, stooping forward to the oars.
+"It would be embarrassing--for you." He looked up savagely into her
+face.
+
+"No," she modified; "but it would be very miserable for both of us,--a
+night without tent, blankets, or fire.  Besides, we're not going to
+blow ashore."
+
+
+She stepped out on the slippery rocks and helped him heave up the
+canvas craft and tilt the water out.  On either side uprose bare wet
+walls of rock.  A heavy sleet was falling steadily, through which a few
+streaming caches showed in the gathering darkness.
+
+"You'd better hurry up," he advised, thanking her for the assistance
+and relaunching the boat.  "Two miles of stiff trail from here to Happy
+Camp.  No wood until you get there, so you'd best hustle along.
+Good-by."
+
+Frona reached out and took his hand, and said, "You are a brave man."
+
+"Oh, I don't know."  He returned the grip with usury and looked his
+admiration.
+
+
+A dozen tents held grimly to their pegs on the extreme edge of the
+timber line at Happy Camp.  Frona, weary with the day, went from tent
+to tent.  Her wet skirts clung heavily to her tired limbs, while the
+wind buffeted her brutally about.  Once, through a canvas wall, she
+heard a man apostrophizing gorgeously, and felt sure that it was Del
+Bishop.  But a peep into the interior told a different tale; so she
+wandered fruitlessly on till she reached the last tent in the camp.
+She untied the flap and looked in.  A spluttering candle showed the one
+occupant, a man, down on his knees and blowing lustily into the
+fire-box of a smoky Yukon stove.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+She cast off the lower flap-fastenings and entered.  The man still blew
+into the stove, unaware of his company.  Frona coughed, and he raised a
+pair of smoke-reddened eyes to hers.
+
+"Certainly," he said, casually enough.  "Fasten the flaps and make
+yourself comfortable."  And thereat returned to his borean task.
+
+"Hospitable, to say the least," she commented to herself, obeying his
+command and coming up to the stove.
+
+A heap of dwarfed spruce, gnarled and wet and cut to proper
+stove-length, lay to one side.  Frona knew it well, creeping and
+crawling and twisting itself among the rocks of the shallow alluvial
+deposit, unlike its arboreal prototype, rarely lifting its head more
+than a foot from the earth.  She looked into the oven, found it empty,
+and filled it with the wet wood.  The man arose to his feet, coughing
+from the smoke which had been driven into his lungs, and nodding
+approval.
+
+When he had recovered his breath, "Sit down and dry your skirts.  I'll
+get supper."
+
+He put a coffee-pot on the front lid of the stove, emptied the bucket
+into it, and went out of the tent after more water.  As his back
+disappeared, Frona dived for her satchel, and when he returned a moment
+later he found her with a dry skirt on and wringing the wet one out.
+While he fished about in the grub-box for dishes and eating utensils,
+she stretched a spare bit of rope between the tent-poles and hung the
+skirt on it to dry.  The dishes were dirty, and, as he bent over and
+washed them, she turned her back and deftly changed her stockings.  Her
+childhood had taught her the value of well-cared feet for the trail.
+She put her wet shoes on a pile of wood at the back of the stove,
+substituting for them a pair of soft and dainty house-moccasins of
+Indian make.  The fire had now grown strong, and she was content to let
+her under-garments dry on her body.
+
+During all this time neither had spoken a word.  Not only had the man
+remained silent, but he went about his work in so preoccupied a way
+that it seemed to Frona that he turned a deaf ear to the words of
+explanation she would have liked to utter.  His whole bearing conveyed
+the impression that it was the most ordinary thing under the sun for a
+young woman to come in out of the storm and night and partake of his
+hospitality.  In one way, she liked this; but in so far as she did not
+comprehend it, she was troubled.  She had a perception of a something
+being taken for granted which she did not understand.  Once or twice
+she moistened her lips to speak, but he appeared so oblivious of her
+presence that she withheld.
+
+After opening a can of corned beef with the axe, he fried half a dozen
+thick slices of bacon, set the frying-pan back, and boiled the coffee.
+From the grub-box he resurrected the half of a cold heavy flapjack.  He
+looked at it dubiously, and shot a quick glance at her.  Then he threw
+the sodden thing out of doors and dumped the contents of a sea-biscuit
+bag upon a camp cloth.  The sea-biscuit had been crumbled into chips
+and fragments and generously soaked by the rain till it had become a
+mushy, pulpy mass of dirty white.
+
+"It's all I have in the way of bread," he muttered; "but sit down and
+we will make the best of it."
+
+"One moment--"  And before he could protest, Frona had poured the
+sea-biscuit into the frying-pan on top of the grease and bacon.  To
+this she added a couple of cups of water and stirred briskly over the
+fire.  When it had sobbed and sighed with the heat for some few
+minutes, she sliced up the corned beef and mixed it in with the rest.
+And by the time she had seasoned it heavily with salt and black pepper,
+a savory steam was rising from the concoction.
+
+"Must say it's pretty good stuff," he said, balancing his plate on his
+knee and sampling the mess avidiously.  "What do you happen to call it?"
+
+"Slumgullion," she responded curtly, and thereafter the meal went on in
+silence.
+
+Frona helped him to the coffee, studying him intently the while.  And
+not only was it not an unpleasant face, she decided, but it was strong.
+Strong, she amended, potentially rather than actually.  A student, she
+added, for she had seen many students' eyes and knew the lasting
+impress of the midnight oil long continued; and his eyes bore the
+impress.  Brown eyes, she concluded, and handsome as the male's should
+be handsome; but she noted with surprise, when she refilled his plate
+with slumgullion, that they were not at all brown in the ordinary
+sense, but hazel-brown.  In the daylight, she felt certain, and in
+times of best health, they would seem gray, and almost blue-gray.  She
+knew it well; her one girl chum and dearest friend had had such an eye.
+
+His hair was chestnut-brown, glinting in the candle-light to gold, and
+the hint of waviness in it explained the perceptible droop to his tawny
+moustache.  For the rest, his face was clean-shaven and cut on a good
+masculine pattern.  At first she found fault with the more than slight
+cheek-hollows under the cheek-bones, but when she measured his
+well-knit, slenderly muscular figure, with its deep chest and heavy
+shoulders, she discovered that she preferred the hollows; at least they
+did not imply lack of nutrition.  The body gave the lie to that; while
+they themselves denied the vice of over-feeding.  Height, five feet,
+nine, she summed up from out of her gymnasium experience; and age
+anywhere between twenty-five and thirty, though nearer the former most
+likely.
+
+"Haven't many blankets," he said abruptly, pausing to drain his cup and
+set it over on the grub-box.  "I don't expect my Indians back from Lake
+Linderman till morning, and the beggars have packed over everything
+except a few sacks of flour and the bare camp outfit.  However, I've a
+couple of heavy ulsters which will serve just as well."
+
+He turned his back, as though he did not expect a reply, and untied a
+rubber-covered roll of blankets.  Then he drew the two ulsters from a
+clothes-bag and threw them down on the bedding.
+
+"Vaudeville artist, I suppose?"
+
+He asked the question seemingly without interest, as though to keep the
+conversation going, and, in fact, as if he knew the stereotyped answer
+beforehand.  But to Frona the question was like a blow in the face.
+She remembered Neepoosa's philippic against the white women who were
+coming into the land, and realized the falseness of her position and
+the way in which he looked upon her.
+
+But he went on before she could speak.  "Last night I had two
+vaudeville queens, and three the night before.  Only there was more
+bedding then.  It's unfortunate, isn't it, the aptitude they display in
+getting lost from their outfits?  Yet somehow I have failed to find any
+lost outfits so far.  And they are all queens, it seems.  No
+under-studies or minor turns about them,--no, no.  And I presume you
+are a queen, too?"
+
+The too-ready blood sprayed her cheek, and this made her angrier than
+did he; for whereas she was sure of the steady grip she had on herself,
+her flushed face betokened a confusion which did not really possess her.
+
+"No," she answered, coolly; "I am not a vaudeville artist."
+
+He tossed several sacks of flour to one side of the stove, without
+replying, and made of them the foundation of a bed; and with the
+remaining sacks he duplicated the operation on the opposite side of the
+stove.
+
+"But you are some kind of an artist, then," he insisted when he had
+finished, with an open contempt on the "artist."
+
+"Unfortunately, I am not any kind of an artist at all."
+
+He dropped the blanket he was folding and straightened his back.
+Hitherto he had no more than glanced at her; but now he scrutinized her
+carefully, every inch of her, from head to heel and back again, the cut
+of her garments and the very way she did her hair.  And he took his
+time about it.
+
+"Oh!  I beg pardon," was his verdict, followed by another stare.  "Then
+you are a very foolish woman dreaming of fortune and shutting your eyes
+to the dangers of the pilgrimage.  It is only meet that two kinds of
+women come into this country.  Those who by virtue of wifehood and
+daughterhood are respectable, and those who are not respectable.
+Vaudeville stars and artists, they call themselves for the sake of
+decency; and out of courtesy we countenance it.  Yes, yes, I know.  But
+remember, the women who come over the trail must be one or the other.
+There is no middle course, and those who attempt it are bound to fail.
+So you are a very, very foolish girl, and you had better turn back
+while there is yet a chance.  If you will view it in the light of a
+loan from a stranger, I will advance your passage back to the States,
+and start an Indian over the trail with you to-morrow for Dyea."
+
+Once or twice Frona had attempted to interrupt him, but he had waved
+her imperatively to silence with his hand.
+
+"I thank you," she began; but he broke in,--
+
+"Oh, not at all, not at all."
+
+"I thank you," she repeated; but it happens that--a--that you are
+mistaken.  I have just come over the trail from Dyea and expect to meet
+my outfit already in camp here at Happy Camp.  They started hours ahead
+of me, and I can't understand how I passed them--yes I do, too!  A boat
+was blown over to the west shore of Crater Lake this afternoon, and
+they must have been in it.  That is where I missed them and came on.
+As for my turning back, I appreciate your motive for suggesting it, but
+my father is in Dawson, and I have not seen him for three years.  Also,
+I have come through from Dyea this day, and am tired, and I would like
+to get some rest.  So, if you still extend your hospitality, I'll go to
+bed."
+
+"Impossible!"  He kicked the blankets to one side, sat down on the
+flour sacks, and directed a blank look upon her.
+
+"Are--are there any women in the other tents?" she asked, hesitatingly.
+"I did not see any, but I may have overlooked."
+
+"A man and his wife were, but they pulled stakes this morning.  No;
+there are no other women except--except two or three in a tent,
+which--er--which will not do for you."
+
+"Do you think I am afraid of their hospitality?" she demanded, hotly.
+"As you said, they are women."
+
+"But I said it would not do," he answered, absently, staring at the
+straining canvas and listening to the roar of the storm.  "A man would
+die in the open on a night like this.
+
+"And the other tents are crowded to the walls," he mused.  "I happen to
+know.  They have stored all their caches inside because of the water,
+and they haven't room to turn around.  Besides, a dozen other strangers
+are storm-bound with them.  Two or three asked to spread their beds in
+here to-night if they couldn't pinch room elsewhere.  Evidently they
+have; but that does not argue that there is any surplus space left.
+And anyway--"
+
+He broke off helplessly.  The inevitableness of the situation was
+growing.
+
+"Can I make Deep Lake to-night?" Frona asked, forgetting herself to
+sympathize with him, then becoming conscious of what she was doing and
+bursting into laughter.
+
+"But you couldn't ford the river in the dark."  He frowned at her
+levity.  "And there are no camps between."
+
+"Are you afraid?" she asked with just the shadow of a sneer.
+
+"Not for myself."
+
+"Well, then, I think I'll go to bed."
+
+"I might sit up and keep the fire going," he suggested after a pause.
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" she cried.  "As though your foolish little code were
+saved in the least!  We are not in civilization.  This is the trail to
+the Pole.  Go to bed."
+
+He elevated his shoulders in token of surrender.  "Agreed.  What shall
+I do then?"
+
+"Help me make my bed, of course.  Sacks laid crosswise!  Thank you,
+sir, but I have bones and muscles that rebel.  Here--  Pull them
+around this way."
+
+Under her direction he laid the sacks lengthwise in a double row.  This
+left an uncomfortable hollow with lumpy sack-corners down the middle;
+but she smote them flat with the side of the axe, and in the same
+manner lessened the slope to the walls of the hollow.  Then she made a
+triple longitudinal fold in a blanket and spread it along the bottom of
+the long depression.
+
+"Hum!" he soliloquized.  "Now I see why I sleep so badly.  Here goes!"
+And he speedily flung his own sacks into shape.
+
+"It is plain you are unused to the trail," she informed him, spreading
+the topmost blanket and sitting down.
+
+"Perhaps so," he made answer.  "But what do you know about this trail
+life?" he growled a little later.
+
+"Enough to conform," she rejoined equivocally, pulling out the dried
+wood from the oven and replacing it with wet.
+
+"Listen to it!  How it storms!" he exclaimed.  "It's growing worse, if
+worse be possible."
+
+The tent reeled under the blows of the wind, the canvas booming
+hollowly at every shock, while the sleet and rain rattled overhead like
+skirmish-fire grown into a battle.  In the lulls they could hear the
+water streaming off at the side-walls with the noise of small
+cataracts.   He reached up curiously and touched the wet roof.  A burst
+of water followed instantly at the point of contact and coursed down
+upon the grub-box.
+
+"You mustn't do that!" Frona cried, springing to her feet.  She put her
+finger on the spot, and, pressing tightly against the canvas, ran it
+down to the side-wall.  The leak at once stopped.  "You mustn't do it,
+you know," she reproved.
+
+"Jove!" was his reply.  "And you came through from Dyea to-day!  Aren't
+you stiff?"
+
+"Quite a bit," she confessed, candidly, "and sleepy."
+
+"Good-night," she called to him several minutes later, stretching her
+body luxuriously in the warm blankets.  And a quarter of an hour after
+that, "Oh, I say!  Are you awake?"
+
+"Yes," his voice came muffled across the stove.  "What is it?"
+
+"Have you the shavings cut?"
+
+"Shavings?" he queried, sleepily.  "What shavings?"
+
+"For the fire in the morning, of course.  So get up and cut them."
+
+He obeyed without a word; but ere he was done she had ceased to hear
+him.
+
+The ubiquitous bacon was abroad on the air when she opened her eyes.
+Day had broken, and with it the storm.  The wet sun was shining
+cheerily over the drenched landscape and in at the wide-spread flaps.
+Already work had begun, and groups of men were filing past under their
+packs.  Frona turned over on her side.  Breakfast was cooked.  Her host
+had just put the bacon and fried potatoes in the oven, and was engaged
+in propping the door ajar with two sticks of firewood.
+
+"Good-morning," she greeted.
+
+"And good-morning to you," he responded, rising to his feet and picking
+up the water-bucket.  "I don't hope that you slept well, for I know you
+did."
+
+Frona laughed.
+
+"I'm going out after some water," he vouchsafed.  "And when I return I
+shall expect you ready for breakfast."
+
+After breakfast, basking herself in the sun, Frona descried a familiar
+bunch of men rounding the tail of the glacier in the direction of
+Crater Lake.  She clapped her hands.
+
+"There comes my outfit, and Del Bishop as shame-faced as can be, I'm
+sure, at his failure to connect."  Turning to the man, and at the same
+time slinging camera and satchel over her shoulder, "So I must say
+good-by, not forgetting to thank you for your kindness."
+
+"Oh, not at all, not at all.  Pray don't mention it.  I'd do the same
+for any--"
+
+"Vaudeville artist!"
+
+He looked his reproach, but went on.  "I don't know your name, nor do I
+wish to know it."
+
+"Well, I shall not be so harsh, for I do know your name, MISTER VANCE
+CORLISS!  I saw it on the shipping tags, of course," she explained.
+"And I want you to come and see me when you get to Dawson.  My name is
+Frona Welse.  Good-by."
+
+"Your father is not Jacob Welse?" he called after her as she ran
+lightly down towards the trail.
+
+She turned her head and nodded.
+
+But Del Bishop was not shamefaced, nor even worried.  "Trust a Welse to
+land on their feet on a soft spot," he had consoled himself as he
+dropped off to sleep the night before.  But he was angry--"madder 'n
+hops," in his own vernacular.
+
+"Good-mornin'," he saluted.  "And it's plain by your face you had a
+comfortable night of it, and no thanks to me."
+
+"You weren't worried, were you?" she asked.
+
+"Worried?  About a Welse?  Who?  Me?  Not on your life.  I was too busy
+tellin' Crater Lake what I thought of it.  I don't like the water.  I
+told you so.  And it's always playin' me scurvy--not that I'm afraid of
+it, though."
+
+"Hey, you Pete!" turning to the Indians.  "Hit 'er up!  Got to make
+Linderman by noon!"
+
+"Frona Welse?" Vance Corliss was repeating to himself.
+
+The whole thing seemed a dream, and he reassured himself by turning and
+looking after her retreating form.  Del Bishop and the Indians were
+already out of sight behind a wall of rock.  Frona was just rounding
+the base.  The sun was full upon her, and she stood out radiantly
+against the black shadow of the wall beyond.  She waved her alpenstock,
+and as he doffed his cap, rounded the brink and disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The position occupied by Jacob Welse was certainly an anomalous one.
+He was a giant trader in a country without commerce, a ripened product
+of the nineteenth century flourishing in a society as primitive as that
+of the Mediterranean vandals.  A captain of industry and a splendid
+monopolist, he dominated the most independent aggregate of men ever
+drawn together from the ends of the earth.  An economic missionary, a
+commercial St. Paul, he preached the doctrines of expediency and force.
+Believing in the natural rights of man, a child himself of democracy,
+he bent all men to his absolutism.  Government of Jacob Welse, for
+Jacob Welse and the people, by Jacob Welse, was his unwritten gospel.
+Single-handed he had carved out his dominion till he gripped the domain
+of a dozen Roman provinces.  At his ukase the population ebbed and
+flowed over a hundred thousand miles of territory, and cities sprang up
+or disappeared at his bidding.
+
+Yet he was a common man.  The air of the world first smote his lungs on
+the open prairie by the River Platte, the blue sky over head, and
+beneath, the green grass of the earth pressing against his tender
+nakedness.  On the horses his eyes first opened, still saddled and
+gazing in mild wonder on the miracle; for his trapper father had but
+turned aside from the trail that the wife might have quiet and the
+birth be accomplished.  An hour or so and the two, which were now
+three, were in the saddle and overhauling their trapper comrades.  The
+party had not been delayed; no time lost.  In the morning his mother
+cooked the breakfast over the camp-fire, and capped it with a
+fifty-mile ride into the next sun-down.
+
+The trapper father had come of the sturdy Welsh stock which trickled
+into early Ohio out of the jostling East, and the mother was a nomadic
+daughter of the Irish emigrant settlers of Ontario.  From both sides
+came the Wanderlust of the blood, the fever to be moving, to be pushing
+on to the edge of things.  In the first year of his life, ere he had
+learned the way of his legs, Jacob Welse had wandered a-horse through a
+thousand miles of wilderness, and wintered in a hunting-lodge on the
+head-waters of the Red River of the North.  His first foot-gear was
+moccasins, his first taffy the tallow from a moose.  His first
+generalizations were that the world was composed of great wastes and
+white vastnesses, and populated with Indians and white hunters like his
+father.  A town was a cluster of deer-skin lodges; a trading-post a
+seat of civilization; and a factor God Almighty Himself.  Rivers and
+lakes existed chiefly for man's use in travelling.  Viewed in this
+light, the mountains puzzled him; but he placed them away in his
+classification of the Inexplicable and did not worry.  Men died,
+sometimes.  But their meat was not good to eat, and their hides
+worthless,--perhaps because they did not grow fur.  Pelts were
+valuable, and with a few bales a man might purchase the earth.  Animals
+were made for men to catch and skin.  He did not know what men were
+made for, unless, perhaps, for the factor.
+
+As he grew older he modified these concepts, but the process was a
+continual source of naive apprehension and wonderment.  It was not
+until he became a man and had wandered through half the cities of the
+States that this expression of childish wonder passed out of his eyes
+and left them wholly keen and alert.  At his boy's first contact with
+the cities, while he revised his synthesis of things, he also
+generalized afresh.  People who lived in cities were effeminate.  They
+did not carry the points of the compass in their heads, and they got
+lost easily.  That was why they elected to stay in the cities.  Because
+they might catch cold and because they were afraid of the dark, they
+slept under shelter and locked their doors at night.  The women were
+soft and pretty, but they could not lift a snowshoe far in a day's
+journey.  Everybody talked too much.  That was why they lied and were
+unable to work greatly with their hands.  Finally, there was a new
+human force called "bluff."  A man who made a bluff must be dead sure
+of it, or else be prepared to back it up.  Bluff was a very good
+thing--when exercised with discretion.
+
+Later, though living his life mainly in the woods and mountains, he
+came to know that the cities were not all bad; that a man might live in
+a city and still be a man.  Accustomed to do battle with natural
+forces, he was attracted by the commercial battle with social forces.
+The masters of marts and exchanges dazzled but did not blind him, and
+he studied them, and strove to grasp the secrets of their strength.
+And further, in token that some good did come out of Nazareth, in the
+full tide of manhood he took to himself a city-bred woman.  But he
+still yearned for the edge of things, and the leaven in his blood
+worked till they went away, and above the Dyea Beach, on the rim of the
+forest, built the big log trading-post.  And here, in the mellow of
+time, he got a proper focus on things and unified the phenomena of
+society precisely as he had already unified the phenomena of nature.
+There was naught in one which could not be expressed in terms of the
+other.  The same principles underlaid both; the same truths were
+manifest of both.  Competition was the secret of creation.  Battle was
+the law and the way of progress.  The world was made for the strong,
+and only the strong inherited it, and through it all there ran an
+eternal equity.  To be honest was to be strong.  To sin was to weaken.
+To bluff an honest man was to be dishonest.  To bluff a bluffer was to
+smite with the steel of justice.  The primitive strength was in the
+arm; the modern strength in the brain.  Though it had shifted ground,
+the struggle was the same old struggle.  As of old time, men still
+fought for the mastery of the earth and the delights thereof.  But the
+sword had given way to the ledger; the mail-clad baron to the
+soft-garbed industrial lord, and the centre of imperial political power
+to the seat of commercial exchanges.  The modern will had destroyed the
+ancient brute.  The stubborn earth yielded only to force.  Brain was
+greater than body.  The man with the brain could best conquer things
+primitive.
+
+He did not have much education as education goes.  To the three R's his
+mother taught him by camp-fire and candle-light, he had added a
+somewhat miscellaneous book-knowledge; but he was not burdened with
+what he had gathered.  Yet he read the facts of life understandingly,
+and the sobriety which comes of the soil was his, and the clear
+earth-vision.
+
+And so it came about that Jacob Welse crossed over the Chilcoot in an
+early day, and disappeared into the vast unknown.  A year later he
+emerged at the Russian missions clustered about the mouth of the Yukon
+on Bering Sea.  He had journeyed down a river three thousand miles
+long, he had seen things, and dreamed a great dream.  But he held his
+tongue and went to work, and one day the defiant whistle of a crazy
+stern-wheel tub saluted the midnight sun on the dank river-stretch by
+Fort o' Yukon.  It was a magnificent adventure.  How he achieved it
+only Jacob Welse can tell; but with the impossible to begin with, plus
+the impossible, he added steamer to steamer and heaped enterprise upon
+enterprise.  Along many a thousand miles of river and tributary he
+built trading-posts and warehouses.  He forced the white man's axe into
+the hands of the aborigines, and in every village and between the
+villages rose the cords of four-foot firewood for his boilers.  On an
+island in Bering Sea, where the river and the ocean meet, he
+established a great distributing station, and on the North Pacific he
+put big ocean steamships; while in his offices in Seattle and San
+Francisco it took clerks by the score to keep the order and system of
+his business.
+
+Men drifted into the land.  Hitherto famine had driven them out, but
+Jacob Welse was there now, and his grub-stores; so they wintered in the
+frost and groped in the frozen muck for gold.  He encouraged them,
+grub-staked them, carried them on the books of the company.  His
+steamers dragged them up the Koyokuk in the old days of Arctic City.
+Wherever pay was struck he built a warehouse and a store.  The town
+followed.  He explored; he speculated; he developed.  Tireless,
+indomitable, with the steel-glitter in his dark eyes, he was everywhere
+at once, doing all things.  In the opening up of a new river he was in
+the van; and at the tail-end also, hurrying forward the grub.  On the
+Outside he fought trade-combinations; made alliances with the
+corporations of the earth, and forced discriminating tariffs from the
+great carriers.  On the Inside he sold flour, and blankets, and
+tobacco; built saw-mills, staked townsites, and sought properties in
+copper, iron, and coal; and that the miners should be well-equipped,
+ransacked the lands of the Arctic even as far as Siberia for
+native-made snow-shoes, muclucs, and parkas.
+
+He bore the country on his shoulders; saw to its needs; did its work.
+Every ounce of its dust passed through his hands; every post-card and
+letter of credit.  He did its banking and exchange; carried and
+distributed its mails.  He frowned upon competition; frightened out
+predatory capital; bluffed militant syndicates, and when they would
+not, backed his bluff and broke them.  And for all, yet found time and
+place to remember his motherless girl, and to love her, and to fit her
+for the position he had made.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+"So I think, captain, you will agree that we must exaggerate the
+seriousness of the situation."  Jacob Welse helped his visitor into his
+fur great-coat and went on.  "Not that it is not serious, but that it
+may not become more serious.  Both you and I have handled famines
+before.  We must frighten them, and frighten them now, before it is too
+late.  Take five thousand men out of Dawson and there will be grub to
+last.  Let those five thousand carry their tale of famine to Dyea and
+Skaguay, and they will prevent five thousand more coming in over the
+ice."
+
+"Quite right!  And you may count on the hearty co-operation of the
+police, Mr. Welse."  The speaker, a strong-faced, grizzled man,
+heavy-set and of military bearing, pulled up his collar and rested his
+hand on the door-knob.  "I see already, thanks to you, the newcomers
+are beginning to sell their outfits and buy dogs.  Lord! won't there be
+a stampede out over the ice as soon as the river closes down!  And each
+that sells a thousand pounds of grub and goes lessens the proposition
+by one empty stomach and fills another that remains.  When does the
+Laura start?"
+
+"This morning, with three hundred grubless men aboard.  Would that they
+were three thousand!"
+
+Amen to that!  And by the way, when does your daughter arrive?"
+
+"'Most any day, now."  Jacob Welse's eyes warmed.  "And I want you to
+dinner when she does, and bring along a bunch of your young bucks from
+the Barracks.  I don't know all their names, but just the same extend
+the invitation as though from me personally.  I haven't cultivated the
+social side much,--no time, but see to it that the girl enjoys herself.
+Fresh from the States and London, and she's liable to feel lonesome.
+You understand."
+
+Jacob Welse closed the door, tilted his chair back, and cocked his feet
+on the guard-rail of the stove.  For one half-minute a girlish vision
+wavered in the shimmering air above the stove, then merged into a woman
+of fair Saxon type.
+
+The door opened.  "Mr. Welse, Mr. Foster sent me to find out if he is
+to go on filling signed warehouse orders?"
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Smith.  But tell him to scale them down by half.  If a
+man holds an order for a thousand pounds, give him five hundred."
+
+He lighted a cigar and tilted back again in his chair.
+
+"Captain McGregor wants to see you, sir."
+
+"Send him in."
+
+Captain McGregor strode in and remained standing before his employer.
+The rough hand of the New World had been laid upon the Scotsman from
+his boyhood; but sterling honesty was written in every line of his
+bitter-seamed face, while a prognathous jaw proclaimed to the onlooker
+that honesty was the best policy,--for the onlooker at any rate, should
+he wish to do business with the owner of the jaw.  This warning was
+backed up by the nose, side-twisted and broken, and by a long scar
+which ran up the forehead and disappeared in the gray-grizzled hair.
+
+"We throw off the lines in an hour, sir; so I've come for the last
+word."
+
+"Good."  Jacob Welse whirled his chair about.  "Captain McGregor."
+
+"Ay."
+
+"I had other work cut out for you this winter; but I have changed my
+mind and chosen you to go down with the Laura.  Can you guess why?"
+
+Captain McGregor swayed his weight from one leg to the other, and a
+shrewd chuckle of a smile wrinkled the corners of his eyes.  "Going to
+be trouble," he grunted.
+
+"And I couldn't have picked a better man.  Mr. Bally will give you
+detailed instructions as you go aboard.  But let me say this: If we
+can't scare enough men out of the country, there'll be need for every
+pound of grub at Fort Yukon.  Understand?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"So no extravagance.  You are taking three hundred men down with you.
+The chances are that twice as many more will go down as soon as the
+river freezes.  You'll have a thousand to feed through the winter.  Put
+them on rations,--working rations,--and see that they work.  Cordwood,
+six dollars per cord, and piled on the bank where steamers can make a
+landing.  No work, no rations.  Understand?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"A thousand men can get ugly, if they are idle.  They can get ugly
+anyway.  Watch out they don't rush the caches.  If they do,--do your
+duty."
+
+The other nodded grimly.  His hands gripped unconsciously, while the
+scar on his forehead took on a livid hue.
+
+"There are five steamers in the ice.  Make them safe against the spring
+break-up.  But first transfer all their cargoes to one big cache.  You
+can defend it better, and make the cache impregnable.  Send a messenger
+down to Fort Burr, asking Mr. Carter for three of his men.  He doesn't
+need them.  Nothing much is doing at Circle City.  Stop in on the way
+down and take half of Mr. Burdwell's men.  You'll need them.  There'll
+be gun-fighters in plenty to deal with.  Be stiff.  Keep things in
+check from the start.  Remember, the man who shoots first comes off
+with the whole hide.  And keep a constant eye on the grub."
+
+"And on the forty-five-nineties," Captain McGregor rumbled back as he
+passed out the door.
+
+"John Melton--Mr. Melton, sir.  Can he see you?"
+
+"See here, Welse, what's this mean?"  John Melton followed wrathfully
+on the heels of the clerk, and he almost walked over him as he
+flourished a paper before the head of the company.  "Read that!  What's
+it stand for?"
+
+Jacob Welse glanced over it and looked up coolly.  "One thousand pounds
+of grub."
+
+"That's what I say, but that fellow you've got in the warehouse says
+no,--five hundred's all it's good for."
+
+"He spoke the truth."
+
+"But--"
+
+"It stands for one thousand pounds, but in the warehouse it is only
+good for five hundred."
+
+"That your signature?" thrusting the receipt again into the other's
+line of vision.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then what are you going to do about it?"
+
+"Give you five hundred.  What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"Refuse to take it."
+
+"Very good.  There is no further discussion."
+
+"Yes there is.  I propose to have no further dealings with you.  I'm
+rich enough to freight my own stuff in over the Passes, and I will next
+year.  Our business stops right now and for all time."
+
+"I cannot object to that.  You have three hundred thousand dollars in
+dust deposited with me.  Go to Mr. Atsheler and draw it at once."
+
+The man fumed impotently up and down.  "Can't I get that other five
+hundred?  Great God, man!  I've paid for it!  You don't intend me to
+starve?"
+
+"Look here, Melton."  Jacob Welse paused to knock the ash from his
+cigar.  "At this very moment what are you working for?  What are you
+trying to get?"
+
+"A thousand pounds of grub."
+
+"For your own stomach?"
+
+The Bonanzo king nodded his head.
+
+"Just so."  The lines showed more sharply on Jacob Welse's forehead.
+"You are working for your own stomach.  I am working for the stomachs
+of twenty thousand."
+
+"But you filled Tim McReady's thousand pounds yesterday all right."
+
+"The scale-down did not go into effect until to-day."
+
+"But why am I the one to get it in the neck hard?"
+
+"Why didn't you come yesterday, and Tim McReady to-day?"
+
+Melton's face went blank, and Jacob Welse answered his own question
+with shrugging shoulders.
+
+"That's the way it stands, Melton.  No favoritism.  If you hold me
+responsible for Tim McReady, I shall hold you responsible for not
+coming yesterday.  Better we both throw it upon Providence.  You went
+through the Forty Mile Famine. You are a white man.  A Bonanzo
+property, or a block of Bonanzo properties, does not entitle you to a
+pound more than the oldest penniless 'sour-dough' or the newest baby
+born.  Trust me.  As long as I have a pound of grub you shall not
+starve.  Stiffen up.  Shake hands.  Get a smile on your face and make
+the best of it."
+
+Still savage of spirit, though rapidly toning down, the king shook
+hands and flung out of the room.  Before the door could close on his
+heels, a loose-jointed Yankee shambled in, thrust a moccasined foot to
+the side and hooked a chair under him, and sat down.
+
+"Say," he opened up, confidentially, "people's gittin' scairt over the
+grub proposition, I guess some."
+
+"Hello, Dave.  That you?"
+
+"S'pose so.  But ez I was saying there'll be a lively stampede fer the
+Outside soon as the river freezes."
+
+"Think so?"
+
+"Unh huh."
+
+"Then I'm glad to hear it.  It's what the country needs.  Going to join
+them?"
+
+"Not in a thousand years."  Dave Harney threw his head back with smug
+complacency.  "Freighted my truck up to the mine yesterday.  Wa'n't a
+bit too soon about it, either.  But say . . .  Suthin' happened to the
+sugar.  Had it all on the last sled, an' jest where the trail turns off
+the Klondike into Bonanzo, what does that sled do but break through the
+ice!  I never seen the beat of it--the last sled of all, an' all the
+sugar!  So I jest thought I'd drop in to-day an' git a hundred pounds
+or so.  White or brown, I ain't pertickler."
+
+Jacob Welse shook his head and smiled, but Harney hitched his chair
+closer.
+
+"The clerk of yourn said he didn't know, an' ez there wa'n't no call to
+pester him, I said I'd jest drop round an' see you.  I don't care what
+it's wuth.  Make it a hundred even; that'll do me handy.
+
+"Say," he went on easily, noting the decidedly negative poise of the
+other's head.  "I've got a tolerable sweet tooth, I have.  Recollect
+the taffy I made over on Preacher Creek that time?  I declare! how time
+does fly!  That was all of six years ago if it's a day.  More'n that,
+surely.  Seven, by the Jimcracky!  But ez I was sayin', I'd ruther do
+without my plug of 'Star' than sugar.  An' about that sugar?  Got my
+dogs outside.  Better go round to the warehouse an' git it, eh?  Pretty
+good idea."
+
+But he saw the "No" shaping on Jacob Welse's lips, and hurried on
+before it could be uttered.
+
+"Now, I don't want to hog it.  Wouldn't do that fer the world.  So if
+yer short, I can put up with seventy-five--" (he studied the other's
+face), "an' I might do with fifty.  I 'preciate your position, an' I
+ain't low-down critter enough to pester--"
+
+"What's the good of spilling words, Dave?  We haven't a pound of sugar
+to spare--"
+
+"Ez I was sayin', I ain't no hog; an' seein' 's it's you, Welse, I'll
+make to scrimp along on twenty-five--"
+
+"Not an ounce!"
+
+"Not the least leetle mite?  Well, well, don't git het up.  We'll jest
+fergit I ast you fer any, an' I'll drop round some likelier time.  So
+long.  Say!"  He threw his jaw to one side and seemed to stiffen the
+muscles of his ear as he listened intently.  "That's the Laura's
+whistle.  She's startin' soon.  Goin' to see her off?  Come along."
+
+Jacob Welse pulled on his bearskin coat and mittens, and they passed
+through the outer offices into the main store.  So large was it, that
+the tenscore purchasers before the counters made no apparent crowd.
+Many were serious-faced, and more than one looked darkly at the head of
+the company as he passed.  The clerks were selling everything except
+grub, and it was grub that was in demand.  "Holding it for a rise.
+Famine prices," a red-whiskered miner sneered.  Jacob Welse heard it,
+but took no notice.  He expected to hear it many times and more
+unpleasantly ere the scare was over.
+
+On the sidewalk he stopped to glance over the public bulletins posted
+against the side of the building.  Dogs lost, found, and for sale
+occupied some space, but the rest was devoted to notices of sales of
+outfits.  The timid were already growing frightened.  Outfits of five
+hundred pounds were offering at a dollar a pound, without flour;
+others, with flour, at a dollar and a half.  Jacob Welse saw Melton
+talking with an anxious-faced newcomer, and the satisfaction displayed
+by the Bonanzo king told that he had succeeded in filling his winter's
+cache.
+
+"Why don't you smell out the sugar, Dave?" Jacob Welse asked, pointing
+to the bulletins.
+
+Dave Harney looked his reproach.  "Mebbe you think I ain't ben
+smellin'.  I've clean wore my dogs out chasin' round from Klondike City
+to the Hospital.  Can't git yer fingers on it fer love or money."
+
+They walked down the block-long sidewalk, past the warehouse doors and
+the long teams of waiting huskies curled up in wolfish comfort in the
+snow.  It was for this snow, the first permanent one of the fall, that
+the miners up-creek had waited to begin their freighting.
+
+"Curious, ain't it?" Dave hazarded suggestively, as they crossed the
+main street to the river bank.  "Mighty curious--me ownin' two
+five-hundred-foot Eldorado claims an' a fraction, wuth five millions if
+I'm wuth a cent, an' no sweetenin' fer my coffee or mush!  Why,
+gosh-dang-it! this country kin go to blazes!  I'll sell out!  I'll quit
+it cold!  I'll--I'll--go back to the States!"
+
+"Oh, no, you won't," Jacob Welse answered.  "I've heard you talk
+before.  You put in a year up Stuart River on straight meat, if I
+haven't forgotten.  And you ate salmon-belly and dogs up the Tanana, to
+say nothing of going through two famines; and you haven't turned your
+back on the country yet.  And you never will.  And you'll die here as
+sure as that's the Laura's spring being hauled aboard.  And I look
+forward confidently to the day when I shall ship you out in a
+lead-lined box and burden the San Francisco end with the trouble of
+winding up your estate.  You are a fixture, and you know it."
+
+As he talked he constantly acknowledged greetings from the passers-by.
+Those who knew him were mainly old-timers and he knew them all by name,
+though there was scarcely a newcomer to whom his face was not familiar.
+
+"I'll jest bet I'll be in Paris in 1900," the Eldorado king protested
+feebly.
+
+But Jacob Welse did not hear.  There was a jangling of gongs as
+McGregor saluted him from the pilot-house and the Laura slipped out
+from the bank.  The men on the shore filled the air with good-luck
+farewells and last advice, but the three hundred grubless ones, turning
+their backs on the golden dream, were moody and dispirited, and made
+small response.  The Laura backed out through a channel cut in the
+shore-ice, swung about in the current, and with a final blast put on
+full steam ahead.
+
+The crowd thinned away and went about its business, leaving Jacob Welse
+the centre of a group of a dozen or so.  The talk was of the famine,
+but it was the talk of men.  Even Dave Harney forgot to curse the
+country for its sugar shortage, and waxed facetious over the
+newcomers,--_chechaquos_, he called them, having recourse to the Siwash
+tongue.  In the midst of his remarks his quick eye lighted on a black
+speck floating down with the mush-ice of the river.  "Jest look at
+that!" he cried.  "A Peterborough canoe runnin' the ice!"
+
+Twisting and turning, now paddling, now shoving clear of the floating
+cakes, the two men in the canoe worked in to the rim-ice, along the
+edge of which they drifted, waiting for an opening.  Opposite the
+channel cut out by the steamer, they drove their paddles deep and
+darted into the calm dead water.  The waiting group received them with
+open arms, helping them up the bank and carrying their shell after them.
+
+In its bottom were two leather mail-pouches, a couple of blankets,
+coffee-pot and frying-pan, and a scant grub-sack.  As for the men, so
+frosted were they, and so numb with the cold, that they could hardly
+stand.  Dave Harney proposed whiskey, and was for haling them away at
+once; but one delayed long enough to shake stiff hands with Jacob Welse.
+
+"She's coming," he announced.  "Passed her boat an hour back.  It ought
+to be round the bend any minute.  I've got despatches for you, but I'll
+see you later.  Got to get something into me first."  Turning to go
+with Harney, he stopped suddenly and pointed up stream.  "There she is
+now.  Just coming out past the bluff."
+
+"Run along, boys, an' git yer whiskey," Harney admonished him and his
+mate.  "Tell 'm it's on me, double dose, an' jest excuse me not
+drinkin' with you, fer I'm goin' to stay."
+
+The Klondike was throwing a thick flow of ice, partly mush and partly
+solid, and swept the boat out towards the middle of the Yukon.  They
+could see the struggle plainly from the bank,--four men standing up and
+poling a way through the jarring cakes.  A Yukon stove aboard was
+sending up a trailing pillar of blue smoke, and, as the boat drew
+closer, they could see a woman in the stern working the long
+steering-sweep.  At sight of this there was a snap and sparkle in Jacob
+Welse's eyes.  It was the first omen, and it was good, he thought.  She
+was still a Welse; a struggler and a fighter.  The years of her culture
+had not weakened her.  Though tasting of the fruits of the first remove
+from the soil, she was not afraid of the soil; she could return to it
+gleefully and naturally.
+
+So he mused till the boat drove in, ice-rimed and battered, against the
+edge of the rim-ice.  The one white man aboard sprang: out, painter in
+hand, to slow it down and work into the channel.  But the rim-ice was
+formed of the night, and the front of it shelved off with him into the
+current.  The nose of the boat sheered out under the pressure of a
+heavy cake, so that he came up at the stern.  The woman's arm flashed
+over the side to his collar, and at the same instant, sharp and
+authoritative, her voice rang out to the Indian oarsmen to back water.
+Still holding the man's head above water, she threw her body against
+the sweep and guided the boat stern-foremost into the opening.  A few
+more strokes and it grounded at the foot of the bank.  She passed the
+collar of the chattering man to Dave Harney, who dragged him out and
+started him off on the trail of the mail-carriers.
+
+Frona stood up, her cheeks glowing from the quick work.  Jacob Welse
+hesitated.  Though he stood within reach of the gunwale, a gulf of
+three years was between.  The womanhood of twenty, added unto the girl
+of seventeen, made a sum more prodigious than he had imagined.  He did
+not know whether to bear-hug the radiant young creature or to take her
+hand and help her ashore.  But there was no apparent hitch, for she
+leaped beside him and was into his arms.  Those above looked away to a
+man till the two came up the bank hand in hand.
+
+"Gentlemen, my daughter."  There was a great pride in his face.
+
+Frona embraced them all with a comrade smile, and each man felt that
+for an instant her eyes had looked straight into his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+That Vance Corliss wanted to see more of the girl he had divided
+blankets with, goes with the saying.  He had not been wise enough to
+lug a camera into the country, but none the less, by a yet subtler
+process, a sun-picture had been recorded somewhere on his cerebral
+tissues.  In the flash of an instant it had been done.  A wave message
+of light and color, a molecular agitation and integration, a certain
+minute though definite corrugation in a brain recess,--and there it
+was, a picture complete!  The blazing sunlight on the beetling black; a
+slender gray form, radiant, starting forward to the vision from the
+marge where light and darkness met; a fresh young morning smile
+wreathed in a flame of burning gold.
+
+It was a picture he looked at often, and the more he looked the greater
+was his desire, to see Frona Welse again.  This event he anticipated
+with a thrill, with the exultancy over change which is common of all
+life.  She was something new, a fresh type, a woman unrelated to all
+women he had met.  Out of the fascinating unknown a pair of hazel eyes
+smiled into his, and a hand, soft of touch and strong of grip, beckoned
+him.  And there was an allurement about it which was as the allurement
+of sin.
+
+Not that Vance Corliss was anybody's fool, nor that his had been an
+anchorite's existence; but that his upbringing, rather, had given his
+life a certain puritanical bent.  Awakening intelligence and broader
+knowledge had weakened the early influence of an austere mother, but
+had not wholly eradicated it.  It was there, deep down, very shadowy,
+but still a part of him.  He could not get away from it.  It distorted,
+ever so slightly, his concepts of things.  It gave a squint to his
+perceptions, and very often, when the sex feminine was concerned,
+determined his classifications.  He prided himself on his largeness
+when he granted that there were three kinds of women.  His mother had
+only admitted two.  But he had outgrown her.  It was incontestable that
+there were three kinds,--the good, the bad, and the partly good and
+partly bad.  That the last usually went bad, he believed firmly.  In
+its very nature such a condition could not be permanent.  It was the
+intermediary stage, marking the passage from high to low, from best to
+worst.
+
+All of which might have been true, even as he saw it; but with
+definitions for premises, conclusions cannot fail to be dogmatic.  What
+was good and bad?  There it was.  That was where his mother whispered
+with dead lips to him.  Nor alone his mother, but divers conventional
+generations, even back to the sturdy ancestor who first uplifted from
+the soil and looked down.  For Vance Corliss was many times removed
+from the red earth, and, though he did not know it, there was a clamor
+within him for a return lest he perish.
+
+Not that he pigeon-holed Frona according to his inherited definitions.
+He refused to classify her at all.  He did not dare.  He preferred to
+pass judgment later, when he had gathered more data.  And there was the
+allurement, the gathering of the data; the great critical point where
+purity reaches dreamy hands towards pitch and refuses to call it
+pitch--till defiled.  No; Vance Corliss was not a cad.  And since
+purity is merely a relative term, he was not pure.  That there was no
+pitch under his nails was not because he had manicured diligently, but
+because it had not been his luck to run across any pitch.  He was not
+good because he chose to be, because evil was repellant; but because he
+had not had opportunity to become evil.  But from this, on the other
+hand, it is not to be argued that he would have gone bad had he had a
+chance.
+
+He was a product of the sheltered life.  All his days had been lived in
+a sanitary dwelling; the plumbing was excellent.  The air he had
+breathed had been mostly ozone artificially manufactured.  He had been
+sun-bathed in balmy weather, and brought in out of the wet when it
+rained.  And when he reached the age of choice he had been too fully
+occupied to deviate from the straight path, along which his mother had
+taught him to creep and toddle, and along which he now proceeded to
+walk upright, without thought of what lay on either side.
+
+Vitality cannot be used over again.  If it be expended on one thing,
+there is none left for the other thing.  And so with Vance Corliss.
+Scholarly lucubrations and healthy exercises during his college days
+had consumed all the energy his normal digestion extracted from a
+wholesome omnivorous diet.  When he did discover a bit of surplus
+energy, he worked it off in the society of his mother and of the
+conventional minds and prim teas she surrounded herself with.  Result:
+A very nice young man, of whom no maid's mother need ever be in
+trepidation; a very strong young man, whose substance had not been
+wasted in riotous living; a very learned young man, with a Freiberg
+mining engineer's diploma and a B.A. sheepskin from Yale; and, lastly,
+a very self-centred, self-possessed young man.
+
+Now his greatest virtue lay in this: he had not become hardened in the
+mould baked by his several forbears and into which he had been pressed
+by his mother's hands.  Some atavism had been at work in the making of
+him, and he had reverted to that ancestor who sturdily uplifted.  But
+so far this portion of his heritage had lain dormant.  He had simply
+remained adjusted to a stable environment.  There had been no call upon
+the adaptability which was his.  But whensoever the call came, being so
+constituted, it was manifest that he should adapt, should adjust
+himself to the unwonted pressure of new conditions.  The maxim of the
+rolling stone may be all true; but notwithstanding, in the scheme of
+life, the inability to become fixed is an excellence par excellence.
+Though he did not know it, this inability was Vance Corliss's most
+splendid possession.
+
+But to return.  He looked forward with great sober glee to meeting
+Frona Welse, and in the meanwhile consulted often the sun-picture he
+carried of her.  Though he went over the Pass and down the lakes and
+river with a push of money behind him (London syndicates are never
+niggardly in such matters).  Frona beat him into Dawson by a fortnight.
+While on his part money in the end overcame obstacles, on hers the name
+of Welse was a talisman greater than treasure.  After his arrival, a
+couple of weeks were consumed in buying a cabin, presenting his letters
+of introduction, and settling down.  But all things come in the fulness
+of time, and so, one night after the river closed, he pointed his
+moccasins in the direction of Jacob Welse's house.  Mrs. Schoville, the
+Gold Commissioner's wife, gave him the honor of her company.
+
+
+Corliss wanted to rub his eyes.  Steam-heating apparatus in the
+Klondike!  But the next instant he had passed out of the hall through
+the heavy portieres and stood inside the drawing-room.  And it was a
+drawing-room.  His moose-hide moccasins sank luxuriantly into the deep
+carpet, and his eyes were caught by a Turner sunrise on the opposite
+wall.  And there were other paintings and things in bronze.  Two Dutch
+fireplaces were roaring full with huge back-logs of spruce.  There was
+a piano; and somebody was singing.  Frona sprang from the stool and
+came forward, greeting him with both hands.  He had thought his
+sun-picture perfect, but this fire-picture, this young creature with
+the flush and warmth of ringing life, quite eclipsed it.  It was a
+whirling moment, as he held her two hands in his, one of those moments
+when an incomprehensible orgasm quickens the blood and dizzies the
+brain.  Though the first syllables came to him faintly, Mrs.
+Schoville's voice brought him back to himself.
+
+"Oh!" she cried.  "You know him!"
+
+And Frona answered, "Yes, we met on the Dyea Trail; and those who meet
+on the Dyea Trail can never forget."
+
+"How romantic!"
+
+The Gold Commissioner's wife clapped her hands.  Though fat and forty,
+and phlegmatic of temperament, between exclamations and hand-clappings
+her waking existence was mostly explosive.  Her husband secretly
+averred that did God Himself deign to meet her face to face, she would
+smite together her chubby hands and cry out, "How romantic!"
+
+"How did it happen?" she continued.  "He didn't rescue you over a
+cliff, or that sort of thing, did he?  Do say that he did!  And you
+never said a word about it, Mr. Corliss.  Do tell me.  I'm just dying
+to know!"
+
+"Oh, nothing like that," he hastened to answer.  "Nothing much.  I,
+that is we--"
+
+He felt a sinking as Frona interrupted.  There was no telling what this
+remarkable girl might say.
+
+"He gave me of his hospitality, that was all," she said.  "And I can
+vouch for his fried potatoes; while for his coffee, it is
+excellent--when one is very hungry."
+
+"Ingrate!" he managed to articulate, and thereby to gain a smile, ere
+he was introduced to a cleanly built lieutenant of the Mounted Police,
+who stood by the fireplace discussing the grub proposition with a
+dapper little man very much out of place in a white shirt and stiff
+collar.
+
+Thanks to the particular niche in society into which he happened to be
+born, Corliss drifted about easily from group to group, and was much
+envied therefore by Del Bishop, who sat stiffly in the first chair he
+had dropped into, and who was waiting patiently for the first person to
+take leave that he might know how to compass the manoeuvre.  In his
+mind's eye he had figured most of it out, knew just how many steps
+required to carry him to the door, was certain he would have to say
+good-by to Frona, but did not know whether or not he was supposed to
+shake hands all around.  He had just dropped in to see Frona and say
+"Howdee," as he expressed it, and had unwittingly found himself in
+company.
+
+Corliss, having terminated a buzz with a Miss Mortimer on the decadence
+of the French symbolists, encountered Del Bishop.  But the pocket-miner
+remembered him at once from the one glimpse he had caught of Corliss
+standing by his tent-door in Happy Camp.  Was almighty obliged to him
+for his night's hospitality to Miss Frona, seein' as he'd ben
+side-tracked down the line; that any kindness to her was a kindness to
+him; and that he'd remember it, by God, as long as he had a corner of a
+blanket to pull over him.  Hoped it hadn't put him out.  Miss Frona'd
+said that bedding was scarce, but it wasn't a cold night (more blowy
+than crisp), so he reckoned there couldn't 'a' ben much shiverin'.  All
+of which struck Corliss as perilous, and he broke away at the first
+opportunity, leaving the pocket-miner yearning for the door.
+
+But Dave Harney, who had not come by mistake, avoided gluing himself to
+the first chair.  Being an Eldorado king, he had felt it incumbent to
+assume the position in society to which his numerous millions entitled
+him; and though unused all his days to social amenities other than the
+out-hanging latch-string and the general pot, he had succeeded to his
+own satisfaction as a knight of the carpet.  Quick to take a cue, he
+circulated with an aplomb which his striking garments and long
+shambling gait only heightened, and talked choppy and disconnected
+fragments with whomsoever he ran up against.  The Miss Mortimer, who
+spoke Parisian French, took him aback with her symbolists; but he
+evened matters up with a goodly measure of the bastard lingo of the
+Canadian _voyageurs_, and left her gasping and meditating over a
+proposition to sell him twenty-five pounds of sugar, white or brown.
+But she was not unduly favored, for with everybody he adroitly turned
+the conversation to grub, and then led up to the eternal proposition.
+"Sugar or bust," he would conclude gayly each time and wander on to the
+next.
+
+But he put the capstone on his social success by asking Frona to sing
+the touching ditty, "I Left My Happy Home for You."  This was something
+beyond her, though she had him hum over the opening bars so that she
+could furnish the accompaniment.  His voice was more strenuous than
+sweet, and Del Bishop, discovering himself at last, joined in raucously
+on the choruses.  This made him feel so much better that he
+disconnected himself from the chair, and when he finally got home he
+kicked up his sleepy tent-mate to tell him about the high time he'd had
+over at the Welse's.  Mrs. Schoville tittered and thought it all so
+unique, and she thought it so unique several times more when the
+lieutenant of Mounted Police and a couple of compatriots roared "Rule
+Britannia" and "God Save the Queen," and the Americans responded with
+"My Country, 'Tis of Thee" and "John Brown."  Then big Alec Beaubien,
+the Circle City king, demanded the "Marseillaise," and the company
+broke up chanting "Die Wacht am Rhein" to the frosty night.
+
+"Don't come on these nights," Frona whispered to Corliss at parting.
+"We haven't spoken three words, and I know we shall be good friends.
+Did Dave Harney succeed in getting any sugar out of you?"
+
+They mingled their laughter, and Corliss went home under the aurora
+borealis, striving to reduce his impressions to some kind of order.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"And why should I not be proud of my race?"
+
+Frona's cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkling.  They had both been
+harking back to childhood, and she had been telling Corliss of her
+mother, whom she faintly remembered.  Fair and flaxen-haired, typically
+Saxon, was the likeness she had drawn, filled out largely with
+knowledge gained from her father and from old Andy of the Dyea Post.
+The discussion had then turned upon the race in general, and Frona had
+said things in the heat of enthusiasm which affected the more
+conservative mind of Corliss as dangerous and not solidly based on
+fact.  He deemed himself too large for race egotism and insular
+prejudice, and had seen fit to laugh at her immature convictions.
+
+"It's a common characteristic of all peoples," he proceeded, "to
+consider themselves superior races,--a naive, natural egoism, very
+healthy and very good, but none the less manifestly untrue.  The Jews
+conceived themselves to be God's chosen people, and they still so
+conceive themselves--"
+
+"And because of it they have left a deep mark down the page of
+history," she interrupted.
+
+"But time has not proved the stability of their conceptions.  And you
+must also view the other side.  A superior people must look upon all
+others as inferior peoples.  This comes home to you.  To be a Roman
+were greater than to be a king, and when the Romans rubbed against your
+savage ancestors in the German forests, they elevated their brows and
+said, 'An inferior people, barbarians.'"
+
+"But we are here, now.  We are, and the Romans are not.  The test is
+time.  So far we have stood the test; the signs are favorable that we
+shall continue to stand it.  We are the best fitted!"
+
+"Egotism."
+
+"But wait.  Put it to the test."
+
+As she spoke her hand flew out impulsively to his.  At the touch his
+heart pulsed upward, there was a rush Of blood and a tightening across
+the temples.  Ridiculous, but delightful, he thought.  At this rate he
+could argue with her the night through.
+
+"The test," she repeated, withdrawing her hand without embarrassment.
+"We are a race of doers and fighters, of globe-encirclers and
+zone-conquerors.  We toil and struggle, and stand by the toil and
+struggle no matter how hopeless it may be.  While we are persistent and
+resistant, we are so made that we fit ourselves to the most diverse
+conditions.  Will the Indian, the Negro, or the Mongol ever conquer the
+Teuton?  Surely not!  The Indian has persistence without variability;
+if he does not modify he dies, if he does try to modify he dies anyway.
+The Negro has adaptability, but he is servile and must be led.  As for
+the Chinese, they are permanent.  All that the other races are not, the
+Anglo-Saxon, or Teuton if you please, is.  All that the other races
+have not, the Teuton has.  What race is to rise up and overwhelm us?"
+
+"Ah, you forget the Slav," Corliss suggested slyly.
+
+"The Slav!"  Her face fell.  "True, the Slav!  The only stripling in
+this world of young men and gray-beards!  But he is still in the
+future, and in the future the decision rests.  In the mean time we
+prepare.  If may be we shall have such a start that we shall prevent
+him growing.  You know, because he was better skilled in chemistry,
+knew how to manufacture gunpowder, that the Spaniard destroyed the
+Aztec.  May not we, who are possessing ourselves of the world and its
+resources, and gathering to ourselves all its knowledge, may not we nip
+the Slav ere he grows a thatch to his lip?"
+
+Vance Corliss shook his head non-committally, and laughed.
+
+"Oh!  I know I become absurd and grow over-warm!" she exclaimed.  "But
+after all, one reason that we are the salt of the earth is because we
+have the courage to say so."
+
+"And I am sure your warmth spreads," he responded.  "See, I'm beginning
+to glow myself.  We are not God's, but Nature's chosen people, we
+Angles, and Saxons, and Normans, and Vikings, and the earth is our
+heritage.  Let us arise and go forth!"
+
+"Now you are laughing at me, and, besides, we have already gone forth.
+Why have you fared into the north, if not to lay hands on the race
+legacy?"
+
+
+She turned her head at the sound of approaching footsteps, and cried
+for greeting, "I appeal to you, Captain Alexander!  I summon you to
+bear witness!"
+
+The captain of police smiled in his sternly mirthful fashion as he
+shook hands with Frona and Corliss.  "Bear witness?" he questioned.
+"Ah, yes!
+
+  "'Bear witness, O my comrades, what a hard-bit gang were we,--
+  The servants of the sweep-head, but the masters of the sea!'"
+
+He quoted the verse with a savage solemnity exulting through his deep
+voice.  This, and the appositeness of it, quite carried Frona away, and
+she had both his hands in hers on the instant.  Corliss was aware of an
+inward wince at the action.  It was uncomfortable.  He did not like to
+see her so promiscuous with those warm, strong hands of hers.  Did she
+so favor all men who delighted her by word or deed?  He did not mind
+her fingers closing round his, but somehow it seemed wanton when shared
+with the next comer.  By the time he had thought thus far, Frona had
+explained the topic under discussion, and Captain Alexander was
+testifying.
+
+"I don't know much about your Slav and other kin, except that they are
+good workers and strong; but I do know that the white man is the
+greatest and best breed in the world.  Take the Indian, for instance.
+The white man comes along and beats him at all his games, outworks him,
+out-roughs him, out-fishes him, out-hunts him.  As far back as their
+myths go, the Alaskan Indians have packed on their backs.  But the
+gold-rushers, as soon as they had learned the tricks of the trade,
+packed greater loads and packed them farther than did the Indians.
+Why, last May, the Queen's birthday, we had sports on the river.  In
+the one, two, three, four, and five men canoe races we beat the Indians
+right and left.  Yet they had been born to the paddle, and most of us
+had never seen a canoe until man-grown."
+
+"But why is it?" Corliss queried.
+
+"I do not know why.  I only know that it is.  I simply bear witness.  I
+do know that we do what they cannot do, and what they can do, we do
+better."
+
+Frona nodded her head triumphantly at Corliss.  "Come, acknowledge your
+defeat, so that we may go in to dinner.  Defeat for the time being, at
+least.  The concrete facts of paddles and pack-straps quite overcome
+your dogmatics.  Ah, I thought so.  More time?  All the time in the
+world.  But let us go in.  We'll see what my father thinks of it,--and
+Mr. Kellar.  A symposium on Anglo-Saxon supremacy!"
+
+
+Frost and enervation are mutually repellant.  The Northland gives a
+keenness and zest to the blood which cannot be obtained in warmer
+climes.  Naturally so, then, the friendship which sprang up between
+Corliss and Frona was anything but languid.  They met often under her
+father's roof-tree, and went many places together.  Each found a
+pleasurable attraction in the other, and a satisfaction which the
+things they were not in accord with could not mar.  Frona liked the man
+because he was a man.  In her wildest flights she could never imagine
+linking herself with any man, no matter how exalted spiritually, who
+was not a man physically.  It was a delight to her and a joy to look
+upon the strong males of her kind, with bodies comely in the sight of
+God and muscles swelling with the promise of deeds and work.  Man, to
+her, was preeminently a fighter.  She believed in natural selection and
+in sexual selection, and was certain that if man had thereby become
+possessed of faculties and functions, they were for him to use and
+could but tend to his good.  And likewise with instincts.  If she felt
+drawn to any person or thing, it was good for her to be so drawn, good
+for herself.  If she felt impelled to joy in a well-built frame and
+well-shaped muscle, why should she restrain?  Why should she not love
+the body, and without shame?  The history of the race, and of all
+races, sealed her choice with approval.  Down all time, the weak and
+effeminate males had vanished from the world-stage.   Only the strong
+could inherit the earth.  She had been born of the strong, and she
+chose to cast her lot with the strong.
+
+Yet of all creatures, she was the last to be deaf and blind to the
+things of the spirit.  But the things of the spirit she demanded should
+be likewise strong.  No halting, no stuttered utterance, tremulous
+waiting, minor wailing!  The mind and the soul must be as quick and
+definite and certain as the body.  Nor was the spirit made alone for
+immortal dreaming.  Like the flesh, it must strive and toil.  It must
+be workaday as well as idle day.  She could understand a weakling
+singing sweetly and even greatly, and in so far she could love him for
+his sweetness and greatness; but her love would have fuller measure
+were he strong of body as well.  She believed she was just.  She gave
+the flesh its due and the spirit its due; but she had, over and above,
+her own choice, her own individual ideal.  She liked to see the two go
+hand in hand.  Prophecy and dyspepsia did not affect her as a
+felicitous admixture.  A splendid savage and a weak-kneed poet!  She
+could admire the one for his brawn and the other for his song; but she
+would prefer that they had been made one in the beginning.
+
+As to Vance Corliss.  First, and most necessary of all, there was that
+physiological affinity between them that made the touch of his hand a
+pleasure to her.  Though souls may rush together, if body cannot endure
+body, happiness is reared on sand and the structure will be ever
+unstable and tottery.  Next, Corliss had the physical potency of the
+hero without the grossness of the brute.  His muscular development was
+more qualitative than quantitative, and it is the qualitative
+development which gives rise to beauty of form.  A giant need not be
+proportioned in the mould; nor a thew be symmetrical to be massive.
+
+And finally,--none the less necessary but still finally,--Vance Corliss
+was neither spiritually dead nor decadent.  He affected her as fresh
+and wholesome and strong, as reared above the soil but not scorning the
+soil.  Of course, none of this she reasoned out otherwise than by
+subconscious processes.  Her conclusions were feelings, not thoughts.
+
+Though they quarrelled and disagreed on innumerable things, deep down,
+underlying all, there was a permanent unity.  She liked him for a
+certain stern soberness that was his, and for his saving grace of
+humor.  Seriousness and banter were not incompatible.  She liked him
+for his gallantry, made to work with and not for display.  She liked
+the spirit of his offer at Happy Camp, when he proposed giving her an
+Indian guide and passage-money back to the United States.  He could
+_do_ as well as talk.  She liked him for his outlook, for his innate
+liberality, which she felt to be there, somehow, no matter that often
+he was narrow of expression.  She liked him for his mind.  Though
+somewhat academic, somewhat tainted with latter-day scholasticism, it
+was still a mind which permitted him to be classed with the
+"Intellectuals."  He was capable of divorcing sentiment and emotion
+from reason.  Granted that he included all the factors, he could not go
+wrong.  And here was where she found chief fault with him,--his
+narrowness which precluded all the factors; his narrowness which gave
+the lie to the breadth she knew was really his.  But she was aware that
+it was not an irremediable defect, and that the new life he was leading
+was very apt to rectify it.  He was filled with culture; what he needed
+was a few more of life's facts.
+
+And she liked him for himself, which is quite different from liking the
+parts which went to compose him.  For it is no miracle for two things,
+added together, to produce not only the sum of themselves, but a third
+thing which is not to be found in either of them.  So with him.  She
+liked him for himself, for that something which refused to stand out as
+a part, or a sum of parts; for that something which is the corner-stone
+of Faith and which has ever baffled Philosophy and Science.  And
+further, to like, with Frona Welse, did not mean to love.
+
+First, and above all, Vance Corliss was drawn to Frona Welse because of
+the clamor within him for a return to the soil.  In him the elements
+were so mixed that it was impossible for women many times removed to
+find favor in his eyes.  Such he had met constantly, but not one had
+ever drawn from him a superfluous heart-beat.  Though there had been in
+him a growing instinctive knowledge of lack of unity,--the lack of
+unity which must precede, always, the love of man and woman,--not one
+of the daughters of Eve he had met had flashed irresistibly in to fill
+the void.  Elective affinity, sexual affinity, or whatsoever the
+intangible essence known as love is, had never been manifest.  When he
+met Frona it had at once sprung, full-fledged, into existence.  But he
+quite misunderstood it, took it for a mere attraction towards the new
+and unaccustomed.
+
+Many men, possessed of birth and breeding, have yielded to this clamor
+for return.  And giving the apparent lie to their own sanity and moral
+stability, many such men have married peasant girls or barmaids,  And
+those to whom evil apportioned itself have been prone to distrust the
+impulse they obeyed, forgetting that nature makes or mars the
+individual for the sake, always, of the type.  For in every such case
+of return, the impulse was sound,--only that time and space interfered,
+and propinquity determined whether the object of choice should be
+bar-maid or peasant girl.
+
+
+Happily for Vance Corliss, time and space were propitious, and in Frona
+he found the culture he could not do without, and the clean sharp tang
+of the earth he needed.  In so far as her education and culture went,
+she was an astonishment.  He had met the scientifically smattered young
+woman before, but Frona had something more than smattering.  Further,
+she gave new life to old facts, and her interpretations of common
+things were coherent and vigorous and new.  Though his acquired
+conservatism was alarmed and cried danger, he could not remain cold to
+the charm of her philosophizing, while her scholarly attainments were
+fully redeemed by her enthusiasm.  Though he could not agree with much
+that she passionately held, he yet recognized that the passion of
+sincerity and enthusiasm was good.
+
+But her chief fault, in his eyes, was her unconventionality.  Woman was
+something so inexpressibly sacred to him, that he could not bear to see
+any good woman venturing where the footing was precarious.  Whatever
+good woman thus ventured, overstepping the metes and bounds of sex and
+status, he deemed did so of wantonness.  And wantonness of such order
+was akin to--well, he could not say it when thinking of Frona, though
+she hurt him often by her unwise acts.  However, he only felt such
+hurts when away from her.  When with her, looking into her eyes which
+always looked back, or at greeting and parting pressing her hand which
+always pressed honestly, it seemed certain that there was in her
+nothing but goodness and truth.
+
+And then he liked her in many different ways for many different things.
+For her impulses, and for her passions which were always elevated.  And
+already, from breathing the Northland air, he had come to like her for
+that comradeship which at first had shocked him.  There were other
+acquired likings, her lack of prudishness, for instance, which he awoke
+one day to find that he had previously confounded with lack of modesty.
+And it was only the day before that day that he drifted, before he
+thought, into a discussion with her of "Camille."  She had seen
+Bernhardt, and dwelt lovingly on the recollection.  He went home
+afterwards, a dull pain gnawing at his heart, striving to reconcile
+Frona with the ideal impressed upon him by his mother that innocence
+was another term for ignorance.  Notwithstanding, by the following day
+he had worked it out and loosened another finger of the maternal grip.
+
+He liked the flame of her hair in the sunshine, the glint of its gold
+by the firelight, and the waywardness of it and the glory.  He liked
+her neat-shod feet and the gray-gaitered calves,--alas, now hidden in
+long-skirted Dawson.  He liked her for the strength of her slenderness;
+and to walk with her, swinging her step and stride to his, or to merely
+watch her come across a room or down the street, was a delight.  Life
+and the joy of life romped through her blood, abstemiously filling out
+and rounding off each shapely muscle and soft curve.  And he liked it
+all.  Especially he liked the swell of her forearm, which rose firm and
+strong and tantalizing and sought shelter all too quickly under the
+loose-flowing sleeve.
+
+The co-ordination of physical with spiritual beauty is very strong in
+normal men, and so it was with Vance Corliss.  That he liked the one
+was no reason that he failed to appreciate the other.  He liked Frona
+for both, and for herself as well.  And to like, with him, though he
+did not know it, was to love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Vance Corliss proceeded at a fair rate to adapt himself to the
+Northland life, and he found that many adjustments came easy.  While
+his own tongue was alien to the brimstone of the Lord, he became quite
+used to strong language on the part of other men, even in the most
+genial conversation.  Carthey, a little Texan who went to work for him
+for a while, opened or closed every second sentence, on an average,
+with the mild expletive, "By damn!"  It was also his invariable way of
+expressing surprise, disappointment, consternation, or all the rest of
+the tribe of sudden emotions.  By pitch and stress and intonation, the
+protean oath was made to perform every function of ordinary speech.  At
+first it was a constant source of irritation and disgust to Corliss,
+but erelong he grew not only to tolerate it, but to like it, and to
+wait for it eagerly.  Once, Carthey's wheel-dog lost an ear in a hasty
+contention with a dog of the Hudson Bay, and when the young fellow bent
+over the animal and discovered the loss, the blended endearment and
+pathos of the "by damn" which fell from his lips was a relation to
+Corliss.  All was not evil out of Nazareth, he concluded sagely, and,
+like Jacob Welse of old, revised his philosophy of life accordingly.
+
+Again, there were two sides to the social life of Dawson.  Up at the
+Barracks, at the Welse's, and a few other places, all men of standing
+were welcomed and made comfortable by the womenkind of like standing.
+There were teas, and dinners, and dances, and socials for charity, and
+the usual run of things; all of which, however, failed to wholly
+satisfy the men.  Down in the town there was a totally different though
+equally popular other side.  As the country was too young for
+club-life, the masculine portion of the community expressed its
+masculinity by herding together in the saloons,--the ministers and
+missionaries being the only exceptions to this mode of expression.
+Business appointments and deals were made and consummated in the
+saloons, enterprises projected, shop talked, the latest news discussed,
+and a general good fellowship maintained.  There all life rubbed
+shoulders, and kings and dog-drivers, old-timers and chechaquos, met on
+a common level.  And it so happened, probably because saw-mills and
+house-space were scarce, that the saloons accommodated the gambling
+tables and the polished dance-house floors.  And here, because he needs
+must bend to custom, Corliss's adaptation went on rapidly.  And as
+Carthey, who appreciated him, soliloquized, "The best of it is he likes
+it damn well, by damn!"
+
+But any adjustment must have its painful periods, and while Corliss's
+general change went on smoothly, in the particular case of Frona it was
+different.  She had a code of her own, quite unlike that of the
+community, and perhaps believed woman might do things at which even the
+saloon-inhabiting males would be shocked.  And because of this, she and
+Corliss had their first disagreeable disagreement.
+
+Frona loved to run with the dogs through the biting frost, cheeks
+tingling, blood bounding, body thrust forward, and limbs rising and
+falling ceaselessly to the pace.  And one November day, with the first
+cold snap on and the spirit thermometer frigidly marking sixty-five
+below, she got out the sled, harnessed her team of huskies, and flew
+down the river trail.  As soon as she cleared the town she was off and
+running.  And in such manner, running and riding by turns, she swept
+through the Indian village below the bluff's, made an eight-mile circle
+up Moosehide Creek and back, crossed the river on the ice, and several
+hours later came flying up the west bank of the Yukon opposite the
+town.  She was aiming to tap and return by the trail for the wood-sleds
+which crossed thereabout, but a mile away from it she ran into the soft
+snow and brought the winded dogs to a walk.
+
+Along the rim of the river and under the frown of the overhanging
+cliffs, she directed the path she was breaking.  Here and there she
+made detours to avoid the out-jutting talus, and at other times
+followed the ice in against the precipitous walls and hugged them
+closely around the abrupt bends.  And so, at the head of her huskies,
+she came suddenly upon a woman sitting in the snow and gazing across
+the river at smoke-canopied Dawson.  She had been crying, and this was
+sufficient to prevent Frona's scrutiny from wandering farther.  A tear,
+turned to a globule of ice, rested on her cheek, and her eyes were dim
+and moist; there was an-expression of hopeless, fathomless woe.
+
+"Oh!" Frona cried, stopping the dogs and coming up to her.  "You are
+hurt?  Can I help you?" she queried, though the stranger shook her
+head.  "But you mustn't sit there.  It is nearly seventy below, and
+you'll freeze in a few minutes.  Your cheeks are bitten already."  She
+rubbed the afflicted parts vigorously with a mitten of snow, and then
+looked down on the warm returning glow.
+
+"I beg pardon."  The woman rose somewhat stiffly to her feet.  "And I
+thank you, but I am perfectly warm, you see" (settling the fur cape
+more closely about her with a snuggling movement), "and I had just sat
+down for the moment."
+
+Frona noted that she was very beautiful, and her woman's eye roved over
+and took in the splendid furs, the make of the gown, and the bead-work
+of the moccasins which peeped from beneath.  And in view of all this,
+and of the fact that the face was unfamiliar, she felt an instinctive
+desire to shrink back.
+
+"And I haven't hurt myself," the woman went on.  "Just a mood, that was
+all, looking out over the dreary endless white."
+
+"Yes," Frona replied, mastering herself; "I can understand.  There must
+be much of sadness in such a landscape, only it never comes that way to
+me.  The sombreness and the sternness of it appeal to me, but not the
+sadness."
+
+"And that is because the lines of our lives have been laid in different
+places," the other ventured, reflectively.  "It is not what the
+landscape is, but what we are.  If we were not, the landscape would
+remain, but without human significance.  That is what we invest it with.
+
+  "'Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
+  From outward things, whate'er you may believe.'"
+
+Frona's eyes brightened, and she went on to complete the passage:
+
+  "'There is an inmost centre in us all,
+  Where truth abides in fulness; and around.'
+
+"And--and--how does it go?  I have forgotten."
+
+  "'Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in--'"
+
+The woman ceased abruptly, her voice trilling off into silvery laughter
+with a certain bitter reckless ring to it which made Frona inwardly
+shiver.  She moved as though to go back to her dogs, but the woman's
+hand went out in a familiar gesture,--twin to Frona's own,--which went
+at once to Frona's heart.
+
+"Stay a moment," she said, with an undertone of pleading in the words,
+"and talk with me.  It is long since I have met a woman"--she paused
+while her tongue wandered for the word--"who could quote 'Paracelsus.'
+You are,--I know you, you see,--you are Jacob Welse's daughter, Frona
+Welse, I believe."
+
+Frona nodded her identity, hesitated, and looked at the woman with
+secret intentness.  She was conscious of a great and pardonable
+curiosity, of a frank out-reaching for fuller knowledge.  This
+creature, so like, so different; old as the oldest race, and young as
+the last rose-tinted babe; flung far as the farthermost fires of men,
+and eternal as humanity itself--where were they unlike, this woman and
+she?  Her five senses told her not; by every law of life they were no;
+only, only by the fast-drawn lines of social caste and social wisdom
+were they not the same.  So she thought, even as for one searching
+moment she studied the other's face.  And in the situation she found an
+uplifting awfulness, such as comes when the veil is thrust aside and
+one gazes on the mysteriousness of Deity.  She remembered: "Her feet
+take hold of hell; her house is the way to the grave, going down to the
+chamber of death," and in the same instant strong upon her was the
+vision of the familiar gesture with which the woman's hand had gone out
+in mute appeal, and she looked aside, out over the dreary endless
+white, and for her, too, the day became filled with sadness.
+
+She gave an involuntary, half-nervous shiver, though she said,
+naturally enough, "Come, let us walk on and get the blood moving again.
+I had no idea it was so cold till I stood still."  She turned to the
+dogs: "Mush-on!  King!  You Sandy!  Mush!"  And back again to the
+woman, "I am quite chilled, and as for you, you must be--"
+
+"Quite warm, of course.  You have been running and your clothes are wet
+against you, while I have kept up the needful circulation and no more.
+I saw you when you leaped off the sled below the hospital and vanished
+down the river like a Diana of the snows.  How I envied you!  You must
+enjoy it."
+
+"Oh, I do," Frona answered, simply.  "I was raised with the dogs."
+
+"It savors of the Greek."
+
+Frona did not reply, and they walked on in silence.  Yet Frona wished,
+though she dared not dare, that she could give her tongue free rein,
+and from out of the other's bitter knowledge, for her own soul's sake
+and sanity, draw the pregnant human generalizations which she must
+possess.  And over her welled a wave of pity and distress; and she felt
+a discomfort, for she knew not what to say or how to voice her heart.
+And when the other's speech broke forth, she hailed it with a great
+relief.
+
+"Tell me," the woman demanded, half-eagerly, half-masterly, "tell me
+about yourself.  You are new to the Inside.  Where were you before you
+came in?  Tell me."
+
+So the difficulty was solved, in a way, and Frona talked on about
+herself, with a successfully feigned girlhood innocence, as though she
+did not appreciate the other or understand her ill-concealed yearning
+for that which she might not have, but which was Frona's.
+
+"There is the trail you are trying to connect with."  They had rounded
+the last of the cliffs, and Frona's companion pointed ahead to where
+the walls receded and wrinkled to a gorge, out of which the sleds drew
+the firewood across the river to town.  "I shall leave you there," she
+concluded.
+
+"But are you not going back to Dawson?" Frona queried.  "It is growing
+late, and you had better not linger."
+
+"No . . .  I . . ."
+
+Her painful hesitancy brought Frona to a realization of her own
+thoughtlessness.  But she had made the step, and she knew she could not
+retrace it.
+
+"We will go back together," she said, bravely.  And in candid
+all-knowledge of the other, "I do not mind."
+
+Then it was that the blood surged into the woman's cold face, and her
+hand went out to the girl in the old, old way.
+
+"No, no, I beg of you," she stammered.  "I beg of you . . .  I . . .  I
+prefer to continue my walk a little farther.  See!  Some one is coming
+now!"
+
+By this time they had reached the wood-trail, and Frona's face was
+flaming as the other's had flamed.  A light sled, dogs a-lope and
+swinging down out of the gorge, was just upon them.  A man was running
+with the team, and he waved his hand to the two women.
+
+"Vance!" Frona exclaimed, as he threw his lead-dogs in the snow and
+brought the sled to a halt.  "What are you doing over here?  Is the
+syndicate bent upon cornering the firewood also?"
+
+"No.  We're not so bad as that."  His face was full of smiling
+happiness at the meeting as he shook hands with her.  "But Carthey is
+leaving me,--going prospecting somewhere around the North Pole, I
+believe,--and I came across to look up Del Bishop, if he'll serve."
+
+He turned his head to glance expectantly at her companion, and she saw
+the smile go out of his face and anger come in.  Frona was helplessly
+aware that she had no grip over the situation, and, though a rebellion
+at the cruelty and injustice of it was smouldering somewhere deep down,
+she could only watch the swift culmination of the little tragedy.  The
+woman met his gaze with a half-shrinking, as from an impending blow,
+and with a softness of expression which entreated pity.  But he
+regarded her long and coldly, then deliberately turned his back.  As he
+did this, Frona noted her face go tired and gray, and the hardness and
+recklessness of her laughter were there painted in harsh tones, and a
+bitter devil rose up and lurked in her eyes.  It was evident that the
+same bitter devil rushed hotly to her tongue.  But it chanced just then
+that she glanced at Frona, and all expression was brushed from her face
+save the infinite tiredness.  She smiled wistfully at the girl, and
+without a word turned and went down the trail.
+
+And without a word Frona sprang upon her sled and was off.  The way was
+wide, and Corliss swung in his dogs abreast of hers.  The smouldering
+rebellion flared up, and she seemed to gather to herself some of the
+woman's recklessness.
+
+"You brute!"
+
+The words left her mouth, sharp, clear-cut, breaking the silence like
+the lash of a whip.  The unexpectedness of it, and the savagery, took
+Corliss aback.  He did not know what to do or say.
+
+"Oh, you coward!  You coward!"
+
+"Frona!  Listen to me--"
+
+But she cut him off.  "No.  Do not speak.  You can have nothing to say.
+You have behaved abominably.  I am disappointed in you.  It is
+horrible! horrible!"
+
+"Yes, it was horrible,--horrible that she should walk with you, have
+speech with you, be seen with you."
+
+"'Not until the sun excludes you, do I exclude you,'" she flung back at
+him.
+
+"But there is a fitness of things--"
+
+"Fitness!" She turned upon him and loosed her wrath.  "If she is unfit,
+are you fit?  May you cast the first stone with that smugly
+sanctimonious air of yours?"
+
+"You shall not talk to me in this fashion.  I'll not have it."
+
+He clutched at her sled, and even in the midst of her anger she noticed
+it with a little thrill of pleasure.
+
+"Shall not?  You coward!"
+
+He reached out as though to lay hands upon her, and she raised her
+coiled whip to strike.  But to his credit he never flinched; his white
+face calmly waited to receive the blow.  Then she deflected the stroke,
+and the long lash hissed out and fell among the dogs.  Swinging the
+whip briskly, she rose to her knees on the sled and called frantically
+to the animals.  Hers was the better team, and she shot rapidly away
+from Corliss.  She wished to get away, not so much from him as from
+herself, and she encouraged the huskies into wilder and wilder speed.
+She took the steep river-bank in full career and dashed like a
+whirlwind through the town and home.  Never in her life had she been in
+such a condition; never had she experienced such terrible anger.  And
+not only was she already ashamed, but she was frightened and afraid of
+herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The next morning Corliss was knocked out of a late bed by Bash, one of
+Jacob Welse's Indians.  He was the bearer of a brief little note from
+Frona, which contained a request for the mining engineer to come and
+see her at his first opportunity.  That was all that was said, and he
+pondered over it deeply.  What did she wish to say to him?  She was
+still such an unknown quantity,--and never so much as now in the light
+of the day before,--that he could not guess.  Did she desire to give
+him his dismissal on a definite, well-understood basis?  To take
+advantage of her sex and further humiliate him?  To tell him what she
+thought of him in coolly considered, cold-measured terms?  Or was she
+penitently striving to make amends for the unmerited harshness she had
+dealt him?  There was neither contrition nor anger in the note, no
+clew, nothing save a formally worded desire to see him.
+
+So it was in a rather unsettled and curious frame of mind that he
+walked in upon her as the last hour of the morning drew to a close.  He
+was neither on his dignity nor off, his attitude being strictly
+non-committal against the moment she should disclose hers.  But without
+beating about the bush, in that way of hers which he had come already
+to admire, she at once showed her colors and came frankly forward to
+him.  The first glimpse of her face told him, the first feel of her
+hand, before she had said a word, told him that all was well.
+
+"I am glad you have come," she began.  "I could not be at peace with
+myself until I had seen you and told you how sorry I am for yesterday,
+and how deeply ashamed I--"
+
+"There, there.  It's not so bad as all that."  They were still
+standing, and he took a step nearer to her.  "I assure you I can
+appreciate your side of it; and though, looking at it theoretically, it
+was the highest conduct, demanding the fullest meed of praise, still,
+in all frankness, there is much to--to--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Much to deplore in it from the social stand-point.  And unhappily, we
+cannot leave the social stand-point out of our reckoning.  But so far
+as I may speak for myself, you have done nothing to feel sorry for or
+be ashamed of."
+
+"It is kind of you," she cried, graciously.  "Only it is not true, and
+you know it is not true.  You know that you acted for the best; you
+know that I hurt you, insulted you; you know that I behaved like a
+fish-wife, and you do know that I disgusted you--"
+
+"No, no!"  He raised his hand as though to ward from her the blows she
+dealt herself.
+
+"But yes, yes.  And I have all reason in the world to be ashamed.  I
+can only say this in defence: the woman had affected me deeply--so
+deeply that I was close to weeping.  Then you came on the scene,--you
+know what you did,--and the sorrow for her bred an indignation against
+you, and--well, I worked myself into a nervous condition such as I had
+never experienced in my life.  It was hysteria, I suppose.  Anyway, I
+was not myself."
+
+"We were neither of us ourselves."
+
+"Now you are untrue.  I did wrong, but you were yourself, as much so
+then as now.  But do be seated.  Here we stand as though you were ready
+to run away at first sign of another outbreak."
+
+"Surely you are not so terrible!" he laughed, adroitly pulling his
+chair into position so that the light fell upon her face.
+
+"Rather, you are not such a coward.  I must have been terrible
+yesterday.  I--I almost struck you.  And you were certainly brave when
+the whip hung over you.  Why, you did not even attempt to raise a hand
+and shield yourself."
+
+"I notice the dogs your whip falls among come nevertheless to lick your
+hand and to be petted."
+
+"Ergo?" she queried, audaciously.
+
+"Ergo, it all depends," he equivocated.
+
+"And, notwithstanding, I am forgiven?"
+
+"As I hope to be forgiven."
+
+"Then I am glad--only, you have done nothing to be forgiven for.  You
+acted according to your light, and I to mine, though it must be
+acknowledged that mine casts the broader flare.  Ah!  I have it,"
+clapping her hands in delight, "I was not angry with you yesterday; nor
+did I behave rudely to you, or even threaten you.  It was utterly
+impersonal, the whole of it.  You simply stood for society, for the
+type which aroused my indignation and anger; and, as its
+representative, you bore the brunt of it.  Don't you see?"
+
+"I see, and cleverly put; only, while you escape the charge of
+maltreating me yesterday; you throw yourself open to it to-day.  You
+make me out all that is narrow-minded and mean and despicable, which is
+very unjust.  Only a few minutes past I said that your way of looking
+at it, theoretically considered, was irreproachable.  But not so when
+we include society."
+
+"But you misunderstand me, Vance.  Listen."  Her hand went out to his,
+and he was content to listen.  "I have always upheld that what is is
+well.  I grant the wisdom of the prevailing social judgment in this
+matter.  Though I deplore it, I grant it; for the human is so made.
+But I grant it socially only.  I, as an individual, choose to regard
+such things differently.  And as between individuals so minded, why
+should it not be so regarded?  Don't you see?  Now I find you guilty.
+As between you and me, yesterday, on the river, you did not so regard
+it.  You behaved as narrow-mindedly as would have the society you
+represent."
+
+"Then you would preach two doctrines?" he retaliated.  "One for the
+elect and one for the herd?  You would be a democrat in theory and an
+aristocrat in practice?  In fact, the whole stand you are making is
+nothing more or less than Jesuitical."
+
+"I suppose with the next breath you will be contending that all men are
+born free and equal, with a bundle of natural rights thrown in?  You
+are going to have Del Bishop work for you; by what equal free-born
+right will he work for you, or you suffer him to work?"
+
+"No," he denied.  "I should have to modify somewhat the questions of
+equality and rights."
+
+"And if you modify, you are lost!" she exulted.  "For you can only
+modify in the direction of my position, which is neither so Jesuitical
+nor so harsh as you have defined it.  But don't let us get lost in
+dialectics.  I want to see what I can see, so tell me about this woman."
+
+"Not a very tasteful topic," Corliss objected.
+
+"But I seek knowledge."
+
+"Nor can it be wholesome knowledge."
+
+Frona tapped her foot impatiently, and studied him.
+
+"She is beautiful, very beautiful," she suggested.  "Do you not think
+so?"
+
+"As beautiful as hell."
+
+"But still beautiful," she insisted.
+
+"Yes, if you will have it so.  And she is as cruel, and hard, and
+hopeless as she is beautiful."
+
+"Yet I came upon her, alone, by the trail, her face softened, and tears
+in her eyes.  And I believe, with a woman's ken, that I saw a side of
+her to which you are blind.  And so strongly did I see it, that when
+you appeared my mind was blank to all save the solitary wail, _Oh, the
+pity of it_!  _The pity of it_!  And she is a woman, even as I, and I
+doubt not that we are very much alike.  Why, she even quoted
+Browning--"
+
+"And last week," he cut her short, "in a single sitting, she gambled
+away thirty thousand of Jack Dorsey's dust,--Dorsey, with two mortgages
+already on his dump!  They found him in the snow next morning, with one
+chamber empty in his revolver."
+
+Frona made no reply, but, walking over to the candle, deliberately
+thrust her finger into the flame.  Then she held it up to Corliss that
+he might see the outraged skin, red and angry.
+
+"And so I point the parable.  The fire is very good, but I misuse it,
+and I am punished."
+
+"You forget," he objected.  "The fire works in blind obedience to
+natural law.  Lucile is a free agent.  That which she has chosen to do,
+that she has done."
+
+"Nay, it is you who forget, for just as surely Dorsey was a free agent.
+But you said Lucile.  Is that her name?  I wish I knew her better."
+
+Corliss winced.  "Don't!  You hurt me when you say such things."
+
+"And why, pray?"
+
+"Because--because--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Because I honor woman highly.  Frona, you have always made a stand for
+frankness, and I can now advantage by it.  It hurts me because of the
+honor in which I hold you, because I cannot bear to see taint approach
+you.  Why, when I saw you and that woman together on the trail, I--you
+cannot understand what I suffered."
+
+"Taint?"  There was a tightening about her lips which he did not
+notice, and a just perceptible lustre of victory lighted her eyes.
+
+"Yes, taint,--contamination," he reiterated.  "There are some things
+which it were not well for a good woman to understand.  One cannot
+dabble with mud and remain spotless."
+
+"That opens the field wide."  She clasped and unclasped her hands
+gleefully.  "You have said that her name was Lucile; you display a
+knowledge of her; you have given me facts about her; you doubtless
+retain many which you dare not give; in short, if one cannot dabble and
+remain spotless, how about you?"
+
+"But I am--"
+
+"A man, of course.  Very good.  Because you are a man, you may court
+contamination.  Because I am a woman, I may not.  Contamination
+contaminates, does it not?  Then you, what do you here with me?  Out
+upon you!"
+
+Corliss threw up his hands laughingly.  "I give in.  You are too much
+for me with your formal logic.  I can only fall back on the higher
+logic, which you will not recognize."
+
+"Which is--"
+
+"Strength.  What man wills for woman, that will he have."
+
+"I take you, then, on your own ground," she rushed on.  "What of
+Lucile?  What man has willed that he has had.  So you, and all men,
+have willed since the beginning of time.  So poor Dorsey willed.  You
+cannot answer, so let me speak something that occurs to me concerning
+that higher logic you call strength.  I have met it before.  I
+recognized it in you, yesterday, on the sleds."
+
+"In me?"
+
+"In you, when you reached out and clutched at me.  You could not down
+the primitive passion, and, for that matter, you did not know it was
+uppermost.  But the expression on your face, I imagine, was very like
+that of a woman-stealing cave-man.  Another instant, and I am sure you
+would have laid violent hands upon me."
+
+"Then I ask your pardon.  I did not dream--"
+
+"There you go, spoiling it all!  I--I quite liked you for it.  Don't
+you remember, I, too, was a cave-woman, brandishing the whip over your
+head?
+
+"But I am not done with you yet, Sir Doubleface, even if you have
+dropped out of the battle."  Her eyes were sparkling mischievously, and
+the wee laughter-creases were forming on her cheek.  "I purpose to
+unmask you."
+
+"As clay in the hands of the potter," he responded, meekly.
+
+"Then you must remember several things.  At first, when I was very
+humble and apologetic, you made it easier for me by saying that you
+could only condemn my conduct on the ground of being socially unwise.
+Remember?"
+
+Corliss nodded.
+
+"Then, just after you branded me as Jesuitical, I turned the
+conversation to Lucile, saying that I wished to see what I could see."
+
+Again he nodded.
+
+"And just as I expected, I saw.  For in only a few minutes you began to
+talk about taint, and contamination, and dabbling in mud,--and all in
+relation to me.  There are your two propositions, sir.  You may only
+stand on one, and I feel sure that you stand on the last one.  Yes, I
+am right.  You do.  And you were insincere, confess, when you found my
+conduct unwise only from the social point of view.  I like sincerity."
+
+"Yes," he began, "I was unwittingly insincere.  But I did not know it
+until further analysis, with your help, put me straight.  Say what you
+will, Frona, my conception of woman is such that she should not court
+defilement."
+
+"But cannot we be as gods, knowing good and evil?"
+
+"But we are not gods," he shook his head, sadly.
+
+"Only the men are?"
+
+"That is new-womanish talk," he frowned.  "Equal rights, the ballot,
+and all that."
+
+"Oh!  Don't!" she protested.  "You won't understand me; you can't.  I
+am no woman's rights' creature; and I stand, not for the new woman, but
+for the new womanhood.  Because I am sincere; because I desire to be
+natural, and honest, and true; and because I am consistent with myself,
+you choose to misunderstand it all and to lay wrong strictures upon me.
+I do try to be consistent, and I think I fairly succeed; but you can
+see neither rhyme nor reason in my consistency.  Perhaps it is because
+you are unused to consistent, natural women; because, more likely, you
+are only familiar with the hot-house breeds,--pretty, helpless,
+well-rounded, stall-fatted little things, blissfully innocent and
+criminally ignorant.  They are not natural or strong; nor can they
+mother the natural and strong."
+
+She stopped abruptly.  They heard somebody enter the hall, and a heavy,
+soft-moccasined tread approaching.
+
+"We are friends," she added hurriedly, and Corliss answered with his
+eyes.
+
+"Ain't intrudin', am I?"  Dave Harney grinned broad insinuation and
+looked about ponderously before coming up to shake hands.
+
+"Not at all," Corliss answered.    "We've bored each other till we were
+pining for some one to come along.  If you hadn't, we would soon have
+been quarrelling, wouldn't we, Miss Welse?"
+
+"I don't think he states the situation fairly," she smiled back.  "In
+fact, we had already begun to quarrel."
+
+"You do look a mite flustered," Harney criticised, dropping his
+loose-jointed frame all over the pillows of the lounging couch.
+
+"How's the famine?" Corliss asked.  "Any public relief started yet?"
+
+"Won't need any public relief.  Miss Frona's old man was too forehanded
+fer 'em.  Scairt the daylights out of the critters, I do b'lieve.
+Three thousand went out over the ice hittin' the high places, an' half
+ez many again went down to the caches, and the market's loosened some
+considerable.  Jest what Welse figgered on, everybody speculated on a
+rise and held all the grub they could lay hand to.  That helped scare
+the shorts, and away they stampeded fer Salt Water, the whole caboodle,
+a-takin' all the dogs with 'em.  Say!" he sat up solemnly, "corner
+dogs!  They'll rise suthin' unheard on in the spring when freightin'
+gits brisk.  I've corralled a hundred a'ready, an' I figger to clear a
+hundred dollars clean on every hide of 'em."
+
+"Think so?"
+
+"Think so!  I guess yes.  Between we three, confidential, I'm startin'
+a couple of lads down into the Lower Country next week to buy up five
+hundred of the best huskies they kin spot.  Think so!  I've limbered my
+jints too long in the land to git caught nappin'."
+
+Frona burst out laughing.  "But you got pinched on the sugar, Dave."
+
+"Oh, I dunno," he responded, complacently.  "Which reminds me.   I've
+got a noospaper, an' only four weeks' old, the _Seattle
+Post-Intelligencer_."
+
+"Has the United States and Spain--"
+
+"Not so fast, not so fast!"  The long Yankee waved his arms for
+silence, cutting off Frona's question which was following fast on that
+of Corliss.
+
+"But have you read it?" they both demanded.
+
+"Unh huh, every line, advertisements an' all."
+
+"Then do tell me," Frona began.  "Has--"
+
+"Now you keep quiet, Miss Frona, till I tell you about it reg'lar.
+That noospaper cost me fifty dollars--caught the man comin' in round
+the bend above Klondike City, an' bought it on the spot.  The dummy
+could a-got a hundred fer it, easy, if he'd held on till he made
+town--"
+
+"But what does it say?  Has--"
+
+"Ez I was sayin', that noospaper cost me fifty dollars.  It's the only
+one that come in.  Everybody's jest dyin' to hear the noos.  So I
+invited a select number of 'em to come here to yer parlors to-night,
+Miss Frona, ez the only likely place, an' they kin read it out loud, by
+shifts, ez long ez they want or till they're tired--that is, if you'll
+let 'em have the use of the place."
+
+"Why, of course, they are welcome.  And you are very kind to--"
+
+He waved her praise away.  "Jest ez I kalkilated.  Now it so happens,
+ez you said, that I was pinched on sugar.  So every mother's son and
+daughter that gits a squint at that paper to-night got to pony up five
+cups of sugar.  Savve?  Five cups,--big cups, white, or brown, or
+cube,--an' I'll take their IOU's, an' send a boy round to their shacks
+the day followin' to collect."
+
+Frona's face went blank at the telling, then the laughter came back
+into it.  "Won't it be jolly?  I'll do it if it raises a scandal.
+To-night, Dave?  Sure to-night?"
+
+"Sure.  An' you git a complimentary, you know, fer the loan of yer
+parlor."
+
+"But papa must pay his five cups.  You must insist upon it, Dave."
+
+Dave's eyes twinkled appreciatively.  "I'll git it back on him, you
+bet!"
+
+"And I'll make him come," she promised, "at the tail of Dave Harney's
+chariot."
+
+"Sugar cart," Dave suggested.  "An' to-morrow night I'll take the paper
+down to the Opery House.  Won't be fresh, then, so they kin git in
+cheap; a cup'll be about the right thing, I reckon."  He sat up and
+cracked his huge knuckles boastfully.  "I ain't ben a-burnin' daylight
+sence navigation closed; an' if they set up all night they won't be up
+early enough in the mornin' to git ahead of Dave Harney--even on a
+sugar proposition."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Over in the corner Vance Corliss leaned against the piano, deep in
+conversation with Colonel Trethaway.  The latter, keen and sharp and
+wiry, for all his white hair and sixty-odd years, was as young in
+appearance as a man of thirty.   A veteran mining engineer, with a
+record which put him at the head of his profession, he represented as
+large American interests as Corliss did British.  Not only had a
+cordial friendship sprung up between them, but in a business way they
+had already been of large assistance to each other.  And it was well
+that they should stand together,--a pair who held in grip and could
+direct at will the potent capital which two nations had contributed to
+the development of the land under the Pole.
+
+The crowded room was thick with tobacco smoke.  A hundred men or so,
+garbed in furs and warm-colored wools, lined the walls and looked on.
+But the mumble of their general conversation destroyed the spectacular
+feature of the scene and gave to it the geniality of common
+comradeship.  For all its _bizarre_ appearance, it was very like the
+living-room of the home when the members of the household come together
+after the work of the day.  Kerosene lamps and tallow candles glimmered
+feebly in the murky atmosphere, while large stoves roared their red-hot
+and white-hot cheer.
+
+On the floor a score of couples pulsed rhythmically to the swinging
+waltz-time music.  Starched shirts and frock coats were not.  The men
+wore their wolf- and beaver-skin caps, with the gay-tasselled ear-flaps
+flying free, while on their feet were the moose-skin moccasins and
+walrus-hide muclucs of the north.  Here and there a woman was in
+moccasins, though the majority danced in frail ball-room slippers of
+silk and satin.  At one end of the hall a great open doorway gave
+glimpse of another large room where the crowd was even denser.  From
+this room, in the lulls in the music, came the pop of corks and the
+clink of glasses, and as an undertone the steady click and clatter of
+chips and roulette balls.
+
+The small door at the rear opened, and a woman, befurred and muffled,
+came in on a wave of frost.  The cold rushed in with her to the warmth,
+taking form in a misty cloud which hung close to the floor, hiding the
+feet of the dancers, and writhing and twisting until vanquished by the
+heat.
+
+"A veritable frost queen, my Lucile," Colonel Trethaway addressed her.
+
+She tossed her head and laughed, and, as she removed her capes and
+street-moccasins, chatted with him gayly.  But of Corliss, though he
+stood within a yard of her, she took no notice.  Half a dozen dancing
+men were waiting patiently at a little distance till she should have
+done with the colonel.  The piano and violin played the opening bars of
+a schottische, and she turned to go; but a sudden impulse made Corliss
+step up to her.  It was wholly unpremeditated; he had not dreamed of
+doing it.
+
+"I am very sorry," he said.
+
+Her eyes flashed angrily as she turned upon him.
+
+"I mean it," he repeated, holding out his hand.  "I am very sorry.  I
+was a brute and a coward.  Will you forgive me?"
+
+She hesitated, and, with the wisdom bought of experience, searched him
+for the ulterior motive.  Then, her face softened, and she took his
+hand.  A warm mist dimmed her eyes.
+
+"Thank you," she said.
+
+But the waiting men had grown impatient, and she was whirled away in
+the arms of a handsome young fellow, conspicuous in a cap of yellow
+Siberian wolf-skin.  Corliss came back to his companion, feeling
+unaccountably good and marvelling at what he had done.
+
+"It's a damned shame."  The colonel's eye still followed Lucile, and
+Vance understood.   "Corliss, I've lived my threescore, and lived them
+well, and do you know, woman is a greater mystery than ever.  Look at
+them, look at them all!"  He embraced the whole scene with his eyes.
+"Butterflies, bits of light and song and laughter, dancing, dancing
+down the last tail-reach of hell.  Not only Lucile, but the rest of
+them.  Look at May, there, with the brow of a Madonna and the tongue of
+a gutter-devil.  And Myrtle--for all the world one of Gainsborough's
+old English beauties stepped down from the canvas to riot out the
+century in Dawson's dance-halls.  And Laura, there, wouldn't she make a
+mother?  Can't you see the child in the curve of her arm against her
+breast!  They're the best of the boiling, I know,--a new country always
+gathers the best,--but there's something wrong, Corliss, something
+wrong.  The heats of life have passed with me, and my vision is truer,
+surer.  It seems a new Christ must arise and preach a new
+salvation--economic or sociologic--in these latter days, it matters
+not, so long as it is preached.  The world has need of it."
+
+The room was wont to be swept by sudden tides, and notably between the
+dances, when the revellers ebbed through the great doorway to where
+corks popped and glasses tinkled.  Colonel Trethaway and Corliss
+followed out on the next ebb to the bar, where fifty men and women were
+lined up.  They found themselves next to Lucile and the fellow in the
+yellow wolf-skin cap.  He was undeniably handsome, and his looks were
+enhanced by a warm overplus of blood in the cheeks and a certain mellow
+fire in the eyes.  He was not technically drunk, for he had himself in
+perfect physical control; but his was the soul-exhilaration which comes
+of the juice of the grape.  His voice was raised the least bit and
+joyous, and his tongue made quick and witty--just in the unstable
+condition when vices and virtues are prone to extravagant expression.
+
+As he raised his glass, the man next to him accidentally jostled his
+arm.  He shook the wine from his sleeve and spoke his mind.  It was not
+a nice word, but one customarily calculated to rouse the fighting
+blood.  And the other man's blood roused, for his fist landed under the
+wolf-skin cap with force sufficient to drive its owner back against
+Corliss.  The insulted man followed up his attack swiftly.   The women
+slipped away, leaving a free field for the men, some of whom were for
+crowding in, and some for giving room and fair play.
+
+The wolf-skin cap did not put up a fight or try to meet the wrath he
+had invoked, but, with his hands shielding his face, strove to retreat.
+The crowd called upon him to stand up and fight.  He nerved himself to
+the attempt, but weakened as the man closed in on him, and dodged away.
+
+"Let him alone.  He deserves it," the colonel called to Vance as he
+showed signs of interfering.  "He won't fight.  If he did, I think I
+could almost forgive him."
+
+"But I can't see him pummelled," Vance objected.  "If he would only
+stand up, it wouldn't seem so brutal."
+
+The blood was streaming from his nose and from a slight cut over one
+eye, when Corliss sprang between.  He attempted to hold the two men
+apart, but pressing too hard against the truculent individual,
+overbalanced him and threw him to the floor.  Every man has friends in
+a bar-room fight, and before Vance knew what was taking place he was
+staggered by a blow from a chum of the man he had downed.  Del Bishop,
+who had edged in, let drive promptly at the man who had attacked his
+employer, and the fight became general.  The crowd took sides on the
+moment and went at it.
+
+Colonel Trethaway forgot that the heats of life had passed, and
+swinging a three-legged stool, danced nimbly into the fray.  A couple
+of mounted police, on liberty, joined him, and with half a dozen others
+safeguarded the man with the wolf-skin cap.
+
+Fierce though it was, and noisy, it was purely a local disturbance.  At
+the far end of the bar the barkeepers still dispensed drinks, and in
+the next room the music was on and the dancers afoot.  The gamblers
+continued their play, and at only the near tables did they evince any
+interest in the affair.
+
+"Knock'm down an' drag'm out!" Del Bishop grinned, as he fought for a
+brief space shoulder to shoulder with Corliss.
+
+Corliss grinned back, met the rush of a stalwart dog-driver with a
+clinch, and came down on top of him among the stamping feet.  He was
+drawn close, and felt the fellow's teeth sinking into his ear.  Like a
+flash, he surveyed his whole future and saw himself going one-eared
+through life, and in the same dash, as though inspired, his thumbs flew
+to the man's eyes and pressed heavily on the balls.  Men fell over him
+and trampled upon him, but it all seemed very dim and far away.  He
+only knew, as he pressed with his thumbs, that the man's teeth wavered
+reluctantly.  He added a little pressure (a little more, and the man
+would have been eyeless), and the teeth slackened and slipped their
+grip.
+
+After that, as he crawled out of the fringe of the melee and came to
+his feet by the side of the bar, all distaste for fighting left him.
+He had found that he was very much like other men after all, and the
+imminent loss of part of his anatomy had scraped off twenty years of
+culture.  Gambling without stakes is an insipid amusement, and Corliss
+discovered, likewise, that the warm blood which rises from hygienic
+gymnasium work is something quite different from that which pounds
+hotly along when thew matches thew and flesh impacts on flesh and the
+stake is life and limb.  As he dragged himself to his feet by means of
+the bar-rail, he saw a man in a squirrel-skin parka lift a beer-mug to
+hurl at Trethaway, a couple of paces off.  And the fingers, which were
+more used to test-tubes and water colors, doubled into a hard fist
+which smote the mug-thrower cleanly on the point of the jaw.  The man
+merely dropped the glass and himself on the floor.  Vance was dazed for
+the moment, then he realized that he had knocked the man
+unconscious,--the first in his life,--and a pang of delight thrilled
+through him.
+
+Colonel Trethaway thanked him with a look, and shouted, "Get on the
+outside!  Work to the door, Corliss!  Work to the door!"
+
+Quite a struggle took place before the storm-doors could be thrown
+open; but the colonel, still attached to the three-legged stool,
+effectually dissipated the opposition, and the Opera House disgorged
+its turbulent contents into the street.  This accomplished, hostilities
+ceased, after the manner of such fights, and the crowd scattered.  The
+two policemen went back to keep order, accompanied by the rest of the
+allies, while Corliss and the colonel, followed by the Wolf-Skin Cap
+and Del Bishop, proceeded up the street.
+
+"Blood and sweat!  Blood and sweat!" Colonel Trethaway exulted.  "Talk
+about putting the vim into one!  Why, I'm twenty years younger if I'm a
+day!  Corliss, your hand.  I congratulate you, I do, I heartily do.
+Candidly, I didn't think it was in you.  You're a surprise, sir, a
+surprise!"
+
+"And a surprise to myself," Corliss answered.  The reaction had set in,
+and he was feeling sick and faint.  "And you, also, are a surprise.
+The way you handled that stool--"
+
+"Yes, now!  I flatter myself I did fairly well with it.  Did you
+see--well, look at that!"  He held up the weapon in question, still
+tightly clutched, and joined in the laugh against himself.
+
+"Whom have I to thank, gentlemen?"
+
+They had come to a pause at the corner, and the man they had rescued
+was holding out his hand.
+
+"My name is St. Vincent," he went on, "and--"
+
+"What name?" Del Bishop queried with sudden interest.
+
+"St. Vincent, Gregory St. Vincent--"
+
+Bishop's fist shot out, and Gregory St. Vincent pitched heavily into
+the snow.  The colonel instinctively raised the stool, then helped
+Corliss to hold the pocket-miner back.
+
+"Are you crazy, man?" Vance demanded.
+
+"The skunk!  I wish I'd hit 'm harder!" was the response.  Then, "Oh,
+that's all right.  Let go o' me.  I won't hit 'm again.  Let go o' me,
+I'm goin' home.  Good-night."
+
+As they helped St. Vincent to his feet, Vance could have sworn he heard
+the colonel giggling.  And he confessed to it later, as he explained,
+"It was so curious and unexpected."  But he made amends by taking it
+upon himself to see St. Vincent home.
+
+"But why did you hit him?" Corliss asked, unavailingly, for the fourth
+time after he had got into his cabin.
+
+"The mean, crawlin' skunk!" the pocket-miner gritted in his blankets.
+"What'd you stop me for, anyway?  I wish I'd hit 'm twice as hard!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"Mr. Harney, pleased to meet you.  Dave, I believe, Dave Harney?"  Dave
+Harney nodded, and Gregory St. Vincent turned to Frona.  "You see, Miss
+Welse, the world is none so large.  Mr. Harney and I are not strangers
+after all."
+
+The Eldorado king studied the other's face until a glimmering
+intelligence came to him.  "Hold on!" he cried, as St. Vincent started
+to speak, "I got my finger on you.  You were smooth-faced then.  Let's
+see,--'86, fall of '87, summer of '88,--yep, that's when.  Summer of
+'88 I come floatin' a raft out of Stewart River, loaded down with
+quarters of moose an' strainin' to make the Lower Country 'fore they
+went bad.  Yep, an' down the Yukon you come, in a Linderman boat.  An'
+I was holdin' strong, ez it was Wednesday, an' my pardner ez it was
+Friday, an' you put us straight--Sunday, I b'lieve it was.  Yep,
+Sunday.  I declare!  Nine years ago!  And we swapped moose-steaks fer
+flour an' bakin' soda, an'--an'--an' sugar!  By the Jimcracky!  I'm
+glad to see you!"
+
+He shoved out his hand and they shook again.
+
+"Come an' see me," he invited, as he moved away.  "I've a right tidy
+little shack up on the hill, and another on Eldorado.  Latch-string's
+always out.  Come an' see me, an' stay ez long ez you've a mind to.
+Sorry to quit you cold, but I got to traipse down to the Opery House
+and collect my taxes,--sugar.  Miss Frona'll tell you."
+
+"You are a surprise, Mr. St. Vincent."  Frona switched back to the
+point of interest, after briefly relating Harney's saccharine
+difficulties.  "The country must indeed have been a wilderness nine
+years ago, and to think that you went through it at that early day!  Do
+tell me about it."
+
+Gregory St. Vincent shrugged his shoulders, "There is very little to
+tell.  It was an ugly failure, filled with many things that are not
+nice, and containing nothing of which to be proud."
+
+"But do tell me, I enjoy such things.  They seem closer and truer to
+life than the ordinary every-day happenings.  A failure, as you call
+it, implies something attempted.  What did you attempt?"
+
+He noted her frank interest with satisfaction.  "Well, if you will, I
+can tell you in few words all there is to tell.  I took the mad idea
+into my head of breaking a new path around the world, and in the
+interest of science and journalism, particularly journalism, I proposed
+going through Alaska, crossing the Bering Straits on the ice, and
+journeying to Europe by way of Northern Siberia.  It was a splendid
+undertaking, most of it being virgin ground, only I failed.  I crossed
+the Straits in good order, but came to grief in Eastern Siberia--all
+because of Tamerlane is the excuse I have grown accustomed to making."
+
+"A Ulysses!"  Mrs. Schoville clapped her hands and joined them.  "A
+modern Ulysses!  How romantic!"
+
+"But not an Othello," Frona replied.  "His tongue is a sluggard.  He
+leaves one at the most interesting point with an enigmatical reference
+to a man of a bygone age.  You take an unfair advantage of us, Mr. St.
+Vincent, and we shall be unhappy until you show how Tamerlane brought
+your journey to an untimely end."
+
+He laughed, and with an effort put aside his reluctance to speak of his
+travels.  "When Tamerlane swept with fire and sword over Eastern Asia,
+states were disrupted, cities overthrown, and tribes scattered like
+star-dust.  In fact, a vast people was hurled broadcast over the land.
+Fleeing before the mad lust of the conquerors, these refugees swung far
+into Siberia, circling to the north and east and fringing the rim of
+the polar basin with a spray of Mongol tribes--am I not tiring you?"
+
+"No, no!" Mrs. Schoville exclaimed.  "It is fascinating!  Your method
+of narration is so vivid!  It reminds me of--of--"
+
+"Of Macaulay," St. Vincent laughed, good-naturedly.  "You know I am a
+journalist, and he has strongly influenced my style.  But I promise you
+I shall tone down.  However, to return, had it not been for these
+Mongol tribes, I should not have been halted in my travels.  Instead of
+being forced to marry a greasy princess, and to become proficient in
+interclannish warfare and reindeer-stealing, I should have travelled
+easily and peaceably to St. Petersburg."
+
+"Oh, these heroes!  Are they not exasperating, Frona?  But what about
+the reindeer-stealing and the greasy princesses?"
+
+The Gold Commissioner's wife beamed upon him, and glancing for
+permission to Frona, he went on.
+
+"The coast people were Esquimo stock, merry-natured and happy, and
+inoffensive.  They called themselves the Oukilion, or the Sea Men.  I
+bought dogs and food from them, and they treated me splendidly.  But
+they were subject to the Chow Chuen, or interior people, who were known
+as the Deer Men.  The Chow Chuen were a savage, indomitable breed, with
+all the fierceness of the untamed Mongol, plus double his viciousness.
+As soon as I left the coast they fell upon me, confiscated my goods,
+and made me a slave."
+
+"But were there no Russians?" Mrs. Schoville asked.
+
+"Russians?  Among the Chow Chuen?"  He laughed his amusement.
+"Geographically, they are within the White Tsar's domain; but
+politically, no.  I doubt if they ever heard of him.  Remember, the
+interior of North-Eastern Siberia is hidden in the polar gloom, a terra
+incognita, where few men have gone and none has returned."
+
+"But you--"
+
+"I chance to be the exception.  Why I was spared, I do not know.  It
+just so happened.  At first I was vilely treated, beaten by the women
+and children, clothed in vermin-infested mangy furs, and fed on refuse.
+They were utterly heartless.  How I managed to survive is beyond me;
+but I know that often and often, at first, I meditated suicide.  The
+only thing that saved me during that period from taking my own life was
+the fact that I quickly became too stupefied and bestial, what of my
+suffering and degradation.  Half-frozen, half-starved, undergoing
+untold misery and hardship, beaten many and many a time into
+insensibility, I became the sheerest animal.
+
+"On looking back much of it seems a dream.  There are gaps which my
+memory cannot fill.  I have vague recollections of being lashed to a
+sled and dragged from camp to camp and tribe to tribe.  Carted about
+for exhibition purposes, I suppose, much as we do lions and elephants
+and wild men.  How far I so journeyed up and down that bleak region I
+cannot guess, though it must have been several thousand miles.  I do
+know that when consciousness returned to me and I really became myself
+again, I was fully a thousand miles to the west of the point where I
+was captured.
+
+"It was springtime, and from out of a forgotten past it seemed I
+suddenly opened my eyes.  A reindeer thong was about my waist and made
+fast to the tail-end of a sled.  This thong I clutched with both hands,
+like an organ-grinder's monkey; for the flesh of my body was raw and in
+great sores from where the thong had cut in.
+
+"A low cunning came to me, and I made myself agreeable and servile.
+That night I danced and sang, and did my best to amuse them, for I was
+resolved to incur no more of the maltreatment which had plunged me into
+darkness.  Now the Deer Men traded with the Sea Men, and the Sea Men
+with the whites, especially the whalers.  So later I discovered a deck
+of cards in the possession of one of the women, and I proceeded to
+mystify the Chow Chuen with a few commonplace tricks.  Likewise, with
+fitting solemnity, I perpetrated upon them the little I knew of parlor
+legerdemain.  Result: I was appreciated at once, and was better fed and
+better clothed.
+
+"To make a long story short, I gradually became a man of importance.
+First the old people and the women came to me for advice, and later the
+chiefs.  My slight but rough and ready knowledge of medicine and
+surgery stood me in good stead, and I became indispensable.  From a
+slave, I worked myself to a seat among the head men, and in war and
+peace, so soon as I had learned their ways, was an unchallenged
+authority.  Reindeer was their medium of exchange, their unit of value
+as it were, and we were almost constantly engaged in cattle forays
+among the adjacent clans, or in protecting our own herds from their
+inroads.  I improved upon their methods, taught them better strategy
+and tactics, and put a snap and go into their operations which no
+neighbor tribe could withstand.
+
+"But still, though I became a power, I was no nearer my freedom.  It
+was laughable, for I had over-reached myself and made myself too
+valuable.  They cherished me with exceeding kindness, but they were
+jealously careful.  I could go and come and command without restraint,
+but when the trading parties went down to the coast I was not permitted
+to accompany them.  That was the one restriction placed upon my
+movements.
+
+"Also, it is very tottery in the high places, and when I began altering
+their political structures I came to grief again.  In the process of
+binding together twenty or more of the neighboring tribes in order to
+settle rival claims, I was given the over-lordship of the federation.
+But Old Pi-Une was the greatest of the under-chiefs,--a king in a
+way,--and in relinquishing his claim to the supreme leadership he
+refused to forego all the honors.  The least that could be done to
+appease him was for me to marry his daughter Ilswunga.  Nay, he
+demanded it.  I offered to abandon the federation, but he would not
+hear of it.  And--"
+
+"And?" Mrs. Schoville murmured ecstatically.
+
+"And I married Ilswunga, which is the Chow Chuen name for Wild Deer.
+Poor Ilswunga!  Like Swinburne's Iseult of Brittany, and I Tristram!
+The last I saw of her she was playing solitaire in the Mission of
+Irkutsky and stubbornly refusing to take a bath."
+
+"Oh, mercy!  It's ten o'clock!" Mrs. Schoville suddenly cried, her
+husband having at last caught her eye from across the room.  "I'm so
+sorry I can't hear the rest, Mr. St. Vincent, how you escaped and all
+that.  But you must come and see me.  I am just dying to hear!"
+
+"And I took you for a tenderfoot, a _chechaquo_," Frona said meekly, as
+St. Vincent tied his ear-flaps and turned up his collar preparatory to
+leaving.
+
+"I dislike posing," he answered, matching her meekness.  "It smacks of
+insincerity; it really is untrue.  And it is so easy to slip into it.
+Look at the old-timers,--'sour-doughs' as they proudly call themselves.
+Just because they have been in the country a few years, they let
+themselves grow wild and woolly and glorify in it.  They may not know
+it, but it is a pose.  In so far as they cultivate salient
+peculiarities, they cultivate falseness to themselves and live lies."
+
+"I hardly think you are wholly just," Frona said, in defence of her
+chosen heroes.  "I do like what you say about the matter in general,
+and I detest posing, but the majority of the old-timers would be
+peculiar in any country, under any circumstances.  That peculiarity is
+their own; it is their mode of expression.  And it is, I am sure, just
+what makes them go into new countries.  The normal man, of course,
+stays at home."
+
+"Oh, I quite agree with you, Miss Welse," he temporized easily.  "I did
+not intend it so sweepingly.  I meant to brand that sprinkling among
+them who are _poseurs_.  In the main, as you say, they are honest, and
+sincere, and natural."
+
+"Then we have no quarrel.  But Mr. St. Vincent, before you go, would
+you care to come to-morrow evening?  We are getting up theatricals for
+Christmas.  I know you can help us greatly, and I think it will not be
+altogether unenjoyable to you.  All the younger people are
+interested,--the officials, officers of police, mining engineers,
+gentlemen rovers, and so forth, to say nothing of the nice women.  You
+are bound to like them."
+
+"I am sure I shall," as he took her hand.  "Tomorrow, did you say?"
+
+"To-morrow evening.  Good-night."
+
+A brave man, she told herself as she went bade from the door, and a
+splendid type of the race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Gregory St. Vincent swiftly became an important factor in the social
+life of Dawson.  As a representative of the Amalgamated Press
+Association, he had brought with him the best credentials a powerful
+influence could obtain, and over and beyond, he was well qualified
+socially by his letters of introduction.  It developed in a quiet way
+that he was a wanderer and explorer of no small parts, and that he had
+seen life and strife pretty well all over the earth's crust.  And
+withal, he was so mild and modest about it, that nobody, not even among
+the men, was irritated by his achievements.  Incidentally, he ran
+across numerous old acquaintances.  Jacob Welse he had met at St.
+Michael's in the fall of '88, just prior to his crossing Bering Straits
+on the ice.  A month or so later, Father Barnum (who had come up from
+the Lower River to take charge of the hospital) had met him a couple of
+hundred miles on his way north of St. Michael's.  Captain Alexander, of
+the Police, had rubbed shoulders with him in the British Legation at
+Peking.  And Bettles, another old-timer of standing, had met him at
+Fort o' Yukon nine years before.
+
+So Dawson, ever prone to look askance at the casual comer, received him
+with open arms.  Especially was he a favorite with the women.  As a
+promoter of pleasures and an organizer of amusements he took the lead,
+and it quickly came to pass that no function was complete without him.
+Not only did he come to help in the theatricals, but insensibly, and as
+a matter of course, he took charge.  Frona, as her friends charged, was
+suffering from a stroke of Ibsen, so they hit upon the "Doll's House,"
+and she was cast for Nora.  Corliss, who was responsible, by the way,
+for the theatricals, having first suggested them, was to take Torvald's
+part; but his interest seemed to have died out, or at any rate he
+begged off on the plea of business rush.  So St. Vincent, without
+friction, took Torvald's lines.  Corliss did manage to attend one
+rehearsal.  It might have been that he had come tired from forty miles
+with the dogs, and it might have been that Torvald was obliged to put
+his arm about Nora at divers times and to toy playfully with her ear;
+but, one way or the other, Corliss never attended again.
+
+Busy he certainly was, and when not away on trail he was closeted
+almost continually with Jacob Welse and Colonel Trethaway.  That it was
+a deal of magnitude was evidenced by the fact that Welse's mining
+interests involved alone mounted to several millions.  Corliss was
+primarily a worker and doer, and on discovering that his thorough
+theoretical knowledge lacked practical experience, he felt put upon his
+mettle and worked the harder.  He even marvelled at the silliness of
+the men who had burdened him with such responsibilities, simply because
+of his pull, and he told Trethaway as much.  But the colonel, while
+recognizing his shortcomings, liked him for his candor, and admired him
+for his effort and for the quickness with which he came to grasp things
+actual.
+
+Del Bishop, who had refused to play any hand but his own, had gone to
+work for Corliss because by so doing he was enabled to play his own
+hand better.  He was practically unfettered, while the opportunities to
+further himself were greatly increased.  Equipped with the best of
+outfits and a magnificent dog-team, his task was mainly to run the
+various creeks and keep his eyes and ears open.  A pocket-miner, first,
+last, and always, he was privately on the constant lookout for pockets,
+which occupation did not interfere in the least with the duty he owed
+his employer.  And as the days went by he stored his mind with
+miscellaneous data concerning the nature of the various placer deposits
+and the lay of the land, against the summer when the thawed surface and
+the running water would permit him to follow a trace from creek-bed to
+side-slope and source.
+
+Corliss was a good employer, paid well, and considered it his right to
+work men as he worked himself.  Those who took service with him either
+strengthened their own manhood and remained, or quit and said harsh
+things about him.  Jacob Welse noted this trait with appreciation, and
+he sounded the mining engineer's praises continually.  Frona heard and
+was gratified, for she liked the things her father liked; and she was
+more gratified because the man was Corliss.  But in his rush of
+business she saw less of him than formerly, while St. Vincent came to
+occupy a greater and growing portion of her time.  His healthful,
+optimistic spirit pleased her, while he corresponded well to her
+idealized natural man and favorite racial type.  Her first doubt--that
+if what he said was true--had passed away.  All the evidence had gone
+counter.  Men who at first questioned the truth of his wonderful
+adventures gave in after hearing him talk.  Those to any extent
+conversant with the parts of the world he made mention of, could not
+but acknowledge that he knew what he talked about.  Young Soley,
+representing Bannock's News Syndicate, and Holmes of the Fairweather,
+recollected his return to the world in '91, and the sensation created
+thereby.  And Sid Winslow, Pacific Coast journalist, had made his
+acquaintance at the Wanderers' Club shortly after he landed from the
+United States revenue cutter which had brought him down from the north.
+Further, as Frona well saw, he bore the ear-marks of his experiences;
+they showed their handiwork in his whole outlook on life.  Then the
+primitive was strong in him, and his was a passionate race pride which
+fully matched hers.  In the absence of Corliss they were much together,
+went out frequently with the dogs, and grew to know each other
+thoroughly.
+
+All of which was not pleasant to Corliss, especially when the brief
+intervals he could devote to her were usually intruded upon by the
+correspondent.  Naturally, Corliss was not drawn to him, and other men,
+who knew or had heard of the Opera House occurrence, only accepted him
+after a tentative fashion.  Trethaway had the indiscretion, once or
+twice, to speak slightingly of him, but so fiercely was he defended by
+his admirers that the colonel developed the good taste to thenceforward
+keep his tongue between his teeth.  Once, Corliss, listening to an
+extravagant panegyric bursting from the lips of Mrs. Schoville,
+permitted himself the luxury of an incredulous smile; but the quick
+wave of color in Frona's face, and the gathering of the brows, warned
+him.
+
+At another time he was unwise enough and angry enough to refer to the
+Opera House broil.  He was carried away, and what he might have said of
+that night's happening would have redounded neither to St. Vincent's
+credit nor to his own, had not Frona innocently put a seal upon his
+lips ere he had properly begun.
+
+"Yes," she said.  "Mr. St. Vincent told me about it.  He met you for
+the first time that night, I believe.  You all fought royally on his
+side,--you and Colonel Trethaway.  He spoke his admiration unreservedly
+and, to tell the truth, with enthusiasm."
+
+Corliss made a gesture of depreciation.
+
+"No! no!  From what he said you must have behaved splendidly.  And I
+was most pleased to hear.  It must be great to give the brute the rein
+now and again, and healthy, too.  Great for us who have wandered from
+the natural and softened to sickly ripeness.  Just to shake off
+artificiality and rage up and down! and yet, the inmost mentor, serene
+and passionless, viewing all and saying: 'This is my other self.
+Behold!  I, who am now powerless, am the power behind and ruleth still!
+This other self, mine ancient, violent, elder self, rages blindly as
+the beast, but 'tis I, sitting apart, who discern the merit of the
+cause and bid him rage or bid him cease!'  Oh, to be a man!"
+
+Corliss could not help a humoring smile, which put Frona upon defence
+at once.
+
+"Tell me, Vance, how did it feel?  Have I not described it rightly?
+Were the symptoms yours?  Did you not hold aloof and watch yourself
+play the brute?"
+
+He remembered the momentary daze which came when he stunned the man
+with his fist, and nodded.
+
+"And pride?" she demanded, inexorably.  "Or shame?"
+
+"A--a little of both, and more of the first than the second," he
+confessed.  "At the time I suppose I was madly exultant; then
+afterwards came the shame, and I tossed awake half the night."
+
+"And finally?"
+
+"Pride, I guess.  I couldn't help it, couldn't down it.  I awoke in the
+morning feeling as though I had won my spurs.  In a subconscious way I
+was inordinately proud of myself, and time and again, mentally, I
+caught myself throwing chests.  Then came the shame again, and I tried
+to reason back my self-respect.  And last of all, pride.  The fight was
+fair and open.  It was none of my seeking.  I was forced into it by the
+best of motives.  I am not sorry, and I would repeat it if necessary."
+
+"And rightly so." Frona's eyes were sparkling.  "And how did Mr. St.
+Vincent acquit himself?"
+
+"He? . . . .  Oh, I suppose all right, creditably.  I was too busy
+watching my other self to take notice."
+
+"But he saw you."
+
+"Most likely so.  I acknowledge my negligence.  I should have done
+better, the chances are, had I thought it would have been of interest
+to you--pardon me.  Just my bungling wit.  The truth is, I was too much
+of a greenhorn to hold my own and spare glances on my neighbors."
+
+So Corliss went away, glad that he had not spoken, and keenly
+appreciating St. Vincent's craft whereby he had so adroitly forestalled
+adverse comment by telling the story in his own modest, self-effacing
+way.
+
+
+Two men and a woman!  The most potent trinity of factors in the
+creating of human pathos and tragedy!  As ever in the history of man,
+since the first father dropped down from his arboreal home and walked
+upright, so at Dawson.  Necessarily, there were minor factors, not
+least among which was Del Bishop, who, in his aggressive way, stepped
+in and accelerated things.  This came about in a trail-camp on the way
+to Miller Creek, where Corliss was bent on gathering in a large number
+of low-grade claims which could only be worked profitably on a large
+scale.
+
+"I'll not be wastin' candles when I make a strike, savve!" the
+pocket-miner remarked savagely to the coffee, which he was settling
+with a chunk of ice.  "Not on your life, I guess rather not!"
+
+"Kerosene?" Corliss queried, running a piece of bacon-rind round the
+frying-pan and pouring in the batter.
+
+"Kerosene, hell!  You won't see my trail for smoke when I get a gait on
+for God's country, my wad in my poke and the sunshine in my eyes.  Say!
+How'd a good juicy tenderloin strike you just now, green onions, fried
+potatoes, and fixin's on the side?  S'help me, that's the first
+proposition I'll hump myself up against.  Then a general whoop-la! for
+a week--Seattle or 'Frisco, I don't care a rap which, and then--"
+
+"Out of money and after a job."
+
+"Not on your family tree!" Bishop roared.  "Cache my sack before I go
+on the tear, sure pop, and then, afterwards, Southern California.
+Many's the day I've had my eye on a peach of a fruit farm down
+there--forty thousand'll buy it.  No more workin' for grub-stakes and
+the like.  Figured it out long; ago,--hired men to work the ranch, a
+manager to run it, and me ownin' the game and livin' off the
+percentage.  A stable with always a couple of bronchos handy; handy to
+slap the packs and saddles on and be off and away whenever the fever
+for chasin' pockets came over me.  Great pocket country down there, to
+the east and along the desert."
+
+"And no house on the ranch?"
+
+"Cert!  With sweet peas growin' up the sides, and in back a patch for
+vegetables--string-beans and spinach and radishes, cucumbers and
+'sparagrass, turnips, carrots, cabbage, and such.  And a woman inside
+to draw me back when I get to runnin' loco after the pockets.  Say, you
+know all about minin'.  Did you ever go snoozin' round after pockets?
+No?  Then just steer clear.  They're worse than whiskey, horses, or
+cards.  Women, when they come afterwards, ain't in it.  Whenever you
+get a hankerin' after pockets, go right off and get married.  It's the
+only thing'll save you; and even then, mebbe, it won't.  I ought 'a'
+done it years ago.  I might 'a' made something of myself if I had.
+Jerusalem! the jobs I've jumped and the good things chucked in my time,
+just because of pockets!  Say, Corliss, you want to get married, you
+do, and right off.  I'm tellin' you straight.  Take warnin' from me and
+don't stay single any longer than God'll let you, sure!"
+
+Corliss laughed.
+
+"Sure, I mean it.  I'm older'n you, and know what I'm talkin'.  Now
+there's a bit of a thing down in Dawson I'd like to see you get your
+hands on.  You was made for each other, both of you."
+
+Corliss was past the stage when he would have treated Bishop's meddling
+as an impertinence.  The trail, which turns men into the same blankets
+and makes them brothers, was the great leveller of distinctions, as he
+had come to learn.  So he flopped a flapjack and held his tongue.
+
+"Why don't you waltz in and win?" Del demanded, insistently.  "Don't
+you cotton to her?  I know you do, or you wouldn't come back to cabin,
+after bein' with her, a-walkin'-like on air.  Better waltz in while you
+got a chance.  Why, there was Emmy, a tidy bit of flesh as women go,
+and we took to each other on the jump.  But I kept a-chasin' pockets
+and chasin' pockets, and delayin'.  And then a big black lumberman, a
+Kanuck, began sidlin' up to her, and I made up my mind to speak--only I
+went off after one more pocket, just one more, and when I got back she
+was Mrs. Somebody Else.
+
+"So take warnin'.  There's that writer-guy, that skunk I poked outside
+the Opera House.  He's walkin' right in and gettin' thick; and here's
+you, just like me, a-racin' round all creation and lettin' matrimony
+slide.  Mark my words, Corliss!  Some fine frost you'll come slippin'
+into camp and find 'em housekeepin'.  Sure!  With nothin' left for you
+in life but pocketing!"
+
+The picture was so unpleasant that Corliss turned surly and ordered him
+to shut up.
+
+"Who?  Me?" Del asked so aggrievedly that Corliss laughed.
+
+"What would you do, then?" he asked.
+
+"Me?  In all kindness I'll tell you.  As soon as you get back you go
+and see her.  Make dates with her ahead till you got to put 'em on
+paper to remember 'em all.  Get a cinch on her spare time ahead so as
+to shut the other fellow out.  Don't get down in the dirt to
+her,--she's not that kind,--but don't be too high and mighty, neither.
+Just so-so--savve?  And then, some time when you see she's feelin'
+good, and smilin' at you in that way of hers, why up and call her hand.
+Of course I can't say what the showdown'll be.  That's for you to find
+out.  But don't hold off too long about it.  Better married early than
+never.  And if that writer-guy shoves in, poke him in the
+breadbasket--hard!  That'll settle him plenty.  Better still, take him
+off to one side and talk to him.  Tell'm you're a bad man, and that you
+staked that claim before he was dry behind the ears, and that if he
+comes nosin' around tryin' to file on it you'll beat his head off."
+
+Bishop got up, stretched, and went outside to feed the dogs.  "Don't
+forget to beat his head off," he called back.  "And if you're squeamish
+about it, just call on me.  I won't keep 'm waitin' long."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"Ah, the salt water, Miss Welse, the strong salt water and the big waves
+and the heavy boats for smooth or rough--that I know.  But the fresh
+water, and the little canoes, egg-shells, fairy bubbles; a big breath, a
+sigh, a heart-pulse too much, and pouf! over you go; not so, that I do
+not know."  Baron Courbertin smiled self-commiseratingly and went on.
+"But it is delightful, magnificent.  I have watched and envied.  Some day
+I shall learn."
+
+"It is not so difficult," St. Vincent interposed.  "Is it, Miss Welse?
+Just a sure and delicate poise of mind and body--"
+
+"Like the tight-rope dancer?"
+
+"Oh, you are incorrigible," Frona laughed.  "I feel certain that you know
+as much about canoes as we."
+
+"And you know?--a woman?"  Cosmopolitan as the Frenchman was, the
+independence and ability for doing of the Yankee women were a perpetual
+wonder to him.  "How?"
+
+"When I was a very little girl, at Dyea, among the Indians.  But next
+spring, after the river breaks, we'll give you your first lessons, Mr.
+St. Vincent and I.  So you see, you will return to civilization with
+accomplishments.  And you will surely love it."
+
+"Under such charming tutorship," he murmured, gallantly.  "But you, Mr.
+St. Vincent, do you think I shall be so successful that I may come to
+love it?  Do you love it?--you, who stand always in the background,
+sparing of speech, inscrutable, as though able but unwilling to speak
+from out the eternal wisdom of a vast experience."  The baron turned
+quickly to Frona.  "We are old friends, did I not tell you?  So I may,
+what you Americans call, _josh_ with him.  Is it not so, Mr. St.
+Vincent?"
+
+Gregory nodded, and Frona said, "I am sure you met at the ends of the
+earth somewhere."
+
+"Yokohama," St. Vincent cut in shortly; "eleven years ago, in
+cherry-blossom time.  But Baron Courbertin does me an injustice, which
+stings, unhappily, because it is not true.  I am afraid, when I get
+started, that I talk too much about myself."
+
+"A martyr to your friends," Frona conciliated.  "And such a teller of
+good tales that your friends cannot forbear imposing upon you."
+
+"Then tell us a canoe story," the baron begged.  "A good one!  A--what
+you Yankees call--a _hair-raiser_!"
+
+They drew up to Mrs. Schoville's fat wood-burning stove, and St.  Vincent
+told of the great whirlpool in the Box Canyon, of the terrible corkscrew
+in the mane of the White Horse Rapids, and of his cowardly comrade, who,
+walking around, had left him to go through alone--nine years before when
+the Yukon was virgin.
+
+Half an hour later Mrs. Schoville bustled in, with Corliss in her wake.
+
+"That hill!  The last of my breath!" she gasped, pulling off her mittens.
+"Never saw such luck!" she declared none the less vehemently the next
+moment.
+
+"This play will never come off!  I never shall be Mrs. Linden!  How can
+I?  Krogstad's gone on a stampede to Indian River, and no one knows when
+he'll be back!  Krogstad" (to Corliss) "is Mr. Maybrick, you know.  And
+Mrs. Alexander has the neuralgia and can't stir out.  So there's no
+rehearsal to-day, that's flat!"  She attitudinized dramatically: "'_Yes,
+in my first terror!  But a day has passed, and in that day I have seen
+incredible things in this house!  Helmer must know everything!  There
+must be an end to this unhappy secret!  O Krogstad, you need me, and I--I
+need you_,' and you are over on the Indian River making sour-dough bread,
+and I shall never see you more!"
+
+They clapped their applause.
+
+"My only reward for venturing out and keeping you all waiting was my
+meeting with this ridiculous fellow."  She shoved Corliss forward.  "Oh!
+you have not met!  Baron Courbertin, Mr. Corliss.  If you strike it rich,
+baron, I advise you to sell to Mr. Corliss.  He has the money-bags of
+Croesus, and will buy anything so long as the title is good.  And if you
+don't strike, sell anyway.  He's a professional philanthropist, you know.
+
+"But would you believe it!" (addressing the general group) "this
+ridiculous fellow kindly offered to see me up the hill and gossip along
+the way--gossip! though he refused point-blank to come in and watch the
+rehearsal.  But when he found there wasn't to be any, he changed about
+like a weather-vane.  So here he is, claiming to have been away to Miller
+Creek; but between ourselves there is no telling what dark deeds--"
+
+"Dark deeds!  Look!" Frona broke in, pointing to the tip of an amber
+mouth-piece which projected from Vance's outside breast-pocket.  "A pipe!
+My congratulations."
+
+She held out her hand and he shook good-humoredly.
+
+"All Del's fault," he laughed.  "When I go before the great white throne,
+it is he who shall stand forth and be responsible for that particular
+sin."
+
+"An improvement, nevertheless," she argued.  "All that is wanting is a
+good round swear-word now and again."
+
+"Oh, I assure you I am not unlearned," he retorted.  "No man can drive
+dogs else.  I can swear from hell to breakfast, by damn, and back again,
+if you will permit me, to the last link of perdition.  By the bones of
+Pharaoh and the blood of Judas, for instance, are fairly efficacious with
+a string of huskies; but the best of my dog-driving nomenclature, more's
+the pity, women cannot stand.  I promise you, however, in spite of hell
+and high water--"
+
+"Oh!  Oh!" Mrs. Schoville screamed, thrusting her fingers into her ears.
+
+"Madame," Baron Courbertin spoke up gravely, "it is a fact, a lamentable
+fact, that the dogs of the north are responsible for more men's souls
+than all other causes put together.  Is it not so?  I leave it to the
+gentlemen."
+
+Both Corliss and St. Vincent solemnly agreed, and proceeded to detonate
+the lady by swapping heart-rending and apposite dog tales.
+
+St. Vincent and the baron remained behind to take lunch with the Gold
+Commissioner's wife, leaving Frona and Corliss to go down the hill
+together.  Silently consenting, as though to prolong the descent, they
+swerved to the right, cutting transversely the myriad foot-paths and sled
+roads which led down into the town.  It was a mid-December day, clear and
+cold; and the hesitant high-noon sun, having laboriously dragged its pale
+orb up from behind the southern land-rim, balked at the great climb to
+the zenith, and began its shamefaced slide back beneath the earth.  Its
+oblique rays refracted from the floating frost particles till the air was
+filled with glittering jewel-dust--resplendent, blazing, flashing light
+and fire, but cold as outer space.
+
+They passed down through the scintillant, magical sheen, their moccasins
+rhythmically crunching the snow and their breaths wreathing mysteriously
+from their lips in sprayed opalescence.  Neither spoke, nor cared to
+speak, so wonderful was it all.  At their feet, under the great vault of
+heaven, a speck in the midst of the white vastness, huddled the golden
+city--puny and sordid, feebly protesting against immensity, man's
+challenge to the infinite!
+
+Calls of men and cries of encouragement came sharply to them from close
+at hand, and they halted.  There was an eager yelping, a scratching of
+feet, and a string of ice-rimed wolf-dogs, with hot-lolling tongues and
+dripping jaws, pulled up the slope and turned into the path ahead of
+them.  On the sled, a long and narrow box of rough-sawed spruce told the
+nature of the freight.  Two dog-drivers, a woman walking blindly, and a
+black-robed priest, made up the funeral cortege.  A few paces farther on
+the dogs were again put against the steep, and with whine and shout and
+clatter the unheeding clay was hauled on and upward to its ice-hewn
+hillside chamber.
+
+"A zone-conqueror," Frona broke voice.
+
+Corliss found his thought following hers, and answered, "These battlers
+of frost and fighters of hunger!  I can understand how the dominant races
+have come down out of the north to empire.  Strong to venture, strong to
+endure, with infinite faith and infinite patience, is it to be wondered
+at?"
+
+Frona glanced at him in eloquent silence.
+
+"'_We smote with our swords_,'" he chanted; "'_to me it was a joy like
+having my bright bride by me on the couch.'  'I have marched with my
+bloody sword, and the raven has followed me.  Furiously we fought; the
+fire passed over the dwellings of men; we slept in the blood of those who
+kept the gates_.'"
+
+"But do you feel it, Vance?" she cried, her hand flashing out and resting
+on his arm.
+
+"I begin to feel, I think.  The north has taught me, is teaching me.  The
+old thing's come back with new significance.  Yet I do not know.  It
+seems a tremendous egotism, a magnificent dream."
+
+"But you are not a negro or a Mongol, nor are you descended from the
+negro or Mongol."
+
+"Yes," he considered, "I am my father's son, and the line goes back to
+the sea-kings who never slept under the smoky rafters of a roof or
+drained the ale-horn by inhabited hearth.  There must be a reason for the
+dead-status of the black, a reason for the Teuton spreading over the
+earth as no other race has ever spread.  There must be something in race
+heredity, else I would not leap at the summons."
+
+"A great race, Vance.  Half of the earth its heritage, and all of the
+sea!  And in threescore generations it has achieved it all--think of it!
+threescore generations!--and to-day it reaches out wider-armed than ever.
+The smiter and the destroyer among nations! the builder and the
+law-giver!  Oh, Vance, my love is passionate, but God will forgive, for
+it is good.  A great race, greatly conceived; and if to perish, greatly
+to perish!  Don't you remember:
+
+"'_Trembles Yggdrasil's ash yet standing; groans that ancient tree, and
+the Jotun Loki is loosed.  The shadows groan on the ways of Hel, until
+the fire of Surt has consumed the tree.  Hrym steers from the east, the
+waters rise, the mundane snake is coiled in jotun-rage.  The worm heats
+the water, and the eagle screams; the pale of beak tears carcases; the
+ship Naglfar is loosed.  Surt from the south comes with flickering flame;
+shines from his sword the Val-god's sun_.'"
+
+Swaying there like a furred Valkyrie above the final carnage of men and
+gods, she touched his imagination, and the blood surged exultingly along
+unknown channels, thrilling and uplifting.
+
+"'_The stony hills are dashed together, the giantesses totter; men tread
+the path of Hel, and heaven is cloven.  The sun darkens, earth in ocean
+sinks, fall from heaven the bright stars, fire's breath assails the
+all-nourishing tree, towering fire plays against heaven itself_.'"
+
+Outlined against the blazing air, her brows and lashes white with frost,
+the jewel-dust striking and washing against hair and face, and the
+south-sun lighting her with a great redness, the man saw her as the
+genius of the race.  The traditions of the blood laid hold of him, and he
+felt strangely at one with the white-skinned, yellow-haired giants of the
+younger world.  And as he looked upon her the mighty past rose before
+him, and the caverns of his being resounded with the shock and tumult of
+forgotten battles.  With bellowing of storm-winds and crash of smoking
+North Sea waves, he saw the sharp-beaked fighting galleys, and the
+sea-flung Northmen, great-muscled, deep-chested, sprung from the
+elements, men of sword and sweep, marauders and scourgers of the warm
+south-lands!  The din of twenty centuries of battle was roaring in his
+ear, and the clamor for return to type strong upon him.  He seized her
+hands passionately.
+
+"Be the bright bride by me, Frona!  Be the bright bride by me on the
+couch!"
+
+She started and looked down at him, questioningly.  Then the import of it
+reached her and she involuntarily drew back.  The sun shot a last failing
+flicker across the earth and vanished.  The fire went out of the air, and
+the day darkened.  Far above, the hearse-dogs howled mournfully.
+
+"No," he interrupted, as words formed on her lips.  "Do not speak.  I
+know my answer, your answer . . .  now . . .  I was a fool . . .  Come,
+let us go down."
+
+It was not until they had left the mountain behind them, crossed the
+flat, and come out on the river by the saw-mill, that the bustle and
+skurry of human life made it seem possible for them to speak.  Corliss
+had walked with his eyes moodily bent to the ground; and Frona, with head
+erect and looking everywhere, stealing an occasional glance to his face.
+Where the road rose over the log run-way of the mill the footing was
+slippery, and catching at her to save her from falling, their eyes met.
+
+"I--I am grieved," she hesitated.  And then, in unconscious self-defence,
+"It was so . . .  I had not expected it--just then."
+
+"Else you would have prevented?" he asked, bitterly.
+
+"Yes.  I think I should have.  I did not wish to give you pain--"
+
+"Then you expected it, some time?"
+
+"And feared it.  But I had hoped . . .  I . . .  Vance, I did not come
+into the Klondike to get married.  I liked you at the beginning, and I
+have liked you more and more,--never so much as to-day,--but--"
+
+"But you had never looked upon me in the light of a possible
+husband--that is what you are trying to say."
+
+As he spoke, he looked at her side-wise, and sharply; and when her eyes
+met his with the same old frankness, the thought of losing her maddened
+him.
+
+"But I have," she answered at once.  "I have looked upon you in that
+light, but somehow it was not convincing.  Why, I do not know.  There was
+so much I found to like in you, so much--"
+
+He tried to stop her with a dissenting gesture, but she went on.
+
+"So much to admire.  There was all the warmth of friendship, and closer
+friendship,--a growing _camaraderie_, in fact; but nothing more.  Though
+I did not wish more, I should have welcomed it had it come."
+
+"As one welcomes the unwelcome guest."
+
+"Why won't you help me, Vance, instead of making it harder?  It is hard
+on you, surely, but do you imagine that I am enjoying it?  I feel because
+of your pain, and, further, I know when I refuse a dear friend for a
+lover the dear friend goes from me.  I do not part with friends lightly."
+
+"I see; doubly bankrupt; friend and lover both.  But they are easily
+replaced.  I fancy I was half lost before I spoke.  Had I remained
+silent, it would have been the same anyway.  Time softens; new
+associations, new thoughts and faces; men with marvellous adventures--"
+
+She stopped him abruptly.
+
+"It is useless, Vance, no matter what you may say.  I shall not quarrel
+with you.  I can understand how you feel--"
+
+"If I am quarrelsome, then I had better leave you."  He halted suddenly,
+and she stood beside him.  "Here comes Dave Harney.  He will see you
+home.  It's only a step."
+
+"You are doing neither yourself nor me kindness."  She spoke with final
+firmness.  "I decline to consider this the end.  We are too close to it
+to understand it fairly.  You must come and see me when we are both
+calmer.  I refuse to be treated in this fashion.  It is childish of you."
+She shot a hasty glance at the approaching Eldorado king.  "I do not
+think I deserve it at your hands.  I refuse to lose you as a friend.  And
+I insist that you come and see me, that things remain on the old footing."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Hello!" Dave Harney touched his cap and slowed down loose-jointedly.
+"Sorry you didn't take my tip?  Dogs gone up a dollar a pound since
+yesterday, and still a-whoopin'.  Good-afternoon, Miss Frona, and Mr.
+Corliss.  Goin' my way?"
+
+"Miss Welse is."  Corliss touched the visor of his cap and half-turned on
+his heel.
+
+"Where're you off to?" Dave demanded.
+
+"Got an appointment," he lied.
+
+"Remember," Frona called to him, "you must come and see me."
+
+"Too busy, I'm afraid, just now.  Good-by.  So long, Dave."
+
+"Jemimy!" Dave remarked, staring after him; "but he's a hustler.  Always
+busy--with big things, too.  Wonder why he didn't go in for dogs?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+But Corliss did go back to see her, and before the day was out.  A
+little bitter self-communion had not taken long to show him his
+childishness.  The sting of loss was hard enough, but the thought, now
+they could be nothing to each other, that her last impressions of him
+should be bad, hurt almost as much, and in a way, even more.  And
+further, putting all to the side, he was really ashamed.  He had
+thought that he could have taken such a disappointment more manfully,
+especially since in advance he had not been at all sure of his footing.
+
+So he called upon her, walked with her up to the Barracks, and on the
+way, with her help, managed to soften the awkwardness which the morning
+had left between them.  He talked reasonably and meekly, which she
+countenanced, and would have apologized roundly had she not prevented
+him.
+
+"Not the slightest bit of blame attaches to you," she said.  "Had I
+been in your place, I should probably have done the same and behaved
+much more outrageously.  For you were outrageous, you know."
+
+"But had you been in my place, and I in yours," he answered, with a
+weak attempt at humor, "there would have been no need."
+
+She smiled, glad that he was feeling less strongly about it.
+
+"But, unhappily, our social wisdom does not permit such a reversal," he
+added, more with a desire to be saying something.
+
+"Ah!" she laughed.  "There's where my Jesuitism comes in.  I can rise
+above our social wisdom."
+
+"You don't mean to say,--that--?"
+
+"There, shocked as usual!  No, I could not be so crude as to speak
+outright, but I might _finesse_, as you whist-players say.  Accomplish
+the same end, only with greater delicacy.  After all, a distinction
+without a difference."
+
+"Could you?" he asked.
+
+"I know I could,--if the occasion demanded.  I am not one to let what I
+might deem life-happiness slip from me without a struggle.  That"
+(judicially) "occurs only in books and among sentimentalists.  As my
+father always says, I belong to the strugglers and fighters.  That
+which appeared to me great and sacred, that would I battle for, though
+I brought heaven tumbling about my ears."
+
+"You have made me very happy, Vance," she said at parting by the
+Barracks gates.  "And things shall go along in the same old way.  And
+mind, not a bit less of you than formerly; but, rather, much more."
+
+
+But Corliss, after several perfunctory visits, forgot the way which led
+to Jacob Welse's home, and applied himself savagely to his work.  He
+even had the hypocrisy, at times, to felicitate himself upon his
+escape, and to draw bleak fireside pictures of the dismal future which
+would have been had he and Frona incompatibly mated.  But this was only
+at times.  As a rule, the thought of her made him hungry, in a way akin
+to physical hunger; and the one thing he found to overcome it was hard
+work and plenty of it.  But even then, what of trail and creek, and
+camp and survey, he could only get away from her in his waking hours.
+In his sleep he was ignobly conquered, and Del Bishop, who was with him
+much, studied his restlessness and gave a ready ear to his mumbled
+words.
+
+The pocket-miner put two and two together, and made a correct induction
+from the different little things which came under his notice.  But this
+did not require any great astuteness.  The simple fact that he no
+longer called on Frona was sufficient evidence of an unprospering suit.
+But Del went a step farther, and drew the corollary that St. Vincent
+was the cause of it all.  Several times he had seen the correspondent
+with Frona, going one place and another, and was duly incensed thereat.
+
+"I'll fix 'm yet!" he muttered in camp one evening, over on Gold Bottom.
+
+"Whom?" Corliss queried.
+
+"Who?  That newspaper man, that's who!"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Aw--general principles.  Why'n't you let me paste 'm that night at the
+Opera House?"
+
+Corliss laughed at the recollection.  "Why did you strike him, Del?"
+
+"General principles," Del snapped back and shut up.
+
+But Del Bishop, for all his punitive spirit, did not neglect the main
+chance, and on the return trip, when they came to the forks of Eldorado
+and Bonanza, he called a halt.
+
+"Say, Corliss," he began at once, "d'you know what a hunch is?"  His
+employer nodded his comprehension.  "Well, I've got one.  I ain't never
+asked favors of you before, but this once I want you to lay over here
+till to-morrow.  Seems to me my fruit ranch is 'most in sight.  I can
+damn near smell the oranges a-ripenin'."
+
+"Certainly," Corliss agreed.  "But better still, I'll run on down to
+Dawson, and you can come in when you've finished hunching."
+
+"Say!" Del objected.  "I said it was a hunch; and I want to ring you in
+on it, savve?  You're all right, and you've learned a hell of a lot out
+of books.  You're a regular high-roller when it comes to the
+laboratory, and all that; but it takes yours truly to get down and read
+the face of nature without spectacles.  Now I've got a theory--"
+
+Corliss threw up his hands in affected dismay, and the pocket-miner
+began to grow angry.
+
+"That's right!  Laugh!  But it's built right up on your own pet theory
+of erosion and changed riverbeds.  And I didn't pocket among the
+Mexicans two years for nothin'.  Where d'you s'pose this Eldorado gold
+came from?--rough, and no signs of washin'?  Eh?  There's where you
+need your spectacles.  Books have made you short-sighted.  But never
+mind how.  'Tisn't exactly pockets, neither, but I know what I'm
+spelling about.  I ain't been keepin' tab on traces for my health.  I
+can tell you mining sharps more about the lay of Eldorado Creek in one
+minute than you could figure out in a month of Sundays.  But never
+mind, no offence.  You lay over with me till to-morrow, and you can buy
+a ranch 'longside of mine, sure." "Well, all right.  I can rest up and
+look over my notes while you're hunting your ancient river-bed."
+
+"Didn't I tell you it was a hunch?" Del reproachfully demanded.
+
+"And haven't I agreed to stop over?  What more do you want?"
+
+"To give you a fruit ranch, that's what!  Just to go with me and nose
+round a bit, that's all."
+
+"I do not want any of your impossible fruit ranches.  I'm tired and
+worried; can't you leave me alone?  I think I am more than fair when I
+humor you to the extent of stopping over.  You may waste your time
+nosing around, but I shall stay in camp.  Understand?"
+
+"Burn my body, but you're grateful!  By the Jumpin' Methuselah, I'll
+quit my job in two minutes if you don't fire me.  Me a-layin' 'wake
+nights and workin' up my theory, and calculatin' on lettin' you in, and
+you a-snorin' and Frona-this and Frona-that--"
+
+"That'll do!  Stop it!"
+
+"The hell it will!  If I didn't know more about gold-mining than you do
+about courtin'--"
+
+Corliss sprang at him, but Del dodged to one side and put up his fists.
+Then he ducked a wild right and left swing and side-stepped his way
+into firmer footing on the hard trail.
+
+"Hold on a moment," he cried, as Corliss made to come at him again.
+"Just a second.  If I lick you, will you come up the hillside with me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And if I don't, you can fire me.  That's fair.  Come on."
+
+Vance had no show whatever, as Del well knew, who played with him,
+feinting, attacking, retreating, dazzling, and disappearing every now
+and again out of his field of vision in a most exasperating way.  As
+Vance speedily discovered, he possessed very little correlation between
+mind and body, and the next thing he discovered was that he was lying
+in the snow and slowly coming back to his senses.
+
+"How--how did you do it?" he stammered to the pocket-miner, who had his
+head on his knee and was rubbing his forehead with snow.
+
+"Oh, you'll do!" Del laughed, helping him limply to his feet.  "You're
+the right stuff.  I'll show you some time.  You've got lots to learn
+yet what you won't find in books.  But not now.  We've got to wade in
+and make camp, then you're comin' up the hill with me."
+
+"Hee! hee!" he chuckled later, as they fitted the pipe of the Yukon
+stove.  "Slow sighted and short.  Couldn't follow me, eh?  But I'll
+show you some time, oh, I'll show you all right, all right!"
+
+"Grab an axe an' come on," he commanded when the camp was completed.
+
+He led the way up Eldorado, borrowed a pick, shovel, and pan at a
+cabin, and headed up among the benches near the mouth of French Creek.
+Vance, though feeling somewhat sore, was laughing at himself by this
+time and enjoying the situation.  He exaggerated the humility with
+which he walked at the heel of his conqueror, while the extravagant
+servility which marked his obedience to his hired man made that
+individual grin.
+
+"You'll do.  You've got the makin's in you!"  Del threw down the tools
+and scanned the run of the snow-surface carefully.  "Here, take the
+axe, shinny up the hill, and lug me down some _skookum_ dry wood."
+
+By the time Corliss returned with the last load of wood, the
+pocket-miner had cleared away the snow and moss in divers spots, and
+formed, in general design, a rude cross.
+
+"Cuttin' her both ways," he explained.  "Mebbe I'll hit her here, or
+over there, or up above; but if there's anything in the hunch, this is
+the place.  Bedrock dips in above, and it's deep there and most likely
+richer, but too much work.  This is the rim of the bench.  Can't be
+more'n a couple of feet down.  All we want is indications; afterwards
+we can tap in from the side."
+
+As he talked, he started fires here and there on the uncovered spaces.
+"But look here, Corliss, I want you to mind this ain't pocketin'.  This
+is just plain ordinary 'prentice work; but pocketin'"--he straightened
+up his back and spoke reverently--"but pocketin' is the deepest science
+and the finest art.  Delicate to a hair's-breadth, hand and eye true
+and steady as steel.  When you've got to burn your pan blue-black twice
+a day, and out of a shovelful of gravel wash down to the one wee speck
+of flour gold,--why, that's washin', that's what it is.  Tell you what,
+I'd sooner follow a pocket than eat."
+
+"And you would sooner fight than do either."  Bishop stopped to
+consider.   He weighed himself with care equal to that of retaining the
+one wee speck of flour gold.  "No, I wouldn't, neither.  I'd take
+pocketin' in mine every time.  It's as bad as dope; Corliss, sure.  If
+it once gets a-hold of you, you're a goner.  You'll never shake it.
+Look at me!  And talk about pipe-dreams; they can't burn a candle
+'longside of it."
+
+He walked over and kicked one of the fires apart.  Then he lifted the
+pick, and the steel point drove in and stopped with a metallic clang,
+as though brought up by solid cement.
+
+"Ain't thawed two inches," he muttered, stooping down and groping with
+his fingers in the wet muck.  The blades of last year's grass had been
+burned away, but he managed to gather up and tear away a handful of the
+roots.
+
+"Hell!"
+
+"What's the matter?" Corliss asked.
+
+"Hell!" he repeated in a passionless way, knocking the dirt-covered
+roots against the pan.
+
+Corliss went over and stooped to closer inspection.  "Hold on!" he
+cried, picking up two or three grimy bits of dirt and rubbing them with
+his fingers.  A bright yellow flashed forth.
+
+"Hell!" the pocket-miner reiterated tonelessly.  "First rattle out the
+box.  Begins at the grass roots and goes all the way down."
+
+Head turned to the side and up, eyes closed, nostrils distended and
+quivering, he rose suddenly to his feet and sniffed the air.  Corliss
+looked up wonderingly.
+
+"Huh!" the pocket-miner grunted.  Then he drew a deep breath.  "Can't
+you smell them oranges?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+The stampede to French Hill was on by the beginning of Christmas week.
+Corliss and Bishop had been in no hurry to record for they looked the
+ground over carefully before blazing their stakes, and let a few close
+friends into the secret,--Harney, Welse, Trethaway, a Dutch _chechaquo_
+who had forfeited both feet to the frost, a couple of the mounted
+police, an old pal with whom Del had prospected through the Black Hills
+Country, the washerwoman at the Forks, and last, and notably, Lucile.
+Corliss was responsible for her getting in on the lay, and he drove and
+marked her stakes himself, though it fell to the colonel to deliver the
+invitation to her to come and be rich.
+
+In accordance with the custom of the country, those thus benefited
+offered to sign over half-interests to the two discoverers.  Corliss
+would not tolerate the proposition.  Del was similarly minded, though
+swayed by no ethical reasons.  He had enough as it stood.  "Got my
+fruit ranch paid for, double the size I was calculatin' on," he
+explained; "and if I had any more, I wouldn't know what to do with it,
+sure."
+
+After the strike, Corliss took it upon himself as a matter of course to
+look about for another man; but when he brought a keen-eyed Californian
+into camp, Del was duly wroth.
+
+"Not on your life," he stormed.
+
+"But you are rich now," Vance answered, "and have no need to work."
+
+"Rich, hell!" the pocket-miner rejoined.  "Accordin' to covenant, you
+can't fire me; and I'm goin' to hold the job down as long as my sweet
+will'll let me.  Savve?"
+
+On Friday morning, early, all interested parties appeared before the
+Gold Commissioner to record their claims.  The news went abroad
+immediately.  In five minutes the first stampeders were hitting the
+trail.  At the end of half an hour the town was afoot.  To prevent
+mistakes on their property,--jumping, moving of stakes, and mutilation
+of notices,--Vance and Del, after promptly recording, started to
+return.  But with the government seal attached to their holdings, they
+took it leisurely, the stampeders sliding past them in a steady stream.
+Midway, Del chanced to look behind.  St. Vincent was in sight, footing
+it at a lively pace, the regulation stampeding pack on his shoulders.
+The trail made a sharp bend at that place, and with the exception of
+the three of them no one was in sight.
+
+"Don't speak to me.  Don't recognize me," Del cautioned sharply, as he
+spoke, buttoning his nose-strap across his face, which served to quite
+hide his identity.  "There's a water-hole over there.  Get down on your
+belly and make a blind at gettin' a drink.  Then go on by your lonely
+to the claims; I've business of my own to handle.  And for the love of
+your bother don't say a word to me or to the skunk.  Don't let 'm see
+your face."
+
+Corliss obeyed wonderingly, stepping aside from the beaten path, lying
+down in the snow, and dipping into the water-hole with an empty
+condensed milk-can.  Bishop bent on one knee and stooped as though
+fastening his moccasin.  Just as St. Vincent came up with him he
+finished tying the knot, and started forward with the feverish haste of
+a man trying to make up for lost time.
+
+"I say, hold on, my man," the correspondent called out to him.
+
+Bishop shot a hurried glance at him and pressed on.  St. Vincent broke
+into a run till they were side by side again.
+
+"Is this the way--"
+
+"To the benches of French Hill?" Del snapped him short.  "Betcher your
+life.  That's the way I'm headin'.  So long."
+
+He ploughed forward at a tremendous rate, and the correspondent,
+half-running, swung in behind with the evident intention of taking the
+pace.  Corliss, still in the dark, lifted his head and watched them go;
+but when he saw the pocket-miner swerve abruptly to the right and take
+the trail up Adams Creek, the light dawned upon him and he laughed
+softly to himself.
+
+Late that night Del arrived in camp on Eldorado exhausted but jubilant.
+
+"Didn't do a thing to him," he cried before he was half inside the
+tent-flaps.  "Gimme a bite to eat" (grabbing at the teapot and running
+a hot flood down his throat),--"cookin'-fat, slush, old moccasins,
+candle-ends, anything!"
+
+Then he collapsed upon the blankets and fell to rubbing his stiff
+leg-muscles while Corliss fried bacon and dished up the beans.
+
+"What about 'm?" he exulted between mouthfuls.  "Well, you can stack
+your chips that he didn't get in on the French Hill benches.  _How far
+is it, my man_?" (in the well-mimicked, patronizing tones of St.
+Vincent).  "_How far is it_?" with the patronage left out.  "_How far
+to French Hill_?" weakly.  "_How far do you think it is_?" very weakly,
+with a tremolo which hinted of repressed tears.  "_How far_--"
+
+The pocket-miner burst into roars of laughter, which were choked by a
+misdirected flood of tea, and which left him coughing and speechless.
+
+"Where'd I leave 'm?" when he had recovered.  "Over on the divide to
+Indian River, winded, plum-beaten, done for.  Just about able to crawl
+into the nearest camp, and that's about all.  I've covered fifty stiff
+miles myself, so here's for bed.  Good-night.  Don't call me in the
+mornin'."
+
+He turned into the blankets all-standing, and as he dozed off Vance
+could hear him muttering, "_How far is it, my man_?  _I say, how far is
+it_?"
+
+
+Regarding Lucile, Corliss was disappointed.  "I confess I cannot
+understand her," he said to Colonel Trethaway.  "I thought her bench
+claim would make her independent of the Opera House."
+
+"You can't get a dump out in a day," the colonel interposed.
+
+"But you can mortgage the dirt in the ground when it prospects as hers
+does.  Yet I took that into consideration, and offered to advance her a
+few thousand, non-interest bearing, and she declined.  Said she didn't
+need it,--in fact, was really grateful; thanked me, and said that any
+time I was short to come and see her."
+
+Trethaway smiled and played with his watch-chain.  "What would you?
+Life, even here, certainly means more to you and me than a bit of grub,
+a piece of blanket, and a Yukon stove.  She is as gregarious as the
+rest of us, and probably a little more so.  Suppose you cut her off
+from the Opera House,--what then?  May she go up to the Barracks and
+consort with the captain's lady, make social calls on Mrs. Schoville,
+or chum with Frona?  Don't you see?  Will you escort her, in daylight,
+down the public street?"
+
+"Will you?" Vance demanded.
+
+"Ay," the colonel replied, unhesitatingly, "and with pleasure."
+
+"And so will I; but--"  He paused and gazed gloomily into the fire.
+"But see how she is going on with St. Vincent.  As thick as thieves
+they are, and always together."
+
+"Puzzles me," Trethaway admitted.  "I can grasp St. Vincent's side of
+it.  Many irons in the fire, and Lucile owns a bench claim on the
+second tier of French Hill.  Mark me, Corliss, we can tell infallibly
+the day that Frona consents to go to his bed and board,--if she ever
+does consent."
+
+"And that will be?"
+
+"The day St. Vincent breaks with Lucile."
+
+Corliss pondered, and the colonel went on.
+
+"But I can't grasp Lucile's side of it.  What she can see in St.
+Vincent--"
+
+"Her taste is no worse than--than that of the rest of the women," Vance
+broke in hotly.  "I am sure that--"
+
+"Frona could not display poor taste, eh?"  Corliss turned on his heel
+and walked out, and left Colonel Trethaway smiling grimly.
+
+Vance Corliss never knew how many people, directly and indirectly, had
+his cause at heart that Christmas week.  Two men strove in particular,
+one for him and one for the sake of Frona.  Pete Whipple, an old-timer
+in the land, possessed an Eldorado claim directly beneath French Hill,
+also a woman of the country for a wife,--a swarthy _breed_, not over
+pretty, whose Indian mother had mated with a Russian fur-trader some
+thirty years before at Kutlik on the Great Delta.  Bishop went down one
+Sunday morning to yarn away an hour or so with Whipple, but found the
+wife alone in the cabin.  She talked a bastard English gibberish which
+was an anguish to hear, so the pocket-miner resolved to smoke a pipe
+and depart without rudeness.  But he got her tongue wagging, and to
+such an extent that he stopped and smoked many pipes, and whenever she
+lagged, urged her on again.  He grunted and chuckled and swore in
+undertones while he listened, punctuating her narrative regularly with
+_hells_! which adequately expressed the many shades of interest he felt.
+
+In the midst of it, the woman fished an ancient leather-bound volume,
+all scarred and marred, from the bottom of a dilapidated chest, and
+thereafter it lay on the table between them.  Though it remained
+unopened, she constantly referred to it by look and gesture, and each
+time she did so a greedy light blazed in Bishop's eyes.  At the end,
+when she could say no more and had repeated herself from two to half a
+dozen times, he pulled out his sack.  Mrs. Whipple set up the gold
+scales and placed the weights, which he counterbalanced with a hundred
+dollars' worth of dust.  Then he departed up the hill to the tent,
+hugging the purchase closely, and broke in on Corliss, who sat in the
+blankets mending moccasins.
+
+"I'll fix 'm yet," Del remarked casually, at the same time patting the
+book and throwing it down on the bed.
+
+Corliss looked up inquiringly and opened it.  The paper was yellow with
+age and rotten from the weather-wear of trail, while the text was
+printed in Russian.  "I didn't know you were a Russian scholar, Del,"
+he quizzed.  "But I can't read a line of it."
+
+"Neither can I, more's the pity; nor does Whipple's woman savve the
+lingo.  I got it from her.  But her old man--he was full Russian, you
+know--he used to read it aloud to her.  But she knows what she knows
+and what her old man knew, and so do I."
+
+"And what do the three of you know?"
+
+"Oh, that's tellin'," Bishop answered, coyly.  "But you wait and watch
+my smoke, and when you see it risin', you'll know, too."
+
+
+Matt McCarthy came in over the ice Christmas week, summed up the
+situation so far as Frona and St. Vincent were concerned, and did not
+like it.  Dave Harney furnished him with full information, to which he
+added that obtained from Lucile, with whom he was on good terms.
+Perhaps it was because he received the full benefit of the sum of their
+prejudice; but no matter how, he at any rate answered roll-call with
+those who looked upon the correspondent with disfavor.  It was
+impossible for them to tell why they did not approve of the man, but
+somehow St. Vincent was never much of a success with men.  This, in
+turn, might have been due to the fact that he shone so resplendently
+with women as to cast his fellows in eclipse; for otherwise, in his
+intercourse with men, he was all that a man could wish.  There was
+nothing domineering or over-riding about him, while he manifested a
+good fellowship at least equal to their own.
+
+Yet, having withheld his judgment after listening to Lucile and Harney,
+Matt McCarthy speedily reached a verdict upon spending an hour with St.
+Vincent at Jacob Welse's,--and this in face of the fact that what
+Lucile had said had been invalidated by Matt's learning of her intimacy
+with the man in question.  Strong of friendship, quick of heart and
+hand, Matt did not let the grass grow under his feet.  "'Tis I'll be
+takin' a social fling meself, as befits a mimber iv the noble Eldorado
+Dynasty," he explained, and went up the hill to a whist party in Dave
+Harney's cabin.  To himself he added, "An' belike, if Satan takes his
+eye off his own, I'll put it to that young cub iv his."
+
+But more than once during the evening he discovered himself challenging
+his own judgment.  Probe as he would with his innocent wit, Matt found
+himself baffled.  St. Vincent certainly rang true.  Simple,
+light-hearted, unaffected, joking and being joked in all good-nature,
+thoroughly democratic.  Matt failed to catch the faintest echo of
+insincerity.
+
+"May the dogs walk on me grave," he communed with himself while
+studying a hand which suffered from a plethora of trumps.  "Is it the
+years are tellin', puttin' the frost in me veins and chillin' the
+blood?  A likely lad, an' is it for me to misjudge because his is
+a-takin' way with the ladies?  Just because the swate creatures smile
+on the lad an' flutter warm at the sight iv him?  Bright eyes and brave
+men!  'Tis the way they have iv lovin' valor.  They're shuddered an'
+shocked at the cruel an' bloody dades iv war, yet who so quick do they
+lose their hearts to as the brave butcher-bye iv a sodger?  Why not?
+The lad's done brave things, and the girls give him the warm soft
+smile.  Small reason, that, for me to be callin' him the devil's own
+cub.  Out upon ye, Matt McCarthy, for a crusty old sour-dough, with
+vitals frozen an' summer gone from yer heart!  'Tis an ossification
+ye've become!  But bide a wee, Matt, bide a wee," he supplemented.
+"Wait till ye've felt the fale iv his flesh."
+
+
+The opportunity came shortly, when St. Vincent, with Frona opposite,
+swept in the full thirteen tricks.
+
+"A rampse!" Matt cried.  "Vincent, me lad, a rampse!  Yer hand on it,
+me brave!"
+
+It was a stout grip, neither warm nor clammy, but Matt shook his head
+dubiously.  "What's the good iv botherin'?" he muttered to himself as
+he shuffled the cards for the next deal.  "Ye old fool!  Find out first
+how Frona darlin' stands, an' if it's pat she is, thin 'tis time for
+doin'."
+
+"Oh, McCarthy's all hunky," Dave Harney assured them later on, coming
+to the rescue of St. Vincent, who was getting the rough side of the
+Irishman's wit.  The evening was over and the company was putting on
+its wraps and mittens.  "Didn't tell you 'bout his visit to the
+cathedral, did he, when he was on the Outside?  Well, it was suthin'
+like this, ez he was explainin' it to me.  He went to the cathedral
+durin' service, an' took in the priests and choir-boys in their
+surplices,--_parkas_, he called 'em,--an' watched the burnin' of the
+holy incense.  'An' do ye know, Dave, he sez to me, 'they got in an'
+made a smudge, and there wa'n't a darned mosquito in sight.'"
+
+"True, ivery word iv it."  Matt unblushingly fathered Harney's yarn.
+"An' did ye niver hear tell iv the time Dave an' me got drunk on
+condensed milk?"
+
+"Oh!  Horrors!" cried Mrs. Schoville.  "But how?  Do tell us."
+
+"'Twas durin' the time iv the candle famine at Forty Mile.  Cold snap
+on, an' Dave slides into me shack to pass the time o' day, and glues
+his eyes on me case iv condensed milk.  'How'd ye like a sip iv Moran's
+good whiskey?' he sez, eyin' the case iv milk the while.  I confiss me
+mouth went wet at the naked thought iv it.  'But what's the use iv
+likin'?' sez I, with me sack bulgin' with emptiness.'  'Candles worth
+tin dollars the dozen,' sez he, 'a dollar apiece.  Will ye give six
+cans iv milk for a bottle iv the old stuff?'  'How'll ye do it?' sez I.
+'Trust me,' sez he.  'Give me the cans.  'Tis cold out iv doors, an'
+I've a pair iv candle-moulds.'
+
+"An' it's the sacred truth I'm tellin' ye all, an' if ye run across
+Bill Moran he'll back me word; for what does Dave Harney do but lug off
+me six cans, freeze the milk into his candle-moulds, an' trade them in
+to bill Moran for a bottle iv tanglefoot!"
+
+As soon as he could be heard through the laughter, Harney raised his
+voice.  "It's true, as McCarthy tells, but he's only told you the half.
+Can't you guess the rest, Matt?"
+
+Matt shook his head.
+
+"Bein' short on milk myself, an' not over much sugar, I doctored three
+of your cans with water, which went to make the candles.  An' by the
+bye, I had milk in my coffee for a month to come."
+
+"It's on me, Dave," McCarthy admitted.  "'Tis only that yer me host, or
+I'd be shockin' the ladies with yer nortorious disgraces.  But I'll
+lave ye live this time, Dave.  Come, spade the partin' guests; we must
+be movin'."
+
+"No ye don't, ye young laddy-buck," he interposed, as St. Vincent
+started to take Frona down the hill, "'Tis her foster-daddy sees her
+home this night."
+
+McCarthy laughed in his silent way and offered his arm to Frona, while
+St. Vincent joined in the laugh against himself, dropped back, and
+joined Miss Mortimer and Baron Courbertin.
+
+"What's this I'm hearin' about you an' Vincent?" Matt bluntly asked as
+soon as they had drawn apart from the others.
+
+He looked at her with his keen gray eyes, but she returned the look
+quite as keenly.
+
+"How should I know what you have been hearing?" she countered.
+
+"Whin the talk goes round iv a maid an' a man, the one pretty an' the
+other not unhandsome, both young an' neither married, does it 'token
+aught but the one thing?"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"An' the one thing the greatest thing in all the world."
+
+"Well?" Frona was the least bit angry, and did not feel inclined to
+help him.
+
+"Marriage, iv course," he blurted out.  "'Tis said it looks that way
+with the pair of ye."
+
+"But is it said that it _is_ that way?"
+
+"Isn't the looks iv it enough ?" he demanded.
+
+"No; and you are old enough to know better.  Mr. St. Vincent and I--we
+enjoy each other as friends, that is all.  But suppose it is as you
+say, what of it?"
+
+"Well," McCarthy deliberated, "there's other talk goes round,  'Tis
+said Vincent is over-thick with a jade down in the town--Lucile, they
+speak iv her."
+
+"All of which signifies?"
+
+She waited, and McCarthy watched her dumbly.
+
+"I know Lucile, and I like her," Frona continued, filling the gap of
+his silence, and ostentatiously manoeuvring to help him on.  "Do you
+know her?  Don't you like her?"
+
+Matt started to speak, cleared his throat, and halted.  At last, in
+desperation, he blurted out, "For two cents, Frona, I'd lay ye acrost
+me knee."
+
+She laughed.  "You don't dare.  I'm not running barelegged at Dyea."
+
+"Now don't be tasin'," he blarneyed.
+
+"I'm not teasing.  Don't you like her?--Lucile?"
+
+"An' what iv it?" he challenged, brazenly.
+
+"Just what I asked,--what of it?"
+
+"Thin I'll tell ye in plain words from a man old enough to be yer
+father.  'Tis undacent, damnably undacent, for a man to kape company
+with a good young girl--"
+
+"Thank you," she laughed, dropping a courtesy.  Then she added, half in
+bitterness, "There have been others who--"
+
+"Name me the man!" he cried hotly.
+
+"There, there, go on.  You were saying?"
+
+"That it's a crying shame for a man to kape company with--with you, an'
+at the same time be chake by jowl with a woman iv her stamp."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"To come drippin' from the muck to dirty yer claneness!  An' ye can ask
+why?"
+
+"But wait, Matt, wait a moment.  Granting your premises--"
+
+"Little I know iv primises," he growled.  "'Tis facts I'm dalin' with."
+
+Frona bit her lip.  "Never mind.  Have it as you will; but let me go on
+and I will deal with facts, too.  When did you last see Lucile?"
+
+"An' why are ye askin'?" he demanded, suspiciously.
+
+"Never mind why.  The fact."
+
+"Well, thin, the fore part iv last night, an' much good may it do ye."
+
+"And danced with her?"
+
+"A rollickin' Virginia reel, an' not sayin' a word iv a quadrille or
+so.  Tis at square dances I excel meself."
+
+Frona walked on in a simulated brown study, no sound going up from the
+twain save the complaint of the snow from under their moccasins.
+
+"Well, thin?" he questioned, uneasily.
+
+"An' what iv it?" he insisted after another silence.
+
+"Oh, nothing," she answered.  "I was just wondering which was the
+muckiest, Mr. St. Vincent or you--or myself, with whom you have both
+been cheek by jowl."
+
+Now, McCarthy was unversed in the virtues of social wisdom, and, though
+he felt somehow the error of her position, he could not put it into
+definite thought; so he steered wisely, if weakly, out of danger.
+
+"It's gettin' mad ye are with yer old Matt," he insinuated, "who has
+yer own good at heart, an' because iv it makes a fool iv himself."
+
+"No, I'm not."
+
+"But ye are."
+
+"There!" leaning swiftly to him and kissing him.  "How could I remember
+the Dyea days and be angry?"
+
+"Ah, Frona darlin', well may ye say it.  I'm the dust iv the dirt under
+yer feet, an' ye may walk on me--anything save get mad.  I cud die for
+ye, swing for ye, to make ye happy.  I cud kill the man that gave ye
+sorrow, were it but a thimbleful, an' go plump into hell with a smile
+on me face an' joy in me heart."
+
+They had halted before her door, and she pressed his arm gratefully.
+"I am not angry, Matt.  But with the exception of my father you are the
+only person I would have permitted to talk to me about this--this
+affair in the way you have.  And though I like you, Matt, love you
+better than ever, I shall nevertheless be very angry if you mention it
+again.  You have no right.  It is something that concerns me alone.
+And it is wrong of you--"
+
+"To prevint ye walkin' blind into danger?"
+
+"If you wish to put it that way, yes."
+
+He growled deep down in his throat.
+
+"What is it you are saying?" she asked.
+
+"That ye may shut me mouth, but that ye can't bind me arm."
+
+"But you mustn't, Matt, dear, you mustn't."
+
+Again he answered with a subterranean murmur.
+
+"And I want you to promise me, now, that you will not interfere in my
+life that way, by word or deed."
+
+"I'll not promise."
+
+"But you must."
+
+"I'll not.  Further, it's gettin' cold on the stoop, an' ye'll be
+frostin' yer toes, the pink little toes I fished splinters out iv at
+Dyea.  So it's in with ye, Frona girl, an' good-night."
+
+He thrust her inside and departed.  When he reached the corner he
+stopped suddenly and regarded his shadow on the snow.  "Matt McCarthy,
+yer a damned fool!  Who iver heard iv a Welse not knowin' their own
+mind?  As though ye'd niver had dalin's with the stiff-necked breed, ye
+calamitous son iv misfortune!"
+
+Then he went his way, still growling deeply, and at every growl the
+curious wolf-dog at his heels bristled and bared its fangs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+"Tired?"
+
+Jacob Welse put both hands on Frona's shoulders, and his eyes spoke the
+love his stiff tongue could not compass.  The tree and the excitement
+and the pleasure were over with, a score or so of children had gone
+home frostily happy across the snow, the last guest had departed, and
+Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were blending into one.
+
+She returned his fondness with glad-eyed interest, and they dropped
+into huge comfortable chairs on either side the fireplace, in which the
+back-log was falling to ruddy ruin.
+
+"And this time next year?"  He put the question seemingly to the
+glowing log, and, as if in ominous foreshadow, it flared brightly and
+crumbled away in a burst of sparks.
+
+"It is marvellous," he went on, dismissing the future in an effort to
+shake himself into a wholesomer frame of mind.  "It has been one long
+continuous miracle, the last few months, since you have been with me.
+We have seen very little of each other, you know, since your childhood,
+and when I think upon it soberly it is hard to realize that you are
+really mine, sprung from me, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.  As
+the tangle-haired wild young creature of Dyea,--a healthy, little,
+natural animal and nothing more,--it required no imagination to accept
+you as one of the breed of Welse.  But as Frona, the woman, as you were
+to-night, as you are now as I look at you, as you have been since you
+came down the Yukon, it is hard . . .  I cannot realize . . .  I . . ."
+He faltered and threw up his hands helplessly.  "I almost wish that I
+had given you no education, that I had kept you with me, faring with
+me, adventuring with me, achieving with me, and failing with me.  I
+would have known you, now, as we sit by the fire.  As it is, I do not.
+To that which I did know there has been added, somehow (what shall I
+call it?), a subtlety; complexity,--favorite words of yours,--which is
+beyond me.
+
+"No."  He waved the speech abruptly from her lips.  She came over and
+knelt at his feet, resting her head on his knee and clasping his hand
+in firm sympathy.  "No, that is not true.  Those are not the words.  I
+cannot find them.  I fail to say what I feel.  Let me try again.
+Underneath all you do carry the stamp of the breed.  I knew I risked
+the loss of that when I sent you away, but I had faith in the
+persistence of the blood and I took the chance; doubted and feared when
+you were gone; waited and prayed dumbly, and hoped oftentimes
+hopelessly; and then the day dawned, the day of days!  When they said
+your boat was coming, death rose and walked on the one hand of me, and
+on the other life everlasting.  _Made or marred; made or marred_,--the
+words rang through my brain till they maddened me.  Would the Welse
+remain the Welse?  Would the blood persist?  Would the young shoot rise
+straight and tall and strong, green with sap and fresh and vigorous?
+Or would it droop limp and lifeless, withered by the heats of the world
+other than the little simple, natural Dyea world?
+
+"It was the day of days, and yet it was a lingering, watching, waiting
+tragedy.  You know I had lived the years lonely, fought the lone fight,
+and you, away, the only kin.  If it had failed . . .  But your boat
+shot from the bluffs into the open, and I was half-afraid to look.  Men
+have never called me coward, but I was nearer the coward then than ever
+and all before.  Ay, that moment I had faced death easier.  And it was
+foolish, absurd.  How could I know whether it was for good or ill when
+you drifted a distant speck on the river?  Still, I looked, and the
+miracle began, for I did know.  You stood at the steering-sweep.  You
+were a Welse.  It seems so little; in truth it meant so much.  It was
+not to be expected of a mere woman, but of a Welse, yes.  And when
+Bishop went over the side, and you gripped the situation as
+imperatively as the sweep, and your voice rang out, and the Siwashes
+bent their backs to your will,--then was it the day of days."
+
+"I tried always, and remembered," Frona whispered.  She crept up softly
+till her arm was about his neck and her head against his breast.  He
+rested one arm lightly on her body, and poured her bright hair again
+and again from his hand in glistening waves.
+
+"As I said, the stamp of the breed was unmarred, but there was yet a
+difference.  There is a difference.  I have watched it, studied it,
+tried to make it out.  I have sat at table, proud by the side of you,
+but dwarfed.  When you talked of little things I was large enough to
+follow; when of big things, too small.  I knew you, had my hand on you,
+when _presto_! and you were away, gone--I was lost.  He is a fool who
+knows not his own ignorance; I was wise enough to know mine.  Art,
+poetry, music,--what do I know of them?  And they were the great
+things, are the great things to you, mean more to you than the little
+things I may comprehend.  And I had hoped, blindly, foolishly, that we
+might be one in the spirit as well as the one flesh.  It has been
+bitter, but I have faced it, and understand.  But to see my own red
+blood get away from me, elude me, rise above me!  It stuns.  God!  I
+have heard you read from your Browning--no, no; do not speak--and
+watched the play of your face, the uplift and the passion of it, and
+all the while the words droning in upon me, meaningless, musical,
+maddening.  And Mrs. Schoville sitting there, nursing an expression of
+idiotic ecstasy, and understanding no more than I.  I could have
+strangled her.
+
+"Why, I have stolen away, at night, with your Browning, and locked
+myself in like a thief in fear.  The text was senseless, I have beaten
+my head with my fist like a wild man, to try and knock some
+comprehension into it.  For my life had worked itself out along one set
+groove, deep and narrow.  I was in the rut.  I had done those things
+which came to my hand and done them well; but the time was past; I
+could not turn my hand anew.  I, who am strong and dominant, who have
+played large with destiny, who could buy body and soul a thousand
+painters and versifiers, was baffled by a few paltry cents' worth of
+printed paper!"
+
+He spilled her hair for a moment's silence.
+
+"To come back.  I had attempted the impossible, gambled against the
+inevitable.  I had sent you from me to get that which I had not,
+dreaming that we would still be one.  As though two could be added to
+two and still remain two.  So, to sum up, the breed still holds, but
+you have learned an alien tongue.  When you speak it I am deaf.  And
+bitterest of all, I know that the new tongue is the greater.  I do not
+know why I have said all this, made my confession of weakness--"
+
+"Oh, father mine, greatest of men!" She raised her head and laughed
+into his eyes, the while brushing back the thick iron-gray hair which
+thatched the dome of his forehead.  "You, who have wrestled more
+mightily, done greater things than these painters and versifiers.  You
+who know so well the law of change.  Might not the same plaint fall
+from your father's lips were he to sit now beside you and look upon
+your work and you?"
+
+"Yes, yes.  I have said that I understand.  Do not let us discuss
+it . . .  a moment's weakness.  My father was a great man."
+
+"And so mine."
+
+"A struggler to the end of his days.  He fought the great lone
+fight--"
+
+"And so mine."
+
+"And died fighting."
+
+"And so shall mine.  So shall we all, we Welses."
+
+He shook her playfully, in token of returning spirits.  "But I intend
+to sell out,--mines, Company, everything,--and study Browning."
+
+"Still the fight.  You can't discount the blood, father."
+
+"Why were you not a boy?" he demanded, abruptly.  "You would have been
+a splendid one.  As it is, a woman, made to be the delight of some man,
+you must pass from me--to-morrow, next day, this time next year, who
+knows how soon?  Ah? now I know the direction my thought has been
+trending.  Just as I know you do, so do I recognize the inevitableness
+of it and the justness.  But the man, Frona, the man?"
+
+"Don't," she demurred.  "Tell me of your father's fight, the last
+fight, the great lone fight at Treasure City.  Ten to one it was, and
+well fought.  Tell me."
+
+"No, Frona.  Do you realize that for the first time in our lives we
+talk together seriously, as father and daughter,--for the first time?
+You have had no mother to advise; no father, for I trusted the blood,
+and wisely, and let you go.  But there comes a time when the mother's
+counsel is needed, and you, you who never knew one?"
+
+Frona yielded, in instant recognition, and waiting, snuggled more
+closely to him.
+
+"This man, St. Vincent--how is it between you?"
+
+"I . . .  I do not know.  How do you mean?"
+
+"Remember always, Frona, that you have free choice, yours is the last
+word.  Still, I would like to understand.  I could . . .  perhaps . . .
+I might be able to suggest.  But nothing more.  Still, a suggestion . . ."
+
+There was something inexpressibly sacred about it, yet she found
+herself tongue-tied.  Instead of the one definite thing to say, a
+muddle of ideas fluttered in her brain.  After all, could he
+understand?  Was there not a difference which prevented him from
+comprehending the motives which, for her, were impelling?  For all her
+harking back to the primitive and stout defence of its sanity and
+truth, did his native philosophy give him the same code which she drew
+from her acquired philosophy?  Then she stood aside and regarded
+herself and the queries she put, and drew apart from them, for they
+breathed of treason.
+
+"There is nothing between us, father," she spoke up resolutely.  "Mr.
+St. Vincent has said nothing, nothing.  We are good friends, we like
+each other, we are very good friends.  I think that is all."
+
+"But you like each other; you like him.  Is it in the way a woman must
+like a man before she can honestly share her life with him, lose
+herself in him?  Do you feel with Ruth, so that when the time comes you
+can say, 'Thy people are my people, and thy God my God'?"
+
+"N---o.  It may be; but I cannot, dare not face it, say it or not say
+it, think it or not think it--now.  It is the great affirmation.  When
+it comes it must come, no one may know how or why, in a great white
+flash, like a revelation, hiding nothing, revealing everything in
+dazzling, blinding truth.  At least I so imagine."
+
+Jacob Welse nodded his head with the slow meditation of one who
+understands, yet stops to ponder and weigh again.
+
+"But why have you asked, father?  Why has Mr. St. Vincent been raised?
+I have been friends with other men."
+
+"But I have not felt about other men as I do of St. Vincent.  We may be
+truthful, you and I, and forgive the pain we give each other.  My
+opinion counts for no more than another's.  Fallibility is the
+commonest of curses.  Nor can I explain why I feel as I do--I oppose
+much in the way you expect to when your great white flash sears your
+eyes.  But, in a word, I do not like St. Vincent."
+
+"A very common judgment of him among the men," Frona interposed, driven
+irresistibly to the defensive.
+
+"Such consensus of opinion only makes my position stronger," he
+returned, but not disputatively.  "Yet I must remember that I look upon
+him as men look.  His popularity with women must proceed from the fact
+that women look differently than men, just as women do differ
+physically and spiritually from men.  It is deep, too deep for me to
+explain.  I but follow my nature and try to be just."
+
+"But have you nothing more definite?" she asked, groping for better
+comprehension of his attitude.  "Can you not put into some sort of
+coherence some one certain thing of the things you feel?"
+
+"I hardly dare.  Intuitions can rarely be expressed in terms of
+thought.  But let me try.  We Welses have never known a coward.  And
+where cowardice is, nothing can endure.  It is like building on sand,
+or like a vile disease which rots and rots and we know not when it may
+break forth."
+
+"But it seems to me that Mr. St. Vincent is the last man in the world
+with whom cowardice may be associated.  I cannot conceive of him in
+that light."
+
+The distress in her face hurt him.  "I know nothing against St.
+Vincent.  There is no evidence to show that he is anything but what he
+appears.  Still, I cannot help feeling it, in my fallible human way.
+Yet there is one thing I have heard, a sordid pot-house brawl in the
+Opera House.  Mind you, Frona, I say nothing against the brawl or the
+place,--men are men, but it is said that he did not act as a man ought
+that night."
+
+"But as you say, father, men are men.  We would like to have them other
+than they are, for the world surely would be better; but we must take
+them as they are.  Lucile--"
+
+"No, no; you misunderstand.  I did not refer to her, but to the fight.
+He did not . . .  he was cowardly."
+
+"But as you say, it is _said_.  He told me about it, not long
+afterwards, and I do not think he would have dared had there been
+anything--"
+
+"But I do not make it as a charge," Jacob Welse hastily broke in.
+"Merely hearsay, and the prejudice of the men would be sufficient to
+account for the tale.  And it has no bearing, anyway.  I should not
+have brought it up, for I have known good men funk in my time--buck
+fever, as it were.  And now let us dismiss it all from our minds.  I
+merely wished to suggest, and I suppose I have bungled.  But understand
+this, Frona," turning her face up to his, "understand above all things
+and in spite of them, first, last, and always, that you are my
+daughter, and that I believe your life is sacredly yours, not mine,
+yours to deal with and to make or mar.  Your life is yours to live, and
+in so far that I influence it you will not have lived your life, nor
+would your life have been yours.  Nor would you have been a Welse, for
+there was never a Welse yet who suffered dictation.  They died first,
+or went away to pioneer on the edge of things.
+
+"Why, if you thought the dance house the proper or natural medium for
+self-expression, I might be sad, but to-morrow I would sanction your
+going down to the Opera House.  It would be unwise to stop you, and,
+further, it is not our way.  The Welses have ever stood by, in many a
+lost cause and forlorn hope, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder.
+Conventions are worthless for such as we.  They are for the swine who
+without them would wallow deeper.  The weak must obey or be crushed;
+not so with the strong.  The mass is nothing; the individual
+everything; and it is the individual, always, that rules the mass and
+gives the law.  A fig for what the world says!  If the Welse should
+procreate a bastard line this day, it would be the way of the Welse,
+and you would be a daughter of the Welse, and in the face of hell and
+heaven, of God himself, we would stand together, we of the one blood,
+Frona, you and I."
+
+"You are larger than I," she whispered, kissing his forehead, and the
+caress of her lips seemed to him the soft impact of a leaf falling
+through the still autumn air.
+
+And as the heat of the room ebbed away, he told of her foremother and
+of his, and of the sturdy Welse who fought the great lone fight, and
+died, fighting, at Treasure City.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+The "Doll's House" was a success.  Mrs. Schoville ecstasized over it in
+terms so immeasurable, so unqualifiable, that Jacob Welse, standing
+near, bent a glittering gaze upon her plump white throat and
+unconsciously clutched and closed his hand on an invisible windpipe.
+Dave Harney proclaimed its excellence effusively, though he questioned
+the soundness of Nora's philosophy and swore by his Puritan gods that
+Torvald was the longest-eared Jack in two hemispheres.  Even Miss
+Mortimer, antagonistic as she was to the whole school, conceded that
+the players had redeemed it; while Matt McCarthy announced that he
+didn't blame Nora darlin' the least bit, though he told the Gold
+Commissioner privately that a song or so and a skirt dance wouldn't
+have hurt the performance.
+
+"Iv course the Nora girl was right," he insisted to Harney, both of
+whom were walking on the heels of Frona and St. Vincent.  "I'd be
+seein'--"
+
+"Rubber--"
+
+"Rubber yer gran'mother!" Matt wrathfully exclaimed.
+
+"Ez I was sayin'," Harney continued, imperturbably, "rubber boots is
+goin' to go sky-high 'bout the time of wash-up.  Three ounces the pair,
+an' you kin put your chips on that for a high card.  You kin gather 'em
+in now for an ounce a pair and clear two on the deal.  A cinch, Matt, a
+dead open an' shut."
+
+"The devil take you an' yer cinches!  It's Nora darlin' I have in me
+mind the while."
+
+They bade good-by to Frona and St. Vincent and went off disputing under
+the stars in the direction of the Opera House.
+
+Gregory St. Vincent heaved an audible sigh.  "At last."
+
+"At last what?" Frona asked, incuriously.
+
+"At last the first opportunity for me to tell you how well you did.
+You carried off the final scene wonderfully; so well that it seemed you
+were really passing out of my life forever."
+
+"What a misfortune!"
+
+"It was terrible."
+
+"No."
+
+"But, yes.  I took the whole condition upon myself.  You were not Nora,
+you were Frona; nor I Torvald, but Gregory.  When you made your exit,
+capped and jacketed and travelling-bag in hand, it seemed I could not
+possibly stay and finish my lines.  And when the door slammed and you
+were gone, the only thing that saved me was the curtain.  It brought me
+to myself, or else I would have rushed after you in the face of the
+audience."
+
+"It is strange how a simulated part may react upon one," Frona
+speculated.
+
+"Or rather?"  St. Vincent suggested.
+
+Frona made no answer, and they walked on without speech.  She was still
+under the spell of the evening, and the exaltation which had come to
+her as Nora had not yet departed.  Besides, she read between the lines
+of St. Vincent's conversation, and was oppressed by the timidity which
+comes over woman when she faces man on the verge of the greater
+intimacy.
+
+It was a clear, cold night, not over-cold,--not more than forty
+below,--and the land was bathed in a soft, diffused flood of light
+which found its source not in the stars, nor yet in the moon, which was
+somewhere over on the other side of the world.  From the south-east to
+the northwest a pale-greenish glow fringed the rim of the heavens, and
+it was from this the dim radiance was exhaled.
+
+Suddenly, like the ray of a search-light, a band of white light
+ploughed overhead.  Night turned to ghostly day on the instant, then
+blacker night descended.  But to the southeast a noiseless commotion
+was apparent.  The glowing greenish gauze was in a ferment, bubbling,
+uprearing, downfalling, and tentatively thrusting huge bodiless hands
+into the upper ether.  Once more a cyclopean rocket twisted its fiery
+way across the sky, from horizon to zenith, and on, and on, in
+tremendous flight, to horizon again.  But the span could not hold, and
+in its wake the black night brooded.  And yet again, broader, stronger,
+deeper, lavishly spilling streamers to right and left, it flaunted the
+midmost zenith with its gorgeous flare, and passed on and down to the
+further edge of the world.  Heaven was bridged at last, and the bridge
+endured!
+
+At this flaming triumph the silence of earth was broken, and ten
+thousand wolf-dogs, in long-drawn unisoned howls, sobbed their dismay
+and grief.  Frona shivered, and St. Vincent passed his arm about her
+waist.  The woman in her was aware of the touch of man, and of a slight
+tingling thrill of vague delight; but she made no resistance.  And as
+the wolf-dogs mourned at her feet and the aurora wantoned overhead, she
+felt herself drawn against him closely.
+
+"Need I tell my story?" he whispered.
+
+She drooped her head in tired content on his shoulder, and together
+they watched the burning vault wherein the stars dimmed and vanished.
+Ebbing, flowing, pulsing to some tremendous rhythm, the prism colors
+hurled themselves in luminous deluge across the firmament.  Then the
+canopy of heaven became a mighty loom, wherein imperial purple and deep
+sea-green blended, wove, and interwove, with blazing woof and flashing
+warp, till the most delicate of tulles, fluorescent and bewildering,
+was daintily and airily shaken in the face of the astonished night.
+
+Without warning the span was sundered by an arrogant arm of black.  The
+arch dissolved in blushing confusion.  Chasms of blackness yawned,
+grew, and rushed together.  Broken masses of strayed color and fading
+fire stole timidly towards the sky-line.  Then the dome of night
+towered imponderable, immense, and the stars came back one by one, and
+the wolf-dogs mourned anew.
+
+"I can offer you so little, dear," the man said with a slightly
+perceptible bitterness.  "The precarious fortunes of a gypsy wanderer."
+
+And the woman, placing his hand and pressing it against her heart,
+said, as a great woman had said before her, "A tent and a crust of
+bread with you, Richard."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+How-ha was only an Indian woman, bred of a long line of fish-eating,
+meat-rending carnivores, and her ethics were as crude and simple as
+her blood.  But long contact with the whites had given her an insight
+into their way of looking at things, and though she grunted
+contemptuously in her secret soul, she none the less understood their
+way perfectly.  Ten years previous she had cooked for Jacob Welse,
+and served him in one fashion or another ever since; and when on a
+dreary January morning she opened the front door in response to the
+deep-tongued knocker, even her stolid presence was shaken as she
+recognized the visitor.  Not that the average man or woman would have
+so recognized.  But How-ha's faculties of observing and remembering
+details had been developed in a hard school where death dealt his
+blow to the lax and life saluted the vigilant.
+
+How-ha looked up and down the woman who stood before her.  Through
+the heavy veil she could barely distinguish the flash of the eyes,
+while the hood of the _parka_ effectually concealed the hair, and the
+_parka_ proper the particular outlines of the body.  But How-ha
+paused and looked again.  There was something familiar in the vague
+general outline.  She quested back to the shrouded head again, and
+knew the unmistakable poise.  Then How-ha's eyes went blear as she
+traversed the simple windings of her own brain, inspecting the bare
+shelves taciturnly stored with the impressions of a meagre life.  No
+disorder; no confused mingling of records; no devious and
+interminable impress of complex emotions, tangled theories, and
+bewildering abstractions--nothing but simple facts, neatly classified
+and conveniently collated.  Unerringly from the stores of the past
+she picked and chose and put together in the instant present, till
+obscurity dropped from the woman before her, and she knew her, word
+and deed and look and history.
+
+"Much better you go 'way quickety-quick," How-ha informed her.
+
+"Miss Welse.  I wish to see her."
+
+The strange woman spoke in firm, even tones which betokened the will
+behind, but which failed to move How-ha.
+
+"Much better you go," she repeated, stolidly.
+
+"Here, take this to Frona Welse, and--ah! would you!" (thrusting her
+knee between the door and jamb) "and leave the door open."
+
+How-ha scowled, but took the note; for she could not shake off the
+grip of the ten years of servitude to the superior race.
+
+
+  May I see you?
+
+     LUCILE.
+
+
+So the note ran.  Frona glanced up expectantly at the Indian woman.
+
+"Um kick toes outside," How-ha explained.  "Me tell um go 'way
+quickety-quick?  Eh?  You t'ink yes?  Um no good.  Um--"
+
+"No.  Take her,"--Frona was thinking quickly,--"no; bring her up
+here."
+
+"Much better--"
+
+"Go!"
+
+How-ha grunted, and yielded up the obedience she could not withhold;
+though, as she went down the stairs to the door, in a tenebrous,
+glimmering way she wondered that the accident of white skin or swart
+made master or servant as the case might be.
+
+In the one sweep of vision, Lucile took in Frona smiling with
+extended hand in the foreground, the dainty dressing-table, the
+simple finery, the thousand girlish evidences; and with the sweet
+wholesomeness of it pervading her nostrils, her own girlhood rose up
+and smote her.  Then she turned a bleak eye and cold ear on outward
+things.
+
+"I am glad you came," Frona was saying.  "I have _so_ wanted to see
+you again, and--but do get that heavy _parka_ off, please.  How thick
+it is, and what splendid fur and workmanship!"
+
+"Yes, from Siberia."  A present from St. Vincent, Lucile felt like
+adding, but said instead, "The Siberians have not yet learned to
+scamp their work, you know."
+
+She sank down into the low-seated rocker with a native grace which
+could not escape the beauty-loving eye of the girl, and with
+proud-poised head and silent tongue listened to Frona as the minutes
+ticked away, and observed with impersonal amusement Frona's painful
+toil at making conversation.
+
+"What has she come for?" Frona asked herself, as she talked on furs
+and weather and indifferent things.
+
+"If you do not say something, Lucile, I shall get nervous, soon," she
+ventured at last in desperation.  "Has anything happened?"
+
+Lucile went over to the mirror and picked up, from among the trinkets
+beneath, a tiny open-work miniature of Frona.  "This is you?  How old
+were you?"
+
+"Sixteen."
+
+"A sylph, but a cold northern one."
+
+"The blood warms late with us," Frona reproved; "but is--"
+
+"None the less warm for that," Lucile laughed.  "And how old are you
+now?"
+
+"Twenty."
+
+"Twenty," Lucile repeated, slowly.  "Twenty," and resumed her seat.
+"You are twenty.  And I am twenty-four."
+
+"So little difference as that!"
+
+"But our blood warms early."  Lucile voiced her reproach across the
+unfathomable gulf which four years could not plumb.
+
+Frona could hardly hide her vexation.  Lucile went over and looked at
+the miniature again and returned.
+
+"What do you think of love?" she asked abruptly, her face softening
+unheralded into a smile.
+
+"Love?" the girl quavered.
+
+"Yes, love.  What do you know about it?  What do you think of it?"
+
+A flood of definitions, glowing and rosy, sped to her tongue, but
+Frona swept them aside and answered, "Love is immolation."
+
+"Very good--sacrifice.  And, now, does it pay?"
+
+"Yes, it pays.  Of course it pays.  Who can doubt it?"
+
+Lucile's eyes twinkled amusedly.
+
+"Why do you smile?" Frona asked.
+
+"Look at me, Frona."  Lucile stood up and her face blazed.  "I am
+twenty-four.  Not altogether a fright; not altogether a dunce.  I
+have a heart.  I have good red blood and warm.  And I have loved.  I
+do not remember the pay.  I know only that I have paid."
+
+"And in the paying were paid," Frona took up warmly.  "The price was
+the reward.  If love be fallible, yet you have loved; you have done,
+you have served.  What more would you?"
+
+"The whelpage love," Lucile sneered.
+
+"Oh!  You are unfair."
+
+"I do you justice," Lucile insisted firmly.  "You would tell me that
+you know; that you have gone unveiled and seen clear-eyed; that
+without placing more than lips to the brim you have divined the taste
+of the dregs, and that the taste is good.  Bah!  The whelpage love!
+And, oh, Frona, I know; you are full womanly and broad, and lend no
+ear to little things, but"--she tapped a slender finger to
+forehead--"it is all here.  It is a heady brew, and you have smelled
+the fumes overmuch.  But drain the dregs, turn down the glass, and
+say that it is good.  No, God forbid!" she cried, passionately.
+"There are good loves.  You should find no masquerade, but one fair
+and shining."
+
+Frona was up to her old trick,--their common one,--and her hand slid
+down Lucile's arm till hand clasped in hand.  "You say things which I
+feel are wrong, yet may not answer.  I can, but how dare I?  I dare
+not put mere thoughts against your facts.  I, who have lived so
+little, cannot in theory give the lie to you who have lived so
+much--"
+
+"'For he who lives more lives than one, more lives than one must
+die.'"
+
+From out of her pain, Lucile spoke the words of her pain, and Frona,
+throwing arms about her, sobbed on her breast in understanding.  As
+for Lucile, the slight nervous ingathering of the brows above her
+eyes smoothed out, and she pressed the kiss of motherhood, lightly
+and secretly, on the other's hair.  For a space,--then the brows
+ingathered, the lips drew firm, and she put Frona from her.
+
+"You are going to marry Gregory St. Vincent?"
+
+Frona was startled.  It was only a fortnight old, and not a word had
+been breathed.  "How do you know?"
+
+"You have answered."  Lucile watched Frona's open face and the bold
+running advertisement, and felt as the skilled fencer who fronts a
+tyro, weak of wrist, each opening naked to his hand.  "How do I
+know?"  She laughed harshly.  "When a man leaves one's arms suddenly,
+lips wet with last kisses and mouth areek with last lies!"
+
+"And--?"
+
+"Forgets the way back to those arms."
+
+"So?"  The blood of the Welse pounded up, and like a hot sun dried
+the mists from her eyes and left them flashing.  "Then that is why
+you came.  I could have guessed it had I given second thought to
+Dawson's gossip."
+
+"It is not too late." Lucile's lip curled.  "And it is your way."
+
+"And I am mindful.  What is it?  Do you intend telling me what he has
+done, what he has been to you.  Let me say that it is useless.  He is
+a man, as you and I are women."
+
+"No," Lucile lied, swallowing her astonishment.
+
+"I had not thought that any action of his would affect you.  I knew
+you were too great for that.  But--have you considered me?"
+
+Frona caught her breath for a moment.  Then she straightened out her
+arms to hold the man in challenge to the arms of Lucile.
+
+"Your father over again," Lucile exclaimed.  "Oh, you impossible
+Welses!"
+
+"But he is not worthy of you, Frona Welse," she continued; "of me,
+yes.  He is not a nice man, a great man, nor a good.  His love cannot
+match with yours.  Bah!  He does not possess love; passion, of one
+sort and another, is the best he may lay claim to.  That you do not
+want.  It is all, at the best, he can give you.  And you, pray what
+may you give him?  Yourself?  A prodigious waste!  But your father's
+yellow--"
+
+"Don't go on, or I shall refuse to listen.  It is wrong of you."  So
+Frona made her cease, and then, with bold inconsistency, "And what
+may the woman Lucile give him?"
+
+"Some few wild moments," was the prompt response; "a burning burst of
+happiness, and the regrets of hell--which latter he deserves, as do
+I.  So the balance is maintained, and all is well."
+
+"But--but--"
+
+"For there is a devil in him," she held on, "a most alluring devil,
+which delights me, on my soul it does, and which, pray God, Frona,
+you may never know.  For you have no devil; mine matches his and
+mates.  I am free to confess that the whole thing is only an
+attraction.  There is nothing permanent about him, nor about me.  And
+there's the beauty, the balance is preserved."
+
+Frona lay back in her chair and lazily regarded her visitor, Lucile
+waited for her to speak.  It was very quiet.
+
+"Well?" Lucile at last demanded, in a low, curious tone, at the same
+time rising to slip into her parka.
+
+"Nothing.  I was only waiting."
+
+"I am done."
+
+"Then let me say that I do not understand you," Frona summed up,
+coldly.  "I cannot somehow just catch your motive.  There is a flat
+ring to what you have said.  However, of this I am sure: for some
+unaccountable reason you have been untrue to yourself to-day.  Do not
+ask me, for, as I said before, I do not know where or how; yet I am
+none the less convinced.  This I do know, you are not the Lucile I
+met by the wood trail across the river.  That was the true Lucile,
+little though I saw of her.  The woman who is here to-day is a
+strange woman.  I do not know her.  Sometimes it has seemed she was
+Lucile, but rarely.  This woman has lied, lied to me, and lied to me
+about herself.  As to what she said of the man, at the worst that is
+merely an opinion.  It may be she has lied about him likewise.  The
+chance is large that she has.  What do you think about it?"
+
+"That you are a very clever girl, Frona.  That you speak sometimes
+more truly than you know, and that at others you are blinder than you
+dream."
+
+"There is something I could love in you, but you have hidden it away
+so that I cannot find it."
+
+Lucile's lips trembled on the verge of speech.  But she settled her
+parka about her and turned to go.
+
+Frona saw her to the door herself, and How-ha pondered over the white
+who made the law and was greater than the law.
+
+When the door had closed, Lucile spat into the street.  "Faugh!  St.
+Vincent!  I have defiled my mouth with your name!"  And she spat
+again.
+
+
+"Come in."
+
+At the summons Matt McCarthy pulled the latch-string, pushed the door
+open, and closed it carefully behind him.
+
+"Oh, it is you!"  St. Vincent regarded his visitor with dark
+abstraction, then, recollecting himself, held out his hand.  "Why,
+hello, Matt, old man.  My mind was a thousand miles away when you
+entered.  Take a stool and make yourself comfortable.  There's the
+tobacco by your hand.  Take a try at it and give us your verdict."
+
+"An' well may his mind be a thousand miles away," Matt assured
+himself; for in the dark he had passed a woman on the trail who
+looked suspiciously like Lucile.  But aloud, "Sure, an' it's
+day-dramin' ye mane.  An' small wondher."
+
+"How's that?" the correspondent asked, cheerily.
+
+"By the same token that I met Lucile down the trail a piece, an' the
+heels iv her moccasins pointing to yer shack.  It's a bitter tongue
+the jade slings on occasion," Matt chuckled.
+
+"That's the worst of it."  St. Vincent met him frankly.  "A man looks
+sidewise at them for a passing moment, and they demand that the
+moment be eternal."
+
+Off with the old love's a stiff proposition, eh?"
+
+"I should say so.  And you understand.  It's easy to see, Matt,
+you've had some experience in your time."
+
+"In me time?  I'll have ye know I'm not too old to still enjoy a bit
+iv a fling."
+
+"Certainly, certainly.  One can read it in your eyes.  The warm heart
+and the roving eye, Matt!"  He slapped his visitor on the shoulder
+with a hearty laugh.
+
+"An' I've none the best iv ye, Vincent.  'Tis a wicked lad ye are,
+with a takin' way with the ladies--as plain as the nose on yer face.
+Manny's the idle kiss ye've given, an' manny's the heart ye've broke.
+But, Vincent, bye, did ye iver know the rale thing?"
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"The rale thing, the rale thing--that is--well, have ye been iver a
+father?"
+
+St. Vincent shook his head.
+
+"And niver have I.  But have ye felt the love iv a father, thin?"
+
+"I hardly know.  I don't think so."
+
+"Well, I have.  An' it's the rale thing, I'll tell ye.  If iver a man
+suckled a child, I did, or the next door to it.  A girl child at
+that, an' she's woman grown, now, an' if the thing is possible, I
+love her more than her own blood-father.  Bad luck, exciptin' her,
+there was niver but one woman I loved, an' that woman had mated
+beforetime.  Not a soul did I brathe a word to, trust me, nor even
+herself.  But she died.  God's love be with her."
+
+His chin went down upon his chest and he quested back to a
+flaxen-haired Saxon woman, strayed like a bit of sunshine into the
+log store by the Dyea River.  He looked up suddenly, and caught St.
+Vincent's stare bent blankly to the floor as he mused on other things.
+
+"A truce to foolishness, Vincent."
+
+The correspondent returned to himself with an effort and found the
+Irishman's small blue eyes boring into him.
+
+"Are ye a brave man, Vincent?"
+
+For a second's space they searched each other's souls.  And in that
+space Matt could have sworn he saw the faintest possible flicker or
+flutter in the man's eyes.
+
+He brought his fist down on the table with a triumphant crash.  "By
+God, yer not!"
+
+The correspondent pulled the tobacco jug over to him and rolled a
+cigarette.  He rolled it carefully, the delicate rice paper crisping
+in his hand without a tremor; but all the while a red tide mounting
+up from beneath the collar of his shirt, deepening in the hollows of
+the cheeks and thinning against the cheekbones above, creeping,
+spreading, till all his face was aflame.
+
+"'Tis good.  An' likely it saves me fingers a dirty job.  Vincent,
+man, the girl child which is woman grown slapes in Dawson this night.
+God help us, you an' me, but we'll niver hit again the pillow as
+clane an' pure as she!  Vincent, a word to the wise: ye'll niver lay
+holy hand or otherwise upon her."
+
+The devil, which Lucile had proclaimed, began to quicken,--a fuming,
+fretting, irrational devil.
+
+"I do not like ye.  I kape me raysons to meself.  It is sufficient.
+But take this to heart, an' take it well: should ye be mad enough to
+make her yer wife, iv that damned day ye'll niver see the inding, nor
+lay eye upon the bridal bed.  Why, man, I cud bate ye to death with
+me two fists if need be.  But it's to be hoped I'll do a nater job.
+Rest aisy.  I promise ye."
+
+"You Irish pig!"
+
+So the devil burst forth, and all unaware, for McCarthy found himself
+eye-high with the muzzle of a Colt's revolver.
+
+"Is it loaded?" he asked.  "I belave ye.  But why are ye lingerin'?
+Lift the hammer, will ye?"
+
+The correspondent's trigger-finger moved and there was a warning
+click.
+
+"Now pull it.  Pull it, I say.  As though ye cud, with that flutter
+to yer eye."
+
+St. Vincent attempted to turn his head aside.
+
+"Look at me, man!" McCarthy commanded.  "Kape yer eyes on me when ye
+do it."
+
+Unwillingly the sideward movement was arrested, and his eyes returned
+and met the Irishman's.
+
+"Now!"
+
+St. Vincent ground his teeth and pulled the trigger--at least he
+thought he did, as men think they do things in dreams.  He willed the
+deed, flashed the order forth; but the flutter of his soul stopped it.
+
+"'Tis paralyzed, is it, that shaky little finger?"  Matt grinned into
+the face of the tortured man.  "Now turn it aside, so, an' drop it,
+gently . . . gently . . . gently."  His voice crooned away in
+soothing diminuendo.
+
+When the trigger was safely down, St. Vincent let the revolver fall
+from his hand, and with a slight audible sigh sank nervelessly upon a
+stool.  He tried to straighten himself, but instead dropped down upon
+the table and buried his face in his palsied hands.  Matt drew on his
+mittens, looking down upon him pityingly the while, and went out,
+closing the door softly behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Where nature shows the rough hand, the sons of men are apt to respond
+with kindred roughness.  The amenities of life spring up only in mellow
+lands, where the sun is warm and the earth fat.  The damp and soggy
+climate of Britain drives men to strong drink; the rosy Orient lures to
+the dream splendors of the lotus.  The big-bodied, white-skinned
+northern dweller, rude and ferocious, bellows his anger uncouthly and
+drives a gross fist into the face of his foe.  The supple
+south-sojourner, silken of smile and lazy of gesture, waits, and does
+his work from behind, when no man looketh, gracefully and without
+offence.  Their ends are one; the difference lies in their ways, and
+therein the climate, and the cumulative effect thereof, is the
+determining factor.  Both are sinners, as men born of women have ever
+been; but the one does his sin openly, in the clear sight of God; the
+other--as though God could not see--veils his iniquity with shimmering
+fancies, hiding it like it were some splendid mystery.
+
+These be the ways of men, each as the sun shines upon him and the wind
+blows against him, according to his kind, and the seed of his father,
+and the milk of his mother.  Each is the resultant of many forces which
+go to make a pressure mightier than he, and which moulds him in the
+predestined shape.  But, with sound legs under him, he may run away,
+and meet with a new pressure.  He may continue running, each new
+pressure prodding him as he goes, until he dies and his final form will
+be that predestined of the many pressures.  An exchange of
+cradle-babes, and the base-born slave may wear the purple imperially,
+and the royal infant begs an alms as wheedlingly or cringe to the lash
+as abjectly as his meanest subject.  A Chesterfield, with an empty
+belly, chancing upon good fare, will gorge as faithfully as the swine
+in the next sty.  And an Epicurus, in the dirt-igloo of the Eskimos,
+will wax eloquent over the whale oil and walrus blubber, or die.
+
+Thus, in the young Northland, frosty and grim and menacing, men
+stripped off the sloth of the south and gave battle greatly.  And they
+stripped likewise much of the veneer of civilization--all of its
+follies, most of its foibles, and perhaps a few of its virtues.  Maybe
+so; but they reserved the great traditions and at least lived frankly,
+laughed honestly, and looked one another in the eyes.
+
+And so it is not well for women, born south of fifty-three and reared
+gently, to knock loosely about the Northland, unless they be great of
+heart.  They may be soft and tender and sensitive, possessed of eyes
+which have not lost the lustre and the wonder, and of ears used only to
+sweet sounds; but if their philosophy is sane and stable, large enough
+to understand and to forgive, they will come to no harm and attain
+comprehension.  If not, they will see things and hear things which
+hurt, and they will suffer greatly, and lose faith in man--which is the
+greatest evil that may happen them.  Such should be sedulously
+cherished, and it were well to depute this to their men-folk, the
+nearer of kin the better.  In line, it were good policy to seek out a
+cabin on the hill overlooking Dawson, or--best of all--across the Yukon
+on the western bank.  Let them not move abroad unheralded and
+unaccompanied; and the hillside back of the cabin may be recommended as
+a fit field for stretching muscles and breathing deeply, a place where
+their ears may remain undefiled by the harsh words of men who strive to
+the utmost.
+
+
+Vance Corliss wiped the last tin dish and filed it away on the shelf,
+lighted his pipe, and rolled over on his back on the bunk to
+contemplate the moss-chinked roof of his French Hill cabin.  This
+French Hill cabin stood on the last dip of the hill into Eldorado
+Creek, close to the main-travelled trail; and its one window blinked
+cheerily of nights at those who journeyed late.
+
+The door was kicked open, and Del Bishop staggered in with a load of
+fire-wood.  His breath had so settled on his face in a white rime that
+he could not speak.  Such a condition was ever a hardship with the man,
+so he thrust his face forthwith into the quivering heat above the
+stove.  In a trice the frost was started and the thawed streamlets
+dancing madly on the white-hot surface beneath.  Then the ice began to
+fall from is beard in chunks, rattling on the lid-tops and simmering
+spitefully till spurted upward in clouds of steam.
+
+"And so you witness an actual phenomenon, illustrative of the three
+forms of matter," Vance laughed, mimicking the monotonous tones of the
+demonstrator; "solid, liquid, and vapor.  In another moment you will
+have the gas."
+
+"Th--th--that's all very well," Bishop spluttered, wrestling with an
+obstructing piece of ice until it was wrenched from his upper lip and
+slammed stoveward with a bang.
+
+"How cold do you make it, Del?  Fifty?"
+
+"Fifty?" the pocket-miner demanded with unutterable scorn, wiping his
+face.  "Quicksilver's been solid for hours, and it's been gittin'
+colder an' colder ever since.  Fifty?  I'll bet my new mittens against
+your old moccasins that it ain't a notch below seventy."
+
+"Think so?"
+
+"D'ye want to bet?"
+
+Vance nodded laughingly.
+
+"Centigrade or Fahrenheit?" Bishop asked, suddenly suspicious.
+
+"Oh, well, if you want my old moccasins so badly," Vance rejoined,
+feigning to be hurt by the other's lack of faith, "why, you can have
+them without betting."
+
+Del snorted and flung himself down on the opposite bunk.  "Think yer
+funny, don't you?"  No answer forthcoming, he deemed the retort
+conclusive, rolled over, and fell to studying the moss chinks.
+
+Fifteen minutes of this diversion sufficed.  "Play you a rubber of crib
+before bed," he challenged across to the other bunk.
+
+"I'll go you." Corliss got up, stretched, and moved the kerosene lamp
+from the shelf to the table, "Think it will hold out?" he asked,
+surveying the oil-level through the cheap glass.
+
+Bishop threw down the crib-board and cards, and measured the contents
+of the lamp with his eye.  "Forgot to fill it, didn't I?  Too late now.
+Do it to-morrow.  It'll last the rubber out, sure."
+
+Corliss took up the cards, but paused in the shuffling.  "We've a big
+trip before us, Del, about a month from now, the middle of March as
+near as I can plan it,--up the Stuart River to McQuestion; up
+McQuestion and back again down the Mayo; then across country to Mazy
+May, winding up at Henderson Creek--"
+
+"On the Indian River?"
+
+"No," Corliss replied, as he dealt the hands; "just below where the
+Stuart taps the Yukon.  And then back to Dawson before the ice breaks."
+
+The pocket-miner's eyes sparkled.  "Keep us hustlin'; but, say, it's a
+trip, isn't it!  Hunch?"
+
+"I've received word from the Parker outfit on the Mayo, and McPherson
+isn't asleep on Henderson--you don't know him.  They're keeping quiet,
+and of course one can't tell, but . . ."
+
+Bishop nodded his head sagely, while Corliss turned the trump he had
+cut.  A sure vision of a "twenty-four" hand was dazzling him, when
+there was a sound of voices without and the door shook to a heavy knock.
+
+"Come in!" he bawled.  "An' don't make such a row about it!  Look at
+that"--to Corliss, at the same time facing his hand--"fifteen-eight,
+fifteen-sixteen, and eight are twenty-four.  Just my luck!"
+
+Corliss started swiftly to his feet.  Bishop jerked his head about.
+Two women and a man had staggered clumsily in through the door, and
+were standing just inside, momentarily blinded by the light.
+
+"By all the Prophets!  Cornell!"  The pocket-miner wrung the man's hand
+and led him forward.  "You recollect Cornell, Corliss?  Jake Cornell,
+Thirty-Seven and a Half Eldorado."
+
+"How could I forget?" the engineer acknowledged warmly, shaking his
+hand.  "That was a miserable night you put us up last fall, about as
+miserable as the moose-steak was good that you gave us for breakfast."
+
+Jake Cornell, hirsute and cadaverous of aspect, nodded his head with
+emphasis and deposited a corpulent demijohn on the table.  Again he
+nodded his head, and glared wildly about him.  The stove caught his eye
+and he strode over to it, lifted a lid, and spat out a mouthful of
+amber-colored juice.  Another stride and he was back.
+
+"'Course I recollect the night," he rumbled, the ice clattering from
+his hairy jaws.  "And I'm danged glad to see you, that's a fact."  He
+seemed suddenly to remember himself, and added a little sheepishly,
+"The fact is, we're all danged glad to see you, ain't we, girls?"  He
+twisted his head about and nodded his companions up.  "Blanche, my
+dear, Mr. Corliss--hem--it gives me . . . hem . . . it gives me
+pleasure to make you acquainted.  Cariboo Blanche, sir.  Cariboo
+Blanche."
+
+"Pleased to meet you."  Cariboo Blanche put out a frank hand and looked
+him over keenly.  She was a fair-featured, blondish woman, originally
+not unpleasing of appearance, but now with lines all deepened and
+hardened as on the faces of men who have endured much weather-beat.
+
+Congratulating himself upon his social proficiency, Jake Cornell
+cleared his throat and marshalled the second woman to the front.  "Mr.
+Corliss, the Virgin; I make you both acquainted.  Hem!" in response to
+the query in Vance's eyes--"Yes, the Virgin.  That's all, just the
+Virgin."
+
+She smiled and bowed, but did not shake hands.  "A toff" was her secret
+comment upon the engineer; and from her limited experience she had been
+led to understand that it was not good form among "toffs" to shake
+hands.
+
+Corliss fumbled his hand, then bowed, and looked at her curiously.  She
+was a pretty, low-browed creature; darkly pretty, with a well-favored
+body, and for all that the type was mean, he could not escape the charm
+of her over-brimming vitality.  She seemed bursting with it, and every
+quick, spontaneous movement appeared to spring from very excess of red
+blood and superabundant energy.
+
+"Pretty healthy proposition, ain't she?" Jake Cornell demanded,
+following his host's gaze with approval.
+
+"None o' your gammon, Jake," the Virgin snapped back, with lip curled
+contemptuously for Vance's especial benefit.  "I fancy it'd be more in
+keeping if you'd look to pore Blanche, there."
+
+"Fact is, we're plum ding dong played out," Jake said.  "An' Blanche
+went through the ice just down the trail, and her feet's like to
+freezin'."
+
+Blanche smiled as Corliss piloted her to a stool by the fire, and her
+stern mouth gave no indication of the pain she was suffering.  He
+turned away when the Virgin addressed herself to removing the wet
+footgear, while Bishop went rummaging for socks and moccasins.
+
+"Didn't go in more'n to the ankles," Cornell explained confidentially;
+"but that's plenty a night like this."
+
+Corliss agreed with a nod of the head.
+
+"Spotted your light, and--hem--and so we come.  Don't mind, do you?"
+
+"Why, certainly not--"
+
+"No intrudin'?"
+
+Corliss reassured him by laying hand on his shoulder and cordially
+pressing him to a seat.  Blanche sighed luxuriously.  Her wet stockings
+were stretched up and already steaming, and her feet basking in the
+capacious warmth of Bishop's Siwash socks.  Vance shoved the tobacco
+canister across, but Cornell pulled out a handful of cigars and passed
+them around.
+
+"Uncommon bad piece of trail just this side of the turn," he remarked
+stentoriously, at the same time flinging an eloquent glance at the
+demijohn.  "Ice rotten from the springs and no sign till you're into
+it."  Turning to the woman by the stove, "How're you feeling, Blanche?"
+
+"Tony," she responded, stretching her body lazily and redisposing her
+feet; "though my legs ain't as limber as when we pulled out."
+
+Looking to his host for consent, Cornell tilted the demijohn over his
+arm and partly filled the four tin mugs and an empty jelly glass.
+
+"Wot's the matter with a toddy?" the Virgin broke in; "or a punch?"
+
+"Got any lime juice?" she demanded of Corliss.
+
+"You 'ave?  Jolly!"  She directed her dark eyes towards Del.  "'Ere,
+you, cookie!  Trot out your mixing-pan and sling the kettle for 'ot
+water.  Come on!  All hands!  Jake's treat, and I'll show you 'ow!  Any
+sugar, Mr. Corliss?  And nutmeg?  Cinnamon, then?  O.K.  It'll do.
+Lively now, cookie!"
+
+"Ain't she a peach?" Cornell confided to Vance, watching her with
+mellow eyes as she stirred the steaming brew.
+
+But the Virgin directed her attentions to the engineer.  "Don't mind
+'im, sir," she advised.  "'E's more'n arf-gorn a'ready, a-'itting the
+jug every blessed stop."
+
+"Now, my dear--" Jake protested.
+
+"Don't you my-dear me," she sniffed.  "I don't like you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Cos . . ."  She ladled the punch carefully into the mugs and
+meditated.  "Cos you chew tobacco.  Cos you're whiskery.  Wot I take to
+is smooth-faced young chaps."
+
+"Don't take any stock in her nonsense," the Fraction King warned, "She
+just does it a-purpose to get me mad."
+
+"Now then!" she commanded, sharply.  "Step up to your licker!  'Ere's
+'ow!"
+
+"What'll it be?" cried Blanche from the stove.
+
+The elevated mugs wavered and halted.
+
+"The Queen, Gawd bless 'er!" the Virgin toasted promptly.
+
+"And Bill!" Del Bishop interrupted.
+
+Again the mugs wavered.
+
+"Bill 'oo?" the Virgin asked, suspiciously.
+
+"McKinley."
+
+She favored him with a smile.  "Thank you, cookie, you're a trump.
+Now!  'Ere's a go, gents!  Take it standing.  The Queen, Gawd bless
+'er, and Bill McKinley!"
+
+"Bottoms up!" thundered Jake Cornell, and the mugs smote the table with
+clanging rims.
+
+Vance Corliss discovered himself amused and interested.  According to
+Frona, he mused ironically,--this was learning life, was adding to his
+sum of human generalizations.  The phrase was hers, and he rolled it
+over a couple of times.  Then, again, her engagement with St. Vincent
+crept into his thought, and he charmed the Virgin by asking her to
+sing.  But she was coy, and only after Bishop had rendered the several
+score stanzas of "Flying Cloud" did she comply.  Her voice, in a weakly
+way, probably registered an octave and a half; below that point it
+underwent strange metamorphoses, while on the upper levels it was
+devious and rickety.  Nevertheless she sang "Take Back Your Gold" with
+touching effect, which brought a fiery moisture into the eyes of the
+Fraction King, who listened greedily, for the time being experiencing
+unwonted ethical yearnings.
+
+The applause was generous, followed immediately by Bishop, who toasted
+the singer as the "Enchantress of Bow Bells," to the reverberating
+"bottoms up!" of Jake Cornell.
+
+
+Two hours later, Frona Welse rapped.  It was a sharp, insistent rap,
+penetrating the din within and bringing Corliss to the door.
+
+She gave a glad little cry when she saw who it was.  "Oh; it is you,
+Vance!  I didn't know you lived here."
+
+He shook hands and blocked the doorway with his body.  Behind him the
+Virgin was laughing and Jake Cornell  roaring:
+
+  "Oh, cable this message along the track;
+  The Prod's out West, but he's coming back;
+  Put plenty of veal for one on the rack,
+    Trolla lala, la la la, la la!"
+
+
+"What is it?" Vance questioned.  "Anything up?"
+
+"I think you might ask me in."  There was a hint of reproach in Frona's
+voice, and of haste.  "I blundered through the ice, and my feet are
+freezing."
+
+"O Gawd!" in the exuberant tones of the Virgin, came whirling over
+Vance's shoulder, and the voices of Blanche and Bishop joining in a
+laugh against Cornell, and that worthy's vociferous protestations.  It
+seemed to him that all the blood of his body had rushed into his face.
+"But you can't come in, Frona.  Don't you hear them?"
+
+"But I must," she insisted.  "My feet are freezing."
+
+With a gesture of resignation he stepped aside and closed the door
+after her.  Coming suddenly in from the darkness, she hesitated a
+moment, but in that moment recovered her sight and took in the scene.
+The air was thick with tobacco smoke, and the odor of it, in the close
+room, was sickening to one fresh from the pure outside.  On the table a
+column of steam was ascending from the big mixing-pan.  The Virgin,
+fleeing before Cornell, was defending herself with a long mustard
+spoon.  Evading him and watching her chance, she continually daubed his
+nose and cheeks with the yellow smear.  Blanche had twisted about from
+the stove to see the fun, and Del Bishop, with a mug at rest half-way
+to his lips, was applauding the successive strokes.  The faces of all
+were flushed.
+
+Vance leaned nervelessly against the door.  The whole situation seemed
+so unthinkably impossible.  An insane desire to laugh came over him,
+which resolved itself into a coughing fit.  But Frona, realizing her
+own pressing need by the growing absence of sensation in her feet,
+stepped forward.
+
+"Hello, Del!" she called.
+
+The mirth froze on his face at the familiar sound and he slowly and
+unwilling turned his head to meet her.  She had slipped the hood of her
+parka back, and her face, outlined against the dark fur, rosy with the
+cold and bright, was like a shaft of the sun shot into the murk of a
+boozing-ken.  They all knew her, for who did not know Jacob Welse's
+daughter?  The Virgin dropped the mustard-spoon with a startled shriek,
+while Cornell, passing a dazed hand across his yellow markings and
+consummating the general smear, collapsed on the nearest stool.
+Cariboo Blanche alone retained her self-possession, and laughed softly.
+
+Bishop managed to articulate "Hello!" but was unable to stave off the
+silence which settled down.
+
+Frona waited a second, and then said, "Good-evening, all."
+
+"This way."  Vance had recovered himself, and seated her by the stove
+opposite Blanche.  "Better get your things off quickly, and be careful
+of the heat.  I'll see what I can find for you."
+
+"Some cold water, please," she asked.  "It will take the frost out.
+Del will get it."
+
+"I hope it is not serious?"
+
+"No."  She shook her head and smiled up to him, at the same time
+working away at her ice-coated moccasins.  "There hasn't been time for
+more than surface-freezing.  At the worst the skin will peel off."
+
+An unearthly silence brooded in the cabin, broken only by Bishop
+filling a basin from the water-bucket, and by Corliss seeking out his
+smallest and daintiest house-moccasins and his warmest socks.
+
+Frona, rubbing her feet vigorously, paused and looked up.  "Don't let
+me chill the festivities just because I'm cold," she laughed.  "Please
+go on."
+
+Jake Cornell straightened up and cleared his throat inanely, and the
+Virgin looked over-dignified; but Blanche came over and took the towel
+out of Frona's hands.
+
+"I wet my feet in the same place," she said, kneeling down and bringing
+a glow to the frosted feet.
+
+"I suppose you can manage some sort of a fit with them.  Here!"  Vance
+tossed over the house-moccasins and woollen wrappings, which the two
+women, with low laughs and confidential undertones, proceeded to
+utilize.
+
+"But what in the world were you doing on trail, alone, at this time of
+night?" Vance asked.  In his heart he was marvelling at the coolness
+and pluck with which she was carrying off the situation.
+
+"I know beforehand that you will censure me," she replied, helping
+Blanche arrange the wet gear over the fire.  "I was at Mrs. Stanton's;
+but first, you must know, Miss Mortimer and I are staying at the
+Pently's for a week.  Now, to start fresh again.  I intended to leave
+Mrs. Stanton's before dark; but her baby got into the kerosene, her
+husband had gone down to Dawson, and--well, we weren't sure of the baby
+up to half an hour ago.  She wouldn't hear of me returning alone; but
+there was nothing to fear; only I had not expected soft ice in such a
+snap."
+
+"How'd you fix the kid?" Del asked, intent on keeping the talk going
+now that it had started.
+
+"Chewing tobacco."  And when the laughter had subsided, she went on:
+"There wasn't any mustard, and it was the best I could think of.
+Besides, Matt McCarthy saved my life with it once, down at Dyea when I
+had the croup.  But you were singing when I came in," she suggested.
+"Do go on."
+
+Jake Cornell hawed prodigiously.   "And I got done."
+
+"Then you, Del.  Sing 'Flying Cloud' as you used to coming down the
+river."
+
+"Oh, 'e 'as!" said the Virgin.
+
+"Then you sing.  I am sure you do."
+
+She smiled into the Virgin's eyes, and that lady delivered herself of a
+coster ballad with more art than she was aware.  The chill of Frona's
+advent was quickly dissipated, and song and toast and merriment went
+round again.  Nor was Frona above touching lips to the jelly glass in
+fellowship; and she contributed her quota by singing "Annie Laurie" and
+"Ben Bolt."  Also, but privily, she watched the drink saturating the
+besotted souls of Cornell and the Virgin.  It was an experience, and
+she was glad of it, though sorry in a way for Corliss, who played the
+host lamely.
+
+But he had little need of pity.  "Any other woman--" he said to
+himself a score of times, looking at Frona and trying to picture
+numerous women he had known by his mother's teapot, knocking at the
+door and coming in as Frona had done.  Then, again, it was only
+yesterday that it would have hurt him, Blanche's rubbing her feet; but
+now he gloried in Frona's permitting it, and his heart went out in a
+more kindly way to Blanche.  Perhaps it was the elevation of the
+liquor, but he seemed to discover new virtues in her rugged face.
+
+Frona had put on her dried moccasins and risen to her feet, and was
+listening patiently to Jake Cornell, who hiccoughed a last incoherent
+toast.
+
+"To the--hic--man," he rumbled, cavernously, "the man--hic--that
+made--that made--"
+
+"The blessed country," volunteered the Virgin.
+
+"True, my dear--hic.  To the man that made the blessed country.
+To--hic--to Jacob Welse!"
+
+"And a rider!" Blanche cried.  "To Jacob Welse's daughter!"
+
+"Ay!  Standing!  And bottoms up!"
+
+"Oh! she's a jolly good fellow," Del led off, the drink ruddying his
+cheek.
+
+"I'd like to shake hands with you, just once," Blanche said in a low
+voice, while the rest were chorusing.
+
+Frona slipped her mitten, which she had already put on, and the
+pressure was firm between them.
+
+"No," she said to Corliss, who had put on his cap and was tying the
+ear-flaps; "Blanche tells me the Pently's are only half a mile from
+here.  The trail is straight.  I'll not hear of any one accompanying me.
+
+"No!"  This time she spoke so authoritatively that he tossed his cap
+into the bunk.  "Good-night, all!" she called, sweeping the roisterers
+with a smile.
+
+But Corliss saw her to the door and stepped outside.  She glanced up to
+him.  Her hood was pulled only partly up, and her face shone alluringly
+under the starlight.
+
+"I--Frona . . .  I wish--"
+
+"Don't be alarmed," she whispered.  "I'll not tell on you, Vance."
+
+He saw the mocking glint in her eyes, but tried to go on.  "I wish to
+explain just how--"
+
+"No need.  I understand.  But at the same time I must confess I do not
+particularly admire your taste--"
+
+"Frona!" The evident pain in his voice reached her.
+
+"Oh, you big foolish!" she laughed.  "Don't I know?  Didn't Blanche
+tell me she wet her feet?"
+
+Corliss bowed his head.  "Truly, Frona, you are the most consistent
+woman I ever met.  Furthermore," with a straightening of his form and a
+dominant assertion in his voice, "this is not the last."
+
+She tried to stop him, but he continued.  "I feel, I know that things
+will turn out differently.  To fling your own words back at you, all
+the factors have not been taken into consideration.  As for St. Vincent
+. . . I'll have you yet.  For that matter, now could not be too soon!"
+
+He flashed out hungry arms to her, but she read quicker than he moved,
+and, laughing, eluded him and ran lightly down the trail.
+
+"Come back, Frona!  Come back!" he called, "I am sorry."
+
+"No, you're not," came the answer.  "And I'd be sorry if you were.
+Good-night."
+
+He watched her merge into the shadows, then entered the cabin.  He had
+utterly forgotten the scene within, and at the first glance it startled
+him.  Cariboo Blanche was crying softly to herself.  Her eyes were
+luminous and moist, and, as he looked, a lone tear stole down her
+cheek.  Bishop's face had gone serious.  The Virgin had sprawled head
+and shoulders on the table, amid overturned mugs and dripping lees, and
+Cornell was tittubating over her, hiccoughing, and repeating vacuously,
+"You're all right, my dear.  You're all right."
+
+But the Virgin was inconsolable.  "O Gawd!  Wen I think on wot is, an'
+was . . .  an' no fault of mine.  No fault of mine, I tell you!" she
+shrieked with quick fierceness.  "'Ow was I born, I ask?  Wot was my
+old man?  A drunk, a chronic.  An' my old woman?  Talk of Whitechapel!
+'Oo guv a cent for me, or 'ow I was dragged up?  'Oo cared a rap, I
+say?  'Oo cared a rap?"
+
+A sudden revulsion came over Corliss.  "Hold your tongue!" he ordered.
+
+The Virgin raised her head, her loosened hair streaming about her like
+a Fury's.  "Wot is she?" she sneered.  "Sweet'eart?"
+
+Corliss whirled upon her savagely, face white and voice shaking with
+passion.
+
+The Virgin cowered down and instinctively threw up her hands to protect
+her face.  "Don't 'it me, sir!" she whined.  "Don't 'it me!"
+
+He was frightened at himself, and waited till he could gather control.
+"Now," he said, calmly, "get into your things and go.  All of you.
+Clear out.  Vamose."
+
+"You're no man, you ain't," the Virgin snarled, discovering that
+physical assault was not imminent.
+
+But Corliss herded her particularly to the door, and gave no heed.
+
+"A-turning ladies out!" she sniffed, with a stumble over the threshold;
+
+"No offence," Jake Cornell muttered, pacifically; "no offence."
+
+"Good-night.  Sorry," Corliss said to Blanche, with the shadow of a
+forgiving smile, as she passed out.
+
+
+"You're a toff!  That's wot you are, a bloomin' toff!" the Virgin
+howled back as he shut the door.
+
+He looked blankly at Del Bishop and surveyed the sodden confusion on
+the table.  Then he walked over and threw himself down on his bunk.
+Bishop leaned an elbow on the table and pulled at his wheezy pipe.  The
+lamp smoked, flickered, and went out; but still he remained, filling
+his pipe again and again and striking endless matches.
+
+"Del!  Are you awake?" Corliss called at last.
+
+Del grunted.
+
+"I was a cur to turn them out into the snow.  I am ashamed."
+
+"Sure," was the affirmation.
+
+A long silence followed.  Del knocked the ashes out and raised up.
+
+"'Sleep?" he called.
+
+There was no reply, and he walked to the bunk softly and pulled the
+blankets over the engineer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+"Yes; what does it all mean?"  Corliss stretched lazily, and cocked up
+his feet on the table.  He was not especially interested, but Colonel
+Trethaway persisted in talking seriously.
+
+"That's it!  The very thing--the old and ever young demand which man
+slaps into the face of the universe."  The colonel searched among the
+scraps in his note-book.  "See," holding up a soiled slip of typed
+paper, "I copied this out years ago.  Listen.  'What a monstrous
+spectre is this man, this disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting
+alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding,
+growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown up with hair
+like grass, fitted with eyes that glitter in his face; a thing to set
+children screaming.  Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many
+hardships, filled with desires so incommensurate and so inconsistent;
+savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey
+upon his fellow-lives.  Infinitely childish, often admirably valiant,
+often touchingly kind; sitting down to debate of right or wrong and the
+attributes of the deity; rising up to battle for an egg or die for an
+idea!'
+
+"And all to what end?" he demanded, hotly, throwing down the paper,
+"this disease of the agglutinated dust?"
+
+Corliss yawned in reply.  He had been on trail all day and was yearning
+for between-blankets.
+
+"Here am I, Colonel Trethaway, modestly along in years, fairly well
+preserved, a place in the community, a comfortable bank account, no
+need to ever exert myself again, yet enduring life bleakly and working
+ridiculously with a zest worthy of a man half my years.  And to what
+end?  I can only eat so much, smoke so much, sleep so much, and this
+tail-dump of earth men call Alaska is the worst of all possible places
+in the matter of grub, tobacco, and blankets."
+
+"But it is the living strenuously which holds you," Corliss interjected.
+
+"Frona's philosophy," the colonel sneered.
+
+"And my philosophy, and yours."
+
+"And of the agglutinated dust--"
+
+"Which is quickened with a passion you do not take into account,--the
+passion of duty, of race, of God!"
+
+"And the compensation?" Trethaway demanded.
+
+"Each breath you draw.  The Mayfly lives an hour."
+
+"I don't see it."
+
+"Blood and sweat!  Blood and sweat!  You cried that after the rough and
+tumble in the Opera House, and every word of it was receipt in full."
+
+"Frona's philosophy."
+
+"And yours and mine."
+
+The colonel threw up his shoulders, and after a pause confessed.  "You
+see, try as I will, I can't make a pessimist out of myself.  We are all
+compensated, and I more fully than most men.  What end? I asked, and
+the answer forthcame: Since the ultimate end is beyond us, then the
+immediate.  More compensation, here and now!"
+
+"Quite hedonistic."
+
+"And rational.  I shall look to it at once.  I can buy grub and
+blankets for a score; I can eat and sleep for only one; ergo, why not
+for two?"
+
+Corliss took his feet down and sat up.  "In other words?"
+
+"I shall get married, and--give the community a shock.  Communities
+like shocks.  That's one of their compensations for being
+agglutinative."
+
+"I can't think of but one woman," Corliss essayed tentatively, putting
+out his hand.
+
+Trethaway shook it slowly.  "It is she."
+
+Corliss let go, and misgiving shot into his face.  "But St. Vincent?"
+
+"Is your problem, not mine."
+
+"Then Lucile--?"
+
+"Certainly not.  She played a quixotic little game of her own and
+botched it beautifully."
+
+"I--I do not understand."  Corliss brushed his brows in a dazed sort of
+way.
+
+Trethaway parted his lips in a superior smile.  "It is not necessary
+that you should.  The question is, Will you stand up with me?"
+
+"Surely.  But what a confoundedly long way around you took.  It is not
+your usual method."
+
+"Nor was it with her," the colonel declared, twisting his moustache
+proudly.
+
+
+A captain of the North-West Mounted Police, by virtue of his
+magisterial office, may perform marriages in time of stress as well as
+execute exemplary justice.  So Captain Alexander received a call from
+Colonel Trethaway, and after he left jotted down an engagement for the
+next morning.  Then the impending groom went to see Frona.  Lucile did
+not make the request, he hastened to explain, but--well, the fact was
+she did not know any women, and, furthermore, he (the colonel) knew
+whom Lucile would like to ask, did she dare.  So he did it upon his own
+responsibility.  And coming as a surprise, he knew it would be a great
+joy to her.
+
+Frona was taken aback by the suddenness of it.  Only the other day, it
+was, that Lucile had made a plea to her for St. Vincent, and now it was
+Colonel Trethaway!  True, there had been a false quantity somewhere,
+but now it seemed doubly false.  Could it be, after all, that Lucile
+was mercenary?  These thoughts crowded upon her swiftly, with the
+colonel anxiously watching her face the while.  She knew she must
+answer quickly, yet was distracted by an involuntary admiration for his
+bravery.  So she followed, perforce, the lead of her heart, and
+consented.
+
+Yet the whole thing was rather strained when the four of them came
+together, next day, in Captain Alexander's private office.  There was a
+gloomy chill about it.  Lucile seemed ready to cry, and showed a
+repressed perturbation quite unexpected of her; while, try as she
+would, Frona could not call upon her usual sympathy to drive away the
+coldness which obtruded intangibly between them.  This, in turn, had a
+consequent effect on Vance, and gave a certain distance to his manner
+which forced him out of touch even with the colonel.
+
+Colonel Trethaway seemed to have thrown twenty years off his erect
+shoulders, and the discrepancy in the match which Frona had felt
+vanished as she looked at him.  "He has lived the years well," she
+thought, and prompted mysteriously, almost with vague apprehension she
+turned her eyes to Corliss.  But if the groom had thrown off twenty
+years, Vance was not a whit behind.  Since their last meeting he had
+sacrificed his brown moustache to the frost, and his smooth face,
+smitten with health and vigor, looked uncommonly boyish; and yet,
+withal, the naked upper lip advertised a stiffness and resolution
+hitherto concealed.  Furthermore, his features portrayed a growth, and
+his eyes, which had been softly firm, were now firm with the added
+harshness or hardness which is bred of coping with things and coping
+quickly,--the stamp of executiveness which is pressed upon men who do,
+and upon all men who do, whether they drive dogs, buck the sea, or
+dictate the policies of empires.
+
+When the simple ceremony was over, Frona kissed Lucile; but Lucile felt
+that there was a subtle something wanting, and her eyes filled with
+unshed tears.  Trethaway, who had felt the aloofness from the start,
+caught an opportunity with Frona while Captain Alexander and Corliss
+were being pleasant to Mrs. Trethaway.
+
+"What's the matter, Frona?" the colonel demanded, bluntly.  "I hope you
+did not come under protest.  I am sorry, not for you, because lack of
+frankness deserves nothing, but for Lucile.  It is not fair to her."
+
+"There has been a lack of frankness throughout."  Her voice trembled.
+"I tried my best,--I thought I could do better,--but I cannot feign
+what I do not feel.  I am sorry, but I . . . I am disappointed.  No, I
+cannot explain, and to you least of all."
+
+"Let's be above-board, Frona.  St. Vincent's concerned?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"And I can put my hand right on the spot.  First place," he looked to
+the side and saw Lucile stealing an anxious glance to him,--"first
+place, only the other day she gave you a song about St. Vincent.
+Second place, and therefore, you think her heart's not in this present
+proposition; that she doesn't care a rap for me; in short, that she's
+marrying me for reinstatement and spoils.  Isn't that it?"
+
+"And isn't it enough?  Oh, I am disappointed, Colonel Trethaway,
+grievously, in her, in you, in myself."
+
+"Don't be a fool!  I like you too well to see you make yourself one.
+The play's been too quick, that is all.  Your eye lost it.  Listen.
+We've kept it quiet, but she's in with the elect on French Hill.  Her
+claim's prospected the richest of the outfit.  Present indication half
+a million at least.  In her own name, no strings attached.  Couldn't
+she take that and go anywhere in the world and reinstate herself?  And
+for that matter, you might presume that I am marrying her for spoils.
+Frona, she cares for me, and in your ear, she's too good for me.  My
+hope is that the future will make up.  But never mind that--haven't got
+the time now.
+
+"You consider her affection sudden, eh?  Let me tell you we've been
+growing into each other from the time I came into the country, and with
+our eyes open.  St. Vincent?  Pshaw!  I knew it all the time.  She got
+it into her head that the whole of him wasn't worth a little finger of
+you, and she tried to break things up.  You'll never know how she
+worked with him.  I told her she didn't know the Welse, and she said
+so, too, after.  So there it is; take it or leave it."
+
+"But what do you think about St. Vincent?"
+
+"What I think is neither here nor there; but I'll tell you honestly
+that I back her judgment.  But that's not the point.  What are you
+going to do about it? about her? now?"
+
+She did not answer, but went back to the waiting group.  Lucile saw her
+coming and watched her face.
+
+"He's been telling you--?"
+
+"That I am a fool," Frona answered.  "And I think I am."  And with a
+smile, "I take it on faith that I am, anyway.  I--I can't reason it out
+just now, but. . ."
+
+Captain Alexander discovered a prenuptial joke just about then, and led
+the way over to the stove to crack it upon the colonel, and Vance went
+along to see fair play.
+
+"It's the first time," Lucile was saying, "and it means more to me, so
+much more, than to . . . most women.  I am afraid.  It is a terrible
+thing for me to do.  But I do love him, I do!"  And when the joke had
+been duly digested and they came back, she was sobbing, "Dear, dear
+Frona."
+
+It was just the moment, better than he could have chosen; and capped
+and mittened, without knocking, Jacob Welse came in.
+
+"The uninvited guest," was his greeting.  "Is it all over?  So?"  And
+he swallowed Lucile up in his huge bearskin.  "Colonel, your hand, and
+your pardon for my intruding, and your regrets for not giving me the
+word.  Come, out with them!  Hello, Corliss!  Captain Alexander, a good
+day."
+
+"What have I done?" Frona wailed, received the bear-hug, and managed to
+press his hand till it almost hurt.
+
+"Had to back the game," he whispered; and this time his hand did hurt.
+
+"Now, colonel, I don't know what your plans are, and I don't care.
+Call them off.  I've got a little spread down to the house, and the
+only honest case of champagne this side of Circle.  Of course, you're
+coming, Corliss, and--"  His eye roved past Captain Alexander with
+hardly a pause.
+
+"Of course," came the answer like a flash, though the Chief Magistrate
+of the Northwest had had time to canvass the possible results of such
+unofficial action.  "Got a hack?"
+
+Jacob Welse laughed and held up a moccasined foot.  "Walking
+be--chucked!"  The captain started impulsively towards the door.  "I'll
+have the sleds up before you're ready.  Three of them, and bells
+galore!"
+
+So Trethaway's forecast was correct, and Dawson vindicated its
+agglutinativeness by rubbing its eyes when three sleds, with three
+scarlet-tuniced policemen swinging the whips, tore down its main
+street; and it rubbed its eyes again when it saw the occupants thereof.
+
+
+"We shall live quietly," Lucile told Frona.  "The Klondike is not all
+the world, and the best is yet to come."
+
+But Jacob Welse said otherwise.  "We've got to make this thing go," he
+said to Captain Alexander, and Captain Alexander said that he was
+unaccustomed to backing out.
+
+Mrs. Schoville emitted preliminary thunders, marshalled the other
+women, and became chronically seismic and unsafe.
+
+Lucile went nowhere save to Frona's.  But Jacob Welse, who rarely went
+anywhere, was often to be found by Colonel Trethaway's fireside, and
+not only was he to be found there, but he usually brought somebody
+along.  "Anything on hand this evening?" he was wont to say on casual
+meeting.  "No?  Then come along with me."  Sometimes he said it with
+lamb-like innocence, sometimes with a challenge brooding under his
+bushy brows, and rarely did he fail to get his man.  These men had
+wives, and thus were the germs of dissolution sown in the ranks of the
+opposition.
+
+Then, again, at Colonel Trethaway's there was something to be found
+besides weak tea and small talk; and the correspondents, engineers, and
+gentlemen rovers kept the trail well packed in that direction, though
+it was the Kings, to a man, who first broke the way.  So the Trethaway
+cabin became the centre of things, and, backed commercially,
+financially, and officially, it could not fail to succeed socially.
+
+The only bad effect of all this was to make the lives of Mrs. Schoville
+and divers others of her sex more monotonous, and to cause them to lose
+faith in certain hoary and inconsequent maxims.  Furthermore, Captain
+Alexander, as highest official, was a power in the land, and Jacob
+Welse was the Company, and there was a superstition extant concerning
+the unwisdom of being on indifferent terms with the Company.  And the
+time was not long till probably a bare half-dozen remained in outer
+cold, and they were considered a warped lot, anyway.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Quite an exodus took place in Dawson in the spring.  Men, because they
+had made stakes, and other men, because they had made none, bought up
+the available dogs and rushed out for Dyea over the last ice.
+Incidentally, it was discovered that Dave Harney possessed most of
+these dogs.
+
+"Going out?" Jacob Welse asked him on a day when the meridian sun for
+the first time felt faintly warm to the naked skin.
+
+"Well, I calkilate not.  I'm clearin' three dollars a pair on the
+moccasins I cornered, to say nothing but saw wood on the boots.  Say,
+Welse, not that my nose is out of joint, but you jest cinched me
+everlastin' on sugar, didn't you?"
+
+Jacob Welse smiled.
+
+"And by the Jimcracky I'm squared!  Got any rubber boots?"
+
+"No; went out of stock early in the winter."  Dave snickered slowly.
+"And I'm the pertickler party that hocus-pocused 'em."
+
+"Not you.  I gave special orders to the clerks.  They weren't sold in
+lots."
+
+"No more they wa'n't.  One man to the pair and one pair to the man, and
+a couple of hundred of them; but it was my dust they chucked into the
+scales an nobody else's.  Drink?  Don't mind.  Easy!  Put up your sack.
+Call it rebate, for I kin afford it. . .  Goin' out?  Not this year, I
+guess.  Wash-up's comin'."
+
+A strike on Henderson the middle of April, which promised to be
+sensational, drew St. Vincent to Stewart River.  And a little later,
+Jacob Welse, interested on Gallagher Gulch and with an eye riveted on
+the copper mines of White River, went up into the same district, and
+with him went Frona, for it was more vacation than business.  In the
+mean time, Corliss and Bishop, who had been on trail for a month or
+more running over the Mayo and McQuestion Country, rounded up on the
+left fork of Henderson, where a block of claims waited to be surveyed.
+
+But by May, spring was so far advanced that travel on the creeks became
+perilous, and on the last of the thawing ice the miners travelled down
+to the bunch of islands below the mouth of the Stewart, where they went
+into temporary quarters or crowded the hospitality of those who
+possessed cabins.  Corliss and Bishop located on Split-up Island (so
+called through the habit parties from the Outside had of dividing there
+and going several ways), where Tommy McPherson was comfortably
+situated.  A couple of days later, Jacob Welse and Frona arrived from a
+hazardous trip out of White River, and pitched tent on the high ground
+at the upper end of Split-up.  A few _chechaquos_, the first of the
+spring rush, strung in exhausted and went into camp against the
+breaking of the river.  Also, there were still men going out who,
+barred by the rotten ice, came ashore to build poling-boats and await
+the break-up or to negotiate with the residents for canoes.  Notably
+among these was the Baron Courbertin.
+
+"Ah!  Excruciating!  Magnificent!  Is it not?"
+
+So Frona first ran across him on the following day.  "What?" she asked,
+giving him her hand.
+
+"You!  You!" doffing his cap.  "It is a delight!"
+
+"I am sure--" she began.
+
+"No!  No!"  He shook his curly mop warmly.  "It is not you.  See!"  He
+turned to a Peterborough, for which McPherson had just mulcted him of
+thrice its value.  "The canoe!  Is it not--not--what you Yankees
+call--a bute?"
+
+"Oh, the canoe," she repeated, with a falling inflection of chagrin.
+
+"No!  No!  Pardon!"  He stamped angrily upon the ground.  "It is not
+so.  It is not you.  It is not the canoe.  It is--ah!  I have it now!
+It is your promise.  One day, do you not remember, at Madame
+Schoville's, we talked of the canoe, and of my ignorance, which was
+sad, and you promised, you said--"
+
+"I would give you your first lesson?"
+
+"And is it not delightful?  Listen!  Do you not hear?  The
+rippling--ah! the rippling!--deep down at the heart of things!  Soon
+will the water run free.  Here is the canoe!  Here we meet!  The first
+lesson!  Delightful!  Delightful!"
+
+The next island below Split-up was known as Roubeau's Island, and was
+separated from the former by a narrow back-channel.  Here, when the
+bottom had about dropped out of the trail, and with the dogs swimming
+as often as not, arrived St. Vincent--the last man to travel the winter
+trail.  He went into the cabin of John Borg, a taciturn, gloomy
+individual, prone to segregate himself from his kind.  It was the
+mischance of St. Vincent's life that of all cabins he chose Borg's for
+an abiding-place against the break-up.
+
+"All right," the man said, when questioned by him.  "Throw your
+blankets into the corner.  Bella'll clear the litter out of the spare
+bunk."
+
+Not till evening did he speak again, and then, "You're big enough to do
+your own cooking.  When the woman's done with the stove you can fire
+away."
+
+The woman, or Bella, was a comely Indian girl, young, and the prettiest
+St. Vincent had run across.  Instead of the customary greased
+swarthiness of the race, her skin was clear and of a light-bronze tone,
+and her features less harsh, more felicitously curved, than those
+common to the blood.
+
+After supper, Borg, both elbows on table and huge misshapen hands
+supporting chin and jaws, sat puffing stinking Siwash tobacco and
+staring straight before him.  It would have seemed ruminative, the
+stare, had his eyes been softer or had he blinked; as it was, his face
+was set and trance-like.
+
+"Have you been in the country long?" St. Vincent asked, endeavoring to
+make conversation.
+
+Borg turned his sullen-black eyes upon him, and seemed to look into him
+and through him and beyond him, and, still regarding him, to have
+forgotten all about him.  It was as though he pondered some great and
+weighty matter--probably his sins, the correspondent mused nervously,
+rolling himself a cigarette.  When the yellow cube had dissipated
+itself in curling fragrance, and he was deliberating about rolling a
+second, Borg suddenly spoke.
+
+"Fifteen years," he said, and returned to his tremendous cogitation.
+
+Thereat, and for half an hour thereafter, St. Vincent, fascinated,
+studied his inscrutable countenance.  To begin with, it was a massive
+head, abnormal and top-heavy, and its only excuse for being was the
+huge bull-throat which supported it.  It had been cast in a mould of
+elemental generousness, and everything about it partook of the
+asymmetrical crudeness of the elemental.  The hair, rank of growth,
+thick and unkempt, matted itself here and there into curious splotches
+of gray; and again, grinning at age, twisted itself into curling locks
+of lustreless black--locks of unusual thickness, like crooked fingers,
+heavy and solid.  The shaggy whiskers, almost bare in places, and in
+others massing into bunchgrass-like clumps, were plentifully splashed
+with gray.  They rioted monstrously over his face and fell raggedly to
+his chest, but failed to hide the great hollowed cheeks or the twisted
+mouth.  The latter was thin-lipped and cruel, but cruel only in a
+passionless sort of way.  But the forehead was the anomaly,--the
+anomaly required to complete the irregularity of the face.  For it was
+a perfect forehead, full and broad, and rising superbly strong to its
+high dome.  It was as the seat and bulwark of some vast intelligence;
+omniscience might have brooded there.
+
+Bella, washing the dishes and placing them away on the shelf behind
+Borg's back, dropped a heavy tin cup.  The cabin was very still, and
+the sharp rattle came without warning.  On the instant, with a brute
+roar, the chair was overturned and Borg was on his feet, eyes blazing
+and face convulsed.  Bella gave an inarticulate, animal-like cry of
+fear and cowered at his feet.  St. Vincent felt his hair bristling, and
+an uncanny chill, like a jet of cold air, played up and down his spine.
+Then Borg righted the chair and sank back into his old position, chin
+on hands and brooding ponderously.  Not a word was spoken, and Bella
+went on unconcernedly with the dishes, while St. Vincent rolled, a
+shaky cigarette and wondered if it had been a dream.
+
+Jacob Welse laughed when the correspondent told him.  "Just his way,"
+he said; "for his ways are like his looks,--unusual.  He's an
+unsociable beast.  Been in the country more years than he can number
+acquaintances.  Truth to say, I don't think he has a friend in all
+Alaska, not even among the Indians, and he's chummed thick with them
+off and on.  'Johnny Sorehead,' they call him, but it might as well be
+'Johnny Break-um-head,' for he's got a quick temper and a rough hand.
+Temper!  Some little misunderstanding popped up between him and the
+agent at Arctic City.  He was in the right, too,--agent's mistake,--but
+he tabooed the Company on the spot and lived on straight meat for a
+year.  Then I happened to run across him at Tanana Station, and after
+due explanations he consented to buy from us again."
+
+"Got the girl from up the head-waters of the White," Bill Brown told
+St. Vincent.  "Welse thinks he's pioneering in that direction, but Borg
+could give him cards and spades on it and then win out.  He's been over
+the ground years ago.  Yes, strange sort of a chap.  Wouldn't hanker to
+be bunk-mates with him."
+
+But St. Vincent did not mind the eccentricities of the man, for he
+spent most of his time on Split-up Island with Frona and the Baron.
+One day, however, and innocently, he ran foul of him.  Two Swedes,
+hunting tree-squirrels from the other end of Roubeau Island, had
+stopped to ask for matches and to yarn a while in the warm sunshine of
+the clearing.  St. Vincent and Borg were accommodating them, the latter
+for the most part in meditative monosyllables.  Just to the rear, by
+the cabin-door, Bella was washing clothes.  The tub was a cumbersome
+home-made affair, and half-full of water, was more than a fair match
+for an ordinary woman.  The correspondent noticed her struggling with
+it, and stepped back quickly to her aid.
+
+With the tub between them, they proceeded to carry it to one side in
+order to dump it where the ground drained from the cabin.  St. Vincent
+slipped in the thawing snow and the soapy water splashed up.  Then
+Bella slipped, and then they both slipped.  Bella giggled and laughed,
+and St. Vincent laughed back.  The spring was in the air and in their
+blood, and it was very good to be alive.  Only a wintry heart could
+deny a smile on such a day.  Bella slipped again, tried to recover,
+slipped with the other foot, and sat down abruptly.  Laughing
+gleefully, both of them, the correspondent caught her hands to pull her
+to her feet.  With a bound and a bellow, Borg was upon them.  Their
+hands were torn apart and St. Vincent thrust heavily backward.  He
+staggered for a couple of yards and almost fell.  Then the scene of the
+cabin was repeated.  Bella cowered and grovelled in the muck, and her
+lord towered wrathfully over her.
+
+"Look you," he said in stifled gutturals, turning to St. Vincent.  "You
+sleep in my cabin and you cook.  That is enough.  Let my woman alone."
+
+Things went on after that as though nothing had happened; St. Vincent
+gave Bella a wide berth and seemed to have forgotten her existence.
+But the Swedes went back to their end of the island, laughing at the
+trivial happening which was destined to be significant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Spring, smiting with soft, warm hands, had come like a miracle, and now
+lingered for a dreamy spell before bursting into full-blown summer.
+The snow had left the bottoms and valleys and nestled only on the north
+slopes of the ice-scarred ridges.  The glacial drip was already in
+evidence, and every creek in roaring spate.  Each day the sun rose
+earlier and stayed later.  It was now chill day by three o'clock and
+mellow twilight at nine.  Soon a golden circle would be drawn around
+the sky, and deep midnight become bright as high noon.  The willows and
+aspens had long since budded, and were now decking themselves in
+liveries of fresh young green, and the sap was rising in the pines.
+
+Mother nature had heaved her waking sigh and gone about her brief
+business.  Crickets sang of nights in the stilly cabins, and in the
+sunshine mosquitoes crept from out hollow logs and snug crevices among
+the rocks,--big, noisy, harmless fellows, that had procreated the year
+gone, lain frozen through the winter, and were now rejuvenated to buzz
+through swift senility to second death.  All sorts of creeping,
+crawling, fluttering life came forth from the warming earth and
+hastened to mature, reproduce, and cease.  Just a breath of balmy air,
+and then the long cold frost again--ah! they knew it well and lost no
+time.  Sand martins were driving their ancient tunnels into the soft
+clay banks, and robins singing on the spruce-garbed islands.  Overhead
+the woodpecker knocked insistently, and in the forest depths the
+partridge boom-boomed and strutted in virile glory.
+
+But in all this nervous haste the Yukon took no part.  For many a
+thousand miles it lay cold, unsmiling, dead.  Wild fowl, driving up
+from the south in wind-jamming wedges, halted, looked vainly for open
+water, and quested dauntlessly on into the north.  From bank to bank
+stretched the savage ice.  Here and there the water burst through and
+flooded over, but in the chill nights froze solidly as ever.  Tradition
+has it that of old time the Yukon lay unbroken through three long
+summers, and on the face of it there be traditions less easy of belief.
+
+So summer waited for open water, and the tardy Yukon took to stretching
+of days and cracking its stiff joints.  Now an air-hole ate into the
+ice, and ate and ate; or a fissure formed, and grew, and failed to
+freeze again.  Then the ice ripped from the shore and uprose bodily a
+yard.  But still the river was loth to loose its grip.  It was a slow
+travail, and man, used to nursing nature with pigmy skill, able to
+burst waterspouts and harness waterfalls, could avail nothing against
+the billions of frigid tons which refused to run down the hill to
+Bering Sea.
+
+On Split-up Island all were ready for the break-up.  Waterways have
+ever been first highways, and the Yukon was the sole highway in all the
+land.  So those bound up-river pitched their poling-boats and shod
+their poles with iron, and those bound down caulked their scows and
+barges and shaped spare sweeps with axe and drawing-knife.  Jacob Welse
+loafed and joyed in the utter cessation from work, and Frona joyed with
+him in that it was good.  But Baron Courbertin was in a fever at the
+delay.  His hot blood grew riotous after the long hibernation, and the
+warm sunshine dazzled him with warmer fancies.
+
+"Oh!  Oh!  It will never break!  Never!"  And he stood gazing at the
+surly ice and raining politely phrased anathema upon it.  "It is a
+conspiracy, poor La Bijou, a conspiracy!"  He caressed La Bijou like it
+were a horse, for so he had christened the glistening Peterborough
+canoe.
+
+Frona and St. Vincent laughed and preached him the gospel of patience,
+which he proceeded to tuck away into the deepest abysses of perdition
+till interrupted by Jacob Welse.
+
+"Look, Courbertin!  Over there, south of the bluff.  Do you make out
+anything?  Moving?"
+
+"Yes; a dog."
+
+"It moves too slowly for a dog.  Frona, get the glasses."
+
+Courbertin and St. Vincent sprang after them, but the latter knew their
+abiding-place and returned triumphant.  Jacob Welse put the binoculars
+to his eyes and gazed steadily across the river.  It was a sheer mile
+from the island to the farther bank, and the sunglare on the ice was a
+sore task to the vision.
+
+"It is a man."  He passed the glasses to the Baron and strained
+absently with his naked eyes.  "And something is up."
+
+"He creeps!" the baron exclaimed.  "The man creeps, he crawls, on hand
+and knee!  Look!  See!"  He thrust the glasses tremblingly into Frona's
+hands.
+
+Looking across the void of shimmering white, it was difficult to
+discern a dark object of such size when dimly outlined against an
+equally dark background of brush and earth.  But Frona could make the
+man out with fair distinctness; and as she grew accustomed to the
+strain she could distinguish each movement, and especially so when he
+came to a wind-thrown pine.  Sue watched painfully.  Twice, after
+tortuous effort, squirming and twisting, he failed in breasting the big
+trunk, and on the third attempt, after infinite exertion, he cleared it
+only to topple helplessly forward and fall on his face in the tangled
+undergrowth.
+
+"It is a man."  She turned the glasses over to St. Vincent.  "And he is
+crawling feebly.  He fell just then this side of the log."
+
+"Does he move?" Jacob Welse asked, and, on a shake of St. Vincent's
+head, brought his rifle from the tent.
+
+He fired six shots skyward in rapid succession.  "He moves!"  The
+correspondent followed him closely.  "He is crawling to the bank.  Ah!
+. . .  No; one moment . . . Yes!  He lies on the ground and raises his
+hat, or something, on a stick.  He is waving it." (Jacob Welse fired
+six more shots.)  "He waves again.  Now he has dropped it and lies
+quite still."
+
+All three looked inquiringly to Jacob Welse.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "How should I know?  A white man or an
+Indian; starvation most likely, or else he is injured."
+
+"But he may be dying," Frona pleaded, as though her father, who had
+done most things, could do all things.
+
+"We can do nothing."
+
+"Ah!  Terrible! terrible!"  The baron wrung his hands.  "Before our
+very eyes, and we can do nothing!  No!" he exclaimed, with swift
+resolution, "it shall not be!  I will cross the ice!"
+
+He would have started precipitately down the bank had not Jacob Welse
+caught his arm.
+
+"Not such a rush, baron.  Keep your head."
+
+"But--"
+
+"But nothing.  Does the man want food, or medicine, or what?  Wait a
+moment.  We will try it together."
+
+"Count me in," St. Vincent volunteered promptly, and Frona's eyes
+sparkled.
+
+While she made up a bundle of food in the tent, the men provided and
+rigged themselves with sixty or seventy feet of light rope.  Jacob
+Welse and St. Vincent made themselves fast to it at either end, and the
+baron in the middle.  He claimed the food as his portion, and strapped
+it to his broad shoulders.  Frona watched their progress from the bank.
+The first hundred yards were easy going, but she noticed at once the
+change when they had passed the limit of the fairly solid shore-ice.
+Her father led sturdily, feeling ahead and to the side with his staff
+and changing direction continually.
+
+St. Vincent, at the rear of the extended line, was the first to go
+through, but he fell with the pole thrust deftly across the opening and
+resting on the ice.  His head did not go under, though the current
+sucked powerfully, and the two men dragged him out after a sharp pull.
+Frona saw them consult together for a minute, with much pointing and
+gesticulating on the part of the baron, and then St. Vincent detach
+himself and turn shoreward.
+
+"Br-r-r-r," he shivered, coming up the bank to her.  "It's impossible."
+
+"But why didn't they come in?" she asked, a slight note of displeasure
+manifest in her voice.
+
+"Said they were going to make one more try, first.  That Courbertin is
+hot-headed, you know."
+
+"And my father just as bull-headed," she smiled.  "But hadn't you
+better change?  There are spare things in the tent."
+
+"Oh, no."  He threw himself down beside her.  "It's warm in the sun."
+
+For an hour they watched the two men, who had become mere specks of
+black in the distance; for they had managed to gain the middle of the
+river and at the same time had worked nearly a mile up-stream.  Frona
+followed them closely with the glasses, though often they were lost to
+sight behind the ice-ridges.
+
+"It was unfair of them," she heard St. Vincent complain, "to say they
+were only going to have one more try.  Otherwise I should not have
+turned back.  Yet they can't make it--absolutely impossible."
+
+"Yes . . .  No . . .  Yes!  They're turning back," she announced.  "But
+listen!  What is that?"
+
+A hoarse rumble, like distant thunder, rose from the midst of the ice.
+She sprang to her feet.  "Gregory, the river can't be breaking!"
+
+"No, no; surely not.  See, it is gone."  The noise which had come from
+above had died away downstream.
+
+"But there!  There!"
+
+Another rumble, hoarser and more ominous than before, lifted itself and
+hushed the robins and the squirrels.  When abreast of them, it sounded
+like a railroad train on a distant trestle.  A third rumble, which
+approached a roar and was of greater duration, began from above and
+passed by.
+
+"Oh, why don't they hurry!"
+
+The two specks had stopped, evidently in conversation.  She ran the
+glasses hastily up and down the river.  Though another roar had risen,
+she could make out no commotion.  The ice lay still and motionless.
+The robins resumed their singing, and the squirrels were chattering
+with spiteful glee.
+
+"Don't fear, Frona."  St. Vincent put his arm about her protectingly.
+"If there is any danger, they know it better than we, and they are
+taking their time."
+
+"I never saw a big river break up," she confessed, and resigned herself
+to the waiting.
+
+The roars rose and fell sporadically, but there were no other signs of
+disruption, and gradually the two men, with frequent duckings, worked
+inshore.  The water was streaming from them and they were shivering
+severely as they came up the bank.
+
+"At last!" Frona had both her father's hands in hers.  "I thought you
+would never come back."
+
+"There, there.  Run and get dinner," Jacob Welse laughed.  "There was
+no danger."
+
+"But what was it?"
+
+"Stewart River's broken and sending its ice down under the Yukon ice.
+We could hear the grinding plainly out there."
+
+"Ah!  And it was terrible! terrible!" cried the baron.  "And that poor,
+poor man, we cannot save him!"
+
+"Yes, we can.  We'll have a try with the dogs after dinner.  Hurry,
+Frona."
+
+But the dogs were a failure.  Jacob Welse picked out the leaders as the
+more intelligent, and with grub-packs on them drove them out from the
+bank.  They could not grasp what was demanded of them.  Whenever they
+tried to return they were driven back with sticks and clods and
+imprecations.  This only bewildered them, and they retreated out of
+range, whence they raised their wet, cold paws and whined pitifully to
+the shore.
+
+"If they could only make it once, they would understand, and then it
+would go like clock-work.  Ah!  Would you?  Go on!  Chook, Miriam!
+Chook!  The thing is to get the first one across."
+
+Jacob Welse finally succeeded in getting Miriam, lead-dog to Frona's
+team, to take the trail left by him and the baron.  The dog went on
+bravely, scrambling over, floundering through, and sometimes swimming;
+but when she had gained the farthest point reached by them, she sat
+down helplessly.  Later on, she cut back to the shore at a tangent,
+landing on the deserted island above; and an hour afterwards trotted
+into camp minus the grub-pack.  Then the two dogs, hovering just out of
+range, compromised matters by devouring each other's burdens; after
+which the attempt was given over and they were called in.
+
+During the afternoon the noise increased in frequency, and by nightfall
+was continuous, but by morning it had ceased utterly.  The river had
+risen eight feet, and in many places was running over its crust.  Much
+crackling and splitting were going on, and fissures leaping into life
+and multiplying in all directions.
+
+"The under-tow ice has jammed below among the islands," Jacob Welse
+explained.  "That's what caused the rise.  Then, again, it has jammed
+at the mouth of the Stewart and is backing up.  When that breaks
+through, it will go down underneath and stick on the lower jam."
+
+"And then? and then?"  The baron exulted.
+
+"La Bijou will swim again."
+
+As the light grew stronger, they searched for the man across the river.
+He had not moved, but in response to their rifle-shots waved feebly.
+
+"Nothing for it till the river breaks, baron, and then a dash with La
+Bijou.  St. Vincent, you had better bring your blankets up and sleep
+here to-night.  We'll need three paddles, and I think we can get
+McPherson."
+
+"No need," the correspondent hastened to reply.  "The back-channel is
+like adamant, and I'll be up by daybreak."
+
+"But I?  Why not?"  Baron Courbertin demanded.  Frona laughed.
+"Remember, we haven't given you your first lessons yet."
+
+"And there'll hardly be time to-morrow," Jacob Welse added.  "When she
+goes, she goes with a rush.  St. Vincent, McPherson, and I will have to
+make the crew, I'm afraid.  Sorry, baron.  Stay with us another year
+and you'll be fit."
+
+But Baron Courbertin was inconsolable, and sulked for a full half-hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+"Awake!  You dreamers, wake!"
+
+Frona was out of her sleeping-furs at Del Bishop's first call; but ere
+she had slipped a skirt on and bare feet into moccasins, her father,
+beyond the blanket-curtain, had thrown back the flaps of the tent and
+stumbled out.
+
+The river was up.  In the chill gray light she could see the ice
+rubbing softly against the very crest of the bank; it even topped it in
+places, and the huge cakes worked inshore many feet.  A hundred yards
+out the white field merged into the dim dawn and the gray sky.  Subdued
+splits and splutters whispered from out the obscureness, and a gentle
+grinding could be heard.
+
+"When will it go?" she asked of Del.
+
+"Not a bit too lively for us.  See there!"  He pointed with his toe to
+the water lapping out from under the ice and creeping greedily towards
+them.  "A foot rise every ten minutes."
+
+"Danger?" he scoffed.  "Not on your life.  It's got to go.  Them
+islands"--waving his hand indefinitely down river--"can't hold up under
+more pressure.  If they don't let go the ice, the ice'll scour them
+clean out of the bed of the Yukon.  Sure!  But I've got to be chasin'
+back.  Lower ground down our way.  Fifteen inches on the cabin floor,
+and McPherson and Corliss hustlin' perishables into the bunks."
+
+"Tell McPherson to be ready for a call," Jacob Welse shouted after him.
+And then to Frona, "Now's the time for St. Vincent to cross the
+back-channel."
+
+The baron, shivering barefooted, pulled out his watch.  "Ten minutes to
+three," he chattered.
+
+"Hadn't you better go back and get your moccasins?" Frona asked.
+"There will be time."
+
+"And miss the magnificence?  Hark!"
+
+From nowhere in particular a brisk crackling arose, then died away.
+The ice was in motion.  Slowly, very slowly, it proceeded down stream.
+There was no commotion, no ear-splitting thunder, no splendid display
+of force; simply a silent flood of white, an orderly procession of
+tight-packed ice--packed so closely that not a drop of water was in
+evidence.  It was there, somewhere, down underneath; but it had to be
+taken on faith.  There was a dull hum or muffled grating, but so low in
+pitch that the ear strained to catch it.
+
+"Ah!  Where is the magnificence?  It is a fake!"
+
+The baron shook his fists angrily at the river, and Jacob Welse's thick
+brows seemed to draw down in order to hide the grim smile in his eyes.
+
+"Ha! ha!  I laugh!  I snap my fingers!  See!  I defy!"
+
+As the challenge left his lips.  Baron Courbertin stepped upon a cake
+which rubbed lightly past at his feet.  So unexpected was it, that when
+Jacob Welse reached after him he was gone.
+
+The ice was picking up in momentum, and the hum growing louder and more
+threatening.  Balancing gracefully, like a circus-rider, the Frenchman
+whirled away along the rim of the bank.  Fifty precarious feet he rode,
+his mount becoming more unstable every instant, and he leaped neatly to
+the shore.  He came back laughing, and received for his pains two or
+three of the choicest phrases Jacob Welse could select from the
+essentially masculine portion of his vocabulary.
+
+"And for why?" Courbertin demanded, stung to the quick.
+
+"For why?" Jacob Welse mimicked wrathfully, pointing into the sleek
+stream sliding by.
+
+A great cake had driven its nose into the bed of the river thirty feet
+below and was struggling to up-end.  All the frigid flood behind
+crinkled and bent back like so much paper.  Then the stalled cake
+turned completely over and thrust its muddy nose skyward.  But the
+squeeze caught it, while cake mounted cake at its back, and its fifty
+feet of muck and gouge were hurled into the air.  It crashed upon the
+moving mass beneath, and flying fragments landed at the feet of those
+that watched.  Caught broadside in a chaos of pressures, it crumbled
+into scattered pieces and disappeared.
+
+"God!"  The baron spoke the word reverently and with awe.
+
+Frona caught his hand on the one side and her father's on the other.
+The ice was now leaping past in feverish haste.  Somewhere below a
+heavy cake butted into the bank, and the ground swayed under their
+feet.  Another followed it, nearer the surface, and as they sprang
+back, upreared mightily, and, with a ton or so of soil on its broad
+back, bowled insolently onward.  And yet another, reaching inshore like
+a huge hand, ripped three careless pines out by the roots and bore them
+away.
+
+Day had broken, and the driving white gorged the Yukon from shore to
+shore.  What of the pressure of pent water behind, the speed of the
+flood had become dizzying.  Down all its length the bank was being
+gashed and gouged, and the island was jarring and shaking to its
+foundations.
+
+"Oh, great!  Great!"  Frona sprang up and down between the men.  "Where
+is your fake, baron?"
+
+"Ah!" He shook his head.  "Ah!  I was wrong.  I am miserable.  But the
+magnificence!  Look!"
+
+He pointed down to the bunch of islands which obstructed the bend.
+There the mile-wide stream divided and subdivided again,--which was
+well for water, but not so well for packed ice.  The islands drove
+their wedged heads into the frozen flood and tossed the cakes high into
+the air.  But cake pressed upon cake and shelved out of the water, out
+and up, sliding and grinding and climbing, and still more cakes from
+behind, till hillocks and mountains of ice upreared and crashed among
+the trees.
+
+"A likely place for a jam," Jacob Welse said.  "Get the glasses,
+Frona."  He gazed through them long and steadily.  "It's growing,
+spreading out.  A cake at the right time and the right place . . ."
+
+"But the river is falling!" Frona cried.
+
+The ice had dropped six feet below the top of the bank, and the Baron
+Courbertin marked it with a stick.
+
+"Our man's still there, but he doesn't move."
+
+It was clear day, and the sun was breaking forth in the north-east.
+They took turn about with the glasses in gazing across the river.
+
+"Look!  Is it not marvellous?"  Courbertin pointed to the mark he had
+made.  The water had dropped another foot.  "Ah!  Too bad! too bad!
+The jam; there will be none!"
+
+Jacob Welse regarded him gravely.
+
+"Ah!  There will be?" he asked, picking up hope.
+
+Frona looked inquiringly at her father.
+
+"Jams are not always nice," he said, with a short laugh.  "It all
+depends where they take place and where you happen to be."
+
+"But the river!  Look!  It falls; I can see it before my eyes."
+
+"It is not too late."  He swept the island-studded bend and saw the
+ice-mountains larger and reaching out one to the other.  "Go into the
+tent, Courbertin, and put on the pair of moccasins you'll find by the
+stove.  Go on.  You won't miss anything.  And you, Frona, start the
+fire and get the coffee under way."
+
+Half an hour after, though the river had fallen twenty feet, they found
+the ice still pounding along.
+
+"Now the fun begins.  Here, take a squint, you hot-headed Gaul.  The
+left-hand channel, man.  Now she takes it!"
+
+Courbertin saw the left-hand channel close, and then a great white
+barrier heave up and travel from island to island.  The ice before them
+slowed down and came to rest.  Then followed the instant rise of the
+river.  Up it came in a swift rush, as though nothing short of the sky
+could stop it.  As when they were first awakened, the cakes rubbed and
+slid inshore over the crest of the bank, the muddy water creeping in
+advance and marking the way.
+
+"Mon Dieu!  But this is not nice!"
+
+"But magnificent, baron," Frona teased.  "In the meanwhile you are
+getting your feet wet."
+
+He retreated out of the water, and in time, for a small avalanche of
+cakes rattled down upon the place he had just left.  The rising water
+had forced the ice up till it stood breast-high above the island like a
+wall.
+
+"But it will go down soon when the jam breaks.  See, even now it comes
+up not so swift.   It has broken."
+
+Frona was watching the barrier.  "No, it hasn't," she denied.
+
+"But the water no longer rises like a race-horse."
+
+"Nor does it stop rising."
+
+He was puzzled for the nonce.  Then his face brightened.  "Ah!  I have
+it!  Above, somewhere, there is another jam.  Most excellent, is it
+not?"
+
+She caught his excited hand in hers and detained him.  "But, listen.
+Suppose the upper jam breaks and the lower jam holds?"
+
+He looked at her steadily till he grasped the full import.  His face
+flushed, and with a quick intake of the breath he straightened up and
+threw back his head.  He made a sweeping gesture as though to include
+the island.  "Then you, and I, the tent, the boats, cabins, trees,
+everything, and La Bijou!  Pouf! and all are gone, to the devil!"
+
+Frona shook her head.  "It is too bad."
+
+"Bad?  Pardon.  Magnificent!"
+
+"No, no, baron; not that.  But that you are not an Anglo-Saxon.  The
+race could well be proud of you."
+
+"And you, Frona, would you not glorify the French!"
+
+"At it again, eh?  Throwing bouquets at yourselves."  Del Bishop
+grinned at them, and made to depart as quickly as he had come.  "But
+twist yourselves.  Some sick men in a cabin down here.  Got to get 'em
+out.  You're needed.  And don't be all day about it," he shouted over
+his shoulder as he disappeared among the trees.
+
+The river was still rising, though more slowly, and as soon as they
+left the high ground they were splashing along ankle-deep in the water.
+Winding in and out among the trees, they came upon a boat which had
+been hauled out the previous fall.  And three _chechaquos_, who had
+managed to get into the country thus far over the ice, had piled
+themselves into it, also their tent, sleds, and dogs.  But the boat was
+perilously near the ice-gorge, which growled and wrestled and
+over-topped it a bare dozen feet away.
+
+"Come!  Get out of this, you fools!" Jacob Welse shouted as he went
+past.
+
+Del Bishop had told them to "get the hell out of there" when he ran by,
+and they could not understand.  One of them turned up an unheeding,
+terrified face.  Another lay prone and listless across the thwarts as
+though bereft of strength; while the third, with the face of a clerk,
+rocked back and forth and moaned monotonously, "My God!  My God!"
+
+The baron stopped long enough to shake him.  "Damn!" he cried.  "Your
+legs, man!--not God, but your legs!  Ah! ah!--hump yourself!  Yes,
+hump!  Get a move on!  Twist!  Get back from the bank!  The woods, the
+trees, anywhere!"
+
+He tried to drag him out, but the man struck at him savagely and held
+back.
+
+"How one collects the vernacular," he confided proudly to Frona as they
+hurried on.  "Twist!  It is a strong word, and suitable."
+
+"You should travel with Del," she laughed.  "He'd increase your stock
+in no time."
+
+"You don't say so."
+
+"Yes, but I do."
+
+"Ah!  Your idioms.  I shall never learn."  And he shook his head
+despairingly with both his hands.
+
+They came out in a clearing, where a cabin stood close to the river.
+On its flat earth-roof two sick men, swathed in blankets, were lying,
+while Bishop, Corliss, and Jacob Welse were splashing about inside the
+cabin after the clothes-bags and general outfit.  The mean depth of the
+flood was a couple of feet, but the floor of the cabin had been dug out
+for purposes of warmth, and there the water was to the waist.
+
+"Keep the tobacco dry," one of the sick men said feebly from the roof.
+
+"Tobacco, hell!" his companion advised.  "Look out for the flour.  And
+the sugar," he added, as an afterthought.
+
+"That's 'cause Bill he don't smoke, miss," the first man explained.
+"But keep an eye on it, won't you?" he pleaded.
+
+"Here.  Now shut up." Del tossed the canister beside him, and the man
+clutched it as though it were a sack of nuggets.
+
+"Can I be of any use?" she asked, looking up at them.
+
+"Nope.  Scurvy.  Nothing'll do 'em any good but God's country and raw
+potatoes."  The pocket-miner regarded her for a moment.  "What are you
+doing here, anyway?  Go on back to high ground."
+
+But with a groan and a crash, the ice-wall bulged in.  A fifty-ton cake
+ended over, splashing them with muddy water, and settled down before
+the door.  A smaller cake drove against the out-jutting corner-logs and
+the cabin reeled.  Courbertin and Jacob Welse were inside.
+
+"After you," Frona heard the baron, and then her father's short amused
+laugh; and the gallant Frenchman came out last, squeezing his way
+between the cake and the logs.
+
+"Say, Bill, if that there lower jam holds, we're goners;" the man with
+the canister called to his partner.
+
+"Ay, that it will," came the answer.  "Below Nulato I saw Bixbie Island
+swept clean as my old mother's kitchen floor."
+
+The men came hastily together about Frona.
+
+"This won't do.  We've got to carry them over to your shack, Corliss."
+As he spoke, Jacob Welse clambered nimbly up the cabin and gazed down
+at the big barrier.  "Where's McPherson?" he asked.
+
+"Petrified astride the ridge-pole this last hour."
+
+Jacob Welse waved his arm.  "It's breaking!  There she goes!"
+
+"No kitchen floor this time.  Bill, with my respects to your old
+woman," called he of the tobacco.
+
+"Ay," answered the imperturbable Bill.
+
+The whole river seemed to pick itself up and start down the stream.
+With the increasing motion the ice-wall broke in a hundred places, and
+from up and down the shore came the rending and crashing of uprooted
+trees.
+
+Corliss and Bishop laid hold of Bill and started off to McPherson's,
+and Jacob Welse and the baron were just sliding his mate over the
+eaves, when a huge block of ice rammed in and smote the cabin squarely.
+Frona saw it, and cried a warning, but the tiered logs were overthrown
+like a house of cards.  She saw Courbertin and the sick man hurled
+clear of the wreckage, and her father go down with it.  She sprang to
+the spot, but he did not rise.  She pulled at him to get his mouth
+above water, but at full stretch his head, barely showed.  Then she let
+go and felt about with her hands till she found his right arm jammed
+between the logs.  These she could not move, but she thrust between
+them one of the roof-poles which had underlaid the dirt and moss.  It
+was a rude handspike and hardly equal to the work, for when she threw
+her weight upon the free end it bent and crackled.  Heedful of the
+warning, she came in a couple of feet and swung upon it tentatively and
+carefully till something gave and Jacob Welse shoved his muddy face
+into the air.
+
+He drew half a dozen great breaths, and burst out, "But that tastes
+good!"  And then, throwing a quick glance about him,  Frona, Del Bishop
+is a most veracious man."
+
+"Why?" she asked, perplexedly.
+
+"Because he said you'd do, you know."
+
+He kissed her, and they both spat the mud from their lips, laughing.
+Courbertin floundered round a corner of the wreckage.
+
+"Never was there such a man!" he cried, gleefully.  "He is mad, crazy!
+There is no appeasement.  His skull is cracked by the fall, and his
+tobacco is gone.  It is chiefly the tobacco which is lamentable."
+
+But his skull was not cracked, for it was merely a slit of the scalp of
+five inches or so.
+
+"You'll have to wait till the others come back.  I can't carry." Jacob
+Welse pointed to his right arm, which hung dead.  "Only wrenched," he
+explained.  "No bones broken."
+
+The baron struck an extravagant attitude and pointed down at Frona's
+foot.  "Ah!  the water, it is gone, and there, a jewel of the flood, a
+pearl of price!"
+
+Her well-worn moccasins had gone rotten from the soaking, and a little
+white toe peeped out at the world of slime.
+
+"Then I am indeed wealthy, baron; for I have nine others."
+
+"And who shall deny? who shall deny?" he cried, fervently.
+
+"What a ridiculous, foolish, lovable fellow it is!"
+
+"I kiss your hand."  And he knelt gallantly in the muck.
+
+She jerked her hand away, and, burying it with its mate in his curly
+mop, shook his head back and forth.  "What shall I do with him, father?"
+
+Jacob Welse shrugged his shoulders and laughed; and she turned
+Courbertin's face up and kissed him on the lips.  And Jacob Welse knew
+that his was the larger share in that manifest joy.
+
+
+The river, fallen to its winter level, was pounding its ice-glut
+steadily along.  But in falling it had rimmed the shore with a
+twenty-foot wall of stranded floes.  The great blocks were spilled
+inland among the thrown and standing trees and the slime-coated flowers
+and grasses like the titanic vomit of some Northland monster.  The sun
+was not idle, and the steaming thaw washed the mud and foulness from
+the bergs till they blazed like heaped diamonds in the brightness, or
+shimmered opalescent-blue.  Yet they were reared hazardously one on
+another, and ever and anon flashing towers and rainbow minarets
+crumbled thunderously into the flood.  By one of the gaps so made lay
+La Bijou, and about it, saving _chechaquos_ and sick men, were grouped
+the denizens of Split-up.
+
+"Na, na, lad; twa men'll be a plenty."  Tommy McPherson sought about
+him with his eyes for corroboration.  "Gin ye gat three i' the canoe
+'twill be ower comfortable."
+
+"It must be a dash or nothing," Corliss spoke up.  "We need three men,
+Tommy, and you know it."
+
+"Na, na; twa's a plenty, I'm tellin' ye."
+
+"But I'm afraid we'll have to do with two."
+
+The Scotch-Canadian evinced his satisfaction openly.  "Mair'd be a
+bother; an' I doot not ye'll mak' it all richt, lad."
+
+"And you'll make one of those two, Tommy," Corliss went on, inexorably.
+
+"Na; there's ithers a plenty wi'oot coontin' me."
+
+"No, there's not.  Courbertin doesn't know the first thing.  St.
+Vincent evidently cannot cross the slough.  Mr. Welse's arm puts him
+out of it.  So it's only you and I, Tommy."
+
+"I'll not be inqueesitive, but yon son of Anak's a likely mon.  He maun
+pit oop a guid stroke."  While the Scot did not lose much love for the
+truculent pocket-miner, he was well aware of his grit, and seized the
+chance to save himself by shoving the other into the breach.
+
+Del Bishop stepped into the centre of the little circle, paused, and
+looked every man in the eyes before he spoke.
+
+"Is there a man here'll say I'm a coward?" he demanded without preface.
+Again he looked each one in the eyes.  "Or is there a man who'll even
+hint that I ever did a curlike act?"  And yet again he searched the
+circle.  "Well and good.  I hate the water, but I've never been afraid
+of it.  I don't know how to swim, yet I've been over the side more
+times than it's good to remember.  I can't pull an oar without batting
+my back on the bottom of the boat.  As for steering--well, authorities
+say there's thirty-two points to the compass, but there's at least
+thirty more when I get started.  And as sure as God made little apples,
+I don't know my elbow from my knee about a paddle.  I've capsized damn
+near every canoe I ever set foot in.  I've gone right through the
+bottom of two.  I've turned turtle in the Canyon and been pulled out
+below the White Horse.  I can only keep stroke with one man, and that
+man's yours truly.  But, gentlemen, if the call comes, I'll take my
+place in La Bijou and take her to hell if she don't turn over on the
+way."
+
+Baron Courbertin threw his arms about him, crying, "As sure as God made
+little apples, thou art a man!"
+
+Tommy's face was white, and he sought refuge in speech from the silence
+which settled down.  "I'll deny I lift a guid paddle, nor that my wind
+is fair; but gin ye gang a tithe the way the next jam'll be on us.  For
+my pairt I conseeder it ay rash.  Bide a wee till the river's clear,
+say I."
+
+"It's no go, Tommy," Jacob Welse admonished.  "You can't cash excuses
+here."
+
+"But, mon!  It doesna need discreemeenation--"
+
+"That'll do!" from Corliss.  "You're coming."
+
+"I'll naething o' the sort.  I'll--"
+
+"Shut up!"  Del had come into the world with lungs of leather and
+larynx of brass, and when he thus jerked out the stops the Scotsman
+quailed and shrank down.
+
+"Oyez!  Oyez!"  In contrast to Del's siren tones, Frona's were purest
+silver as they rippled down-island through the trees.  "Oyez!  Oyez!
+Open water!  Open water!  And wait a minute.  I'll be with you."
+
+Three miles up-stream, where the Yukon curved grandly in from the west,
+a bit of water appeared.  It seemed too marvellous for belief, after
+the granite winter; but McPherson, untouched of imagination, began a
+crafty retreat.
+
+"Bide a wee, bide a wee," he protested, when collared by the
+pocket-miner.  "A've forgot my pipe."
+
+"Then you'll bide with us, Tommy," Del sneered.  "And I'd let you have
+a draw of mine if your own wasn't sticking out of your pocket."
+
+"'Twas the baccy I'd in mind."
+
+"Then dig into this."  He shoved his pouch into McPherson's shaking
+hands.  "You'd better shed your coat.  Here!  I'll help you.  And
+private, Tommy, if you don't act the man, I won't do a thing to you.
+Sure."
+
+Corliss had stripped his heavy flannel shirt for freedom; and it was
+plain, when Frona joined them, that she also had been shedding.  Jacket
+and skirt were gone, and her underskirt of dark cloth ceased midway
+below the knee.
+
+"You'll do," Del commended.
+
+Jacob Welse looked at her anxiously, and went over to where she was
+testing the grips of the several paddles.  "You're not--?" he began.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"You're a guid girl," McPherson broke in.  "Now, a've a wumman to home,
+to say naething o' three bairns--"
+
+"All ready!"  Corliss lifted the bow of La Bijou and looked back.
+
+The turbid water lashed by on the heels of the ice-run.  Courbertin
+took the stern in the steep descent, and Del marshalled Tommy's
+reluctant rear.  A flat floe, dipping into the water at a slight
+incline, served as the embarking-stage.
+
+"Into the bow with you, Tommy!"
+
+The Scotsman groaned, felt Bishop breathe heavily at his back, and
+obeyed; Frona meeting his weight by slipping into the stern.
+
+"I can steer," she assured Corliss, who for the first time was aware
+that she was coming.
+
+He glanced up to Jacob Welse, as though for consent, and received it.
+
+"Hit 'er up!  Hit 'er up!" Del urged impatiently.  "You're burnin'
+daylight!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+La Bijou was a perfect expression of all that was dainty and delicate
+in the boat-builder's soul.  Light as an egg-shell, and as fragile, her
+three-eighths-inch skin offered no protection from a driving chunk of
+ice as small as a man's head.  Nor, though the water was open, did she
+find a clear way, for the river was full of scattered floes which had
+crumbled down from the rim-ice.  And here, at once, through skilful
+handling, Corliss took to himself confidence in Frona.
+
+It was a great picture: the river rushing blackly between its
+crystalline walls; beyond, the green woods stretching upward to touch
+the cloud-flecked summer sky; and over all, like a furnace blast, the
+hot sun beating down.  A great picture, but somehow Corliss's mind
+turned to his mother and her perennial tea, the soft carpets, the prim
+New England maid-servants, the canaries singing in the wide windows,
+and he wondered if she could understand.  And when he thought of the
+woman behind him, and felt the dip and lift, dip and lift, of her
+paddle, his mother's women came back to him, one by one, and passed in
+long review,--pale, glimmering ghosts, he thought, caricatures of the
+stock which had replenished the earth, and which would continue to
+replenish the earth.
+
+La Bijou skirted a pivoting floe, darted into a nipping channel, and
+shot out into the open with the walls grinding together behind.  Tommy
+groaned.
+
+"Well done!" Corliss encouraged.
+
+"The fule wumman!" came the backward snarl.  "Why couldna she bide a
+bit?"
+
+Frona caught his words and flung a laugh defiantly.  Vance darted a
+glance over his shoulder to her, and her smile was witchery.  Her cap,
+perched precariously, was sliding off, while her flying hair, aglint in
+the sunshine, framed her face as he had seen it framed on the Dyea
+Trail.
+
+"How I should like to sing, if it weren't for saving one's breath.  Say
+the 'Song of the Sword,' or the 'Anchor Chanty.'"
+
+"Or the 'First Chanty,'" Corliss answered.  "'Mine was the woman,
+darkling I found her,'" he hummed, significantly.
+
+She flashed her paddle into the water on the opposite side in order to
+go wide of a jagged cake, and seemed not to hear.  "I could go on this
+way forever."
+
+"And I," Corliss affirmed, warmly.
+
+But she refused to take notice, saying, instead, "Vance, do you know
+I'm glad we're friends?"
+
+"No fault of mine we're not more."
+
+"You're losing your stroke, sir," she reprimanded; and he bent silently
+to the work.
+
+La Bijou was driving against the current at an angle of forty-five
+degrees, and her resultant course was a line at right angles to the
+river.  Thus, she would tap the western bank directly opposite the
+starting-point, where she could work up-stream in the slacker flood.
+But a mile of indented shore, and then a hundred yards of bluffs rising
+precipitously from out a stiff current would still lie between them and
+the man to be rescued.
+
+"Now let us ease up," Corliss advised, as they slipped into an eddy and
+drifted with the back-tide under the great wall of rim-ice.
+
+"Who would think it mid-May?"  She glanced up at the carelessly poised
+cakes.  "Does it seem real to you, Vance?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Nor to me.  I know that I, Frona, in the flesh, am here, in a
+Peterborough, paddling for dear life with two men; year of our Lord
+eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, Alaska, Yukon River; this is water,
+that is ice; my arms are tired, my heart up a few beats, and I am
+sweating,--and yet it seems all a dream.  Just think!  A year ago I was
+in Paris!"  She drew a deep breath and looked out over the water to the
+further shore, where Jacob Welse's tent, like a snowy handkerchief,
+sprawled against the deep green of the forest.  "I do not believe there
+is such a place," she added.  "There is no Paris."
+
+"And I was in London a twelvemonth past," Corliss meditated.  "But I
+have undergone a new incarnation.  London?  There is no London now.  It
+is impossible.  How could there be so many people in the world?  This
+is the world, and we know of fact that there are very few people in it,
+else there could not be so much ice and sea and sky.  Tommy, here, I
+know, thinks fondly of a place he calls Toronto.  He mistakes.  It
+exists only in his mind,--a memory of a former life he knew.  Of
+course, he does not think so.  That is but natural; for he is no
+philosopher, nor does he bother--"
+
+"Wheest, will ye!" Tommy fiercely whispered.  "Your gabble'll bring it
+doon aboot oor heads."
+
+Life is brief in the Northland, and fulfilment ever clutters the heels
+of prophecy.  A premonitory tremor sighed down the air, and the rainbow
+wall swayed above them.  The three paddles gripped the water with
+common accord.  La Bijou leaped out from under.  Broadside after
+broadside flared and crashed, and a thousand frigid tons thundered down
+behind them.  The displaced water surged outward in a foamy, upstanding
+circle, and La Bijou, striving wildly to rise, ducked through the stiff
+overhang of the crest and wallowed, half-full, in the trough.
+
+"Dinna I tell ye, ye gabbling fules!"
+
+"Sit still, and bail!" Corliss checked him sharply.  "Or you'll not
+have the comfort of telling us anything."
+
+He shook his head at Frona, and she winked back; then they both
+chuckled, much like children over an escapade which looks disastrous
+but turns out well.
+
+Creeping timidly under the shadow of the impending avalanches, La Bijou
+slipped noiselessly up the last eddy.  A corner of the bluff rose
+savagely from the river--a monstrous mass of naked rock, scarred and
+battered of the centuries; hating the river that gnawed it ever; hating
+the rain that graved its grim face with unsightly seams; hating the sun
+that refused to mate with it, whereof green life might come forth and
+hide its hideousness.  The whole force of the river hurled in against
+it, waged furious war along its battlements, and caromed off into
+mid-stream again.  Down all its length the stiff waves stood in serried
+rows, and its crevices and water-worn caverns were a-bellow with unseen
+strife.
+
+"Now!  Bend to it!  Your best!"
+
+It was the last order Corliss could give, for in the din they were
+about to enter a man's voice were like a cricket's chirp amid the
+growling of an earthquake.  La Bijou sprang forward, cleared the eddy
+with a bound, and plunged into the thick.  _Dip and lift, dip and
+lift_, the paddles worked with rhythmic strength.  The water rippled
+and tore, and pulled all ways at once; and the fragile shell, unable to
+go all ways at once, shook and quivered with the shock of resistance.
+It veered nervously to the right and left, but Frona held it with a
+hand of steel.  A yard away a fissure in the rock grinned at them.  La
+Bijou leaped and shot ahead, and the water, slipping away underneath,
+kept her always in one place.  Now they surged out from the fissure,
+now in; ahead for half a yard, then back again; and the fissure mocked
+their toil.
+
+Five minutes, each of which sounded a separate eternity, and the
+fissure was past.  Ten minutes, and it was a hundred feet astern.  _Dip
+and lift, dip and lift_, till sky and earth and river were blotted out,
+and consciousness dwindled to a thin line,--a streak of foam, fringed
+on the one hand with sneering rock, on the other with snarling water.
+That thin line summed up all.  Somewhere below was the beginning of
+things; somewhere above, beyond the roar and traffic, was the end of
+things; and for that end they strove.
+
+And still Frona held the egg-shell with a hand of steel.  What they
+gained they held, and fought for more, inch by inch, _dip and lift_;
+and all would have been well but for the flutter of Tommy's soul.  A
+cake of ice, sucked beneath by the current, rose under his paddle with
+a flurry of foam, turned over its toothed edge, and was dragged back
+into the depths.  And in that sight he saw himself, hair streaming
+upward and drowned hands clutching emptiness, going feet first, down
+and down.  He stared, wide-eyed, at the portent, and his poised paddle
+refused to strike.  On the instant the fissure grinned in their faces,
+and the next they were below the bluffs, drifting gently in the eddy.
+
+Frona lay, head thrown back, sobbing at the sun; amidships Corliss
+sprawled panting; and forward, choking and gasping and nerveless, the
+Scotsman drooped his head upon his knees.  La Bijou rubbed softly
+against the rim-ice and came to rest.  The rainbow-wall hung above like
+a fairy pile; the sun, flung backward from innumerable facets, clothed
+it in jewelled splendor.  Silvery streams tinkled down its crystal
+slopes; and in its clear depths seemed to unfold, veil on veil, the
+secrets of life and death and mortal striving,--vistas of
+pale-shimmering azure opening like dream-visions, and promising, down
+there in the great cool heart, infinite rest, infinite cessation and
+rest.
+
+The topmost tower, delicately massive, a score of feet above them,
+swayed to and fro, gently, like the ripple of wheat in light summer
+airs.  But Corliss gazed at it unheeding.  Just to lie there, on the
+marge of the mystery, just to lie there and drink the air in great
+gulps, and do nothing!--he asked no more.  A dervish, whirling on heel
+till all things blur, may grasp the essence of the universe and prove
+the Godhead indivisible; and so a man, plying a paddle, and plying and
+plying, may shake off his limitations and rise above time and space.
+And so Corliss.
+
+But gradually his blood ceased its mad pounding, and the air was no
+longer nectar-sweet, and a sense of things real and pressing came back
+to him.
+
+"We've got to get out of this," he said.  His voice sounded like a
+man's whose throat has been scorched by many and long potations.  It
+frightened him, but he limply lifted a shaking paddle and shoved off.
+
+"Yes; let us start, by all means," Frona said in a dim voice, which
+seemed to come to him from a far distance.
+
+Tommy lifted his head and gazed about.  "A doot we'll juist hae to gie
+it oop."
+
+"Bend to it!"
+
+"Ye'll no try it anither?"
+
+"Bend to it!" Corliss repeated.
+
+"Till your heart bursts, Tommy," Frona added.
+
+Once again they fought up the thin line, and all the world vanished,
+save the streak of foam, and the snarling water, and the grinning
+fissure.  But they passed it, inch by inch, and the broad bend welcomed
+them from above, and only a rocky buttress of implacable hate, around
+whose base howled the tides of an equal hate, stood between.  Then La
+Bijou leaped and throbbed and shook again, and the current slid out
+from under, and they remained ever in one place.  _Dip and lift, dip
+and lift_, through an infinity of time and torture and travail, till
+even the line dimmed and faded and the struggle lost its meaning.
+Their souls became merged in the rhythm of the toil.  Ever lifting,
+ever falling, they seemed to have become great pendulums of time.  And
+before and behind glimmered the eternities, and between the eternities,
+ever lifting, ever falling, they pulsed in vast rhythmical movement.
+They were no longer humans, but rhythms.  They surged in till their
+paddles touched the bitter rock, but they did not know; surged out,
+where chance piloted them unscathed through the lashing ice, but they
+did not see.  Nor did they feel the shock of the smitten waves, nor the
+driving spray that cooled their faces. . .
+
+La Bijou veered out into the stream, and their paddles, flashing
+mechanically in the sunshine, held her to the return angle across the
+river.  As time and matter came back to them, and Split-up Island
+dawned upon their eyes like the foreshore of a new world, they settled
+down to the long easy stroke wherein breath and strength may be
+recovered.
+
+"A third attempt would have been useless," Corliss said, in a dry,
+cracked whisper.
+
+And Frona answered, "Yes; our hearts would have surely broken."
+
+Life, and the pleasant camp-fire, and the quiet rest in the noonday
+shade, came back to Tommy as the shore drew near, and more than all,
+blessed Toronto, its houses that never moved, and its jostling streets.
+Each time his head sank forward and he reached out and clutched the
+water with his paddle, the streets enlarged, as though gazing through a
+telescope and adjusting to a nearer focus.  And each time the paddle
+drove clear and his head was raised, the island bounded forward.  His
+head sank, and the streets were of the size of life; it raised, and
+Jacob Welse and the two men stood on the bank three lengths away.
+
+"Dinna I tell ye!" he shouted to them, triumphantly.
+
+But Frona jerked the canoe parallel with the bank, and he found himself
+gazing at the long up-stream stretch.  He arrested a stroke midway, and
+his paddle clattered in the bottom.
+
+"Pick it up!" Corliss's voice was sharp and relentless.
+
+"I'll do naething o' the kind."  He turned a rebellious face on his
+tormentor, and ground his teeth in anger and disappointment.
+
+The canoe was drifting down with the current, and Frona merely held it
+in place.  Corliss crawled forward on his knees.
+
+"I don't want to hurt you, Tommy," he said in a low, tense voice, "so
+. . .  well, just pick it up, that's a good fellow."
+
+"I'll no."
+
+"Then I shall kill you," Corliss went on, in the same calm, passionless
+way, at the same time drawing his hunting-knife from its sheath.
+
+"And if I dinna?" the Scotsman queried stoutly, though cowering away.
+
+Corliss pressed gently with the knife.  The point of the steel entered
+Tommy's back just where the heart should be, passed slowly through the
+shirt, and bit into the skin.  Nor did it stop there; neither did it
+quicken, but just as slowly held on its way.  He shrank back, quivering.
+
+"There! there! man!  Pit it oop!" he shrieked.  "I maun gie in!"
+
+Frona's face was quite pale, but her eyes were hard, brilliantly hard,
+and she nodded approval.
+
+"We're going to try this side, and shoot across from above," she called
+to her father.  "What?  I can't hear.  Tommy?  Oh, his heart's weak.
+Nothing serious."  She saluted with her paddle.  "We'll be back in no
+time, father mine.  In no time."
+
+Stewart River was wide open, and they ascended it a quarter of a mile
+before they shot its mouth and continued up the Yukon.  But when they
+were well abreast of the man on the opposite bank a new obstacle faced
+them.  A mile above, a wreck of an island clung desperately to the
+river bed.  Its tail dwindled to a sand-spit which bisected the river
+as far down as the impassable bluffs.  Further, a few hundred thousand
+tons of ice had grounded upon the spit and upreared a glittering ridge.
+
+"We'll have to portage," Corliss said, as Frona turned the canoe from
+the bank.
+
+La Bijou darted across the narrower channel to the sand-spit and
+slipped up a little ice ravine, where the walls were less precipitous.
+They landed on an out-jutting cake, which, without support, overhung
+the water for sheer thirty feet.  How far its other end could be buried
+in the mass was matter for conjecture.  They climbed to the summit,
+dragging the canoe after them, and looked out over the dazzle.  Floe
+was piled on floe in titanic confusion.  Huge blocks topped and
+overtopped one another, only to serve as pedestals for great white
+masses, which blazed and scintillated in the sun like monstrous jewels.
+
+"A bonny place for a bit walk," Tommy sneered, "wi' the next jam fair
+to come ony time."  He sat down resolutely.  "No, thank ye kindly, I'll
+no try it."
+
+Frona and Corliss clambered on, the canoe between them.
+
+"The Persians lashed their slaves into battle," she remarked, looking
+back.  "I never understood before.  Hadn't you better go back after
+him?"
+
+Corliss kicked him up, whimpering, and forced him to go on in advance.
+The canoe was an affair of little weight, but its bulk, on the steep
+rises and sharp turns, taxed their strength.  The sun burned down upon
+them.  Its white glare hurt their eyes, the sweat oozed out from every
+pore, and they panted for breath.
+
+"Oh, Vance, do you know . . ."
+
+"What?"  He swept the perspiration from his forehead and flung it from
+him with a quick flirt of the hand.
+
+"I wish I had eaten more breakfast."
+
+He grunted sympathetically.  They had reached the midmost ridge and
+could see the open river, and beyond, quite clearly, the man and his
+signal of distress.  Below, pastoral in its green quiet, lay Split-up
+Island.  They looked up to the broad bend of the Yukon, smiling lazily,
+as though it were not capable at any moment of spewing forth a flood of
+death.  At their feet the ice sloped down into a miniature gorge,
+across which the sun cast a broad shadow.
+
+"Go on, Tommy," Frona bade.  "We're half-way over, and there's water
+down there."
+
+"It's water ye'd be thinkin' on, is it?" he snarled, "and you a-leadin'
+a buddie to his death!"
+
+"I fear you have done some great sin, Tommy," she said, with a
+reproving shake of the head, "or else you would not be so afraid of
+death."  She sighed and picked up her end of the canoe.  "Well, I
+suppose it is natural.  You do not know how to die--"
+
+"No more do I want to die," he broke in fiercely.
+
+"But there come times for all men to die,--times when to die is the
+only thing to do.  Perhaps this is such a time."
+
+Tommy slid carefully over a glistening ledge and dropped his height to
+a broad foothold.  "It's a' vera guid," he grinned up; "but dinna ye
+think a've suffeecient discreemeenation to judge for mysel'?  Why
+should I no sing my ain sang?"
+
+"Because you do not know how.  The strong have ever pitched the key for
+such as you.  It is they that have taught your kind when and how to
+die, and led you to die, and lashed you to die."
+
+"Ye pit it fair," he rejoined.  "And ye do it weel.  It doesna behoove
+me to complain, sic a michty fine job ye're makin' on it."
+
+"You are doing well," Corliss chuckled, as Tommy dropped out of sight
+and landed into the bed of the gorge.  "The cantankerous brute! he'd
+argue on the trail to Judgment."
+
+"Where did you learn to paddle?" she asked.
+
+"College--exercise," he answered, shortly.  "But isn't that fine?
+Look!"
+
+The melting ice had formed a pool in the bottom of the gorge.  Frona
+stretched out full length, and dipped her hot mouth in its coolness.
+And lying as she did, the soles of her dilapidated moccasins, or rather
+the soles of her feet (for moccasins and stockings had gone in shreds),
+were turned upward.  They were very white, and from contact with the
+ice were bruised and cut.  Here and there the blood oozed out, and from
+one of the toes it streamed steadily.
+
+"So wee, and pretty, and salt-like," Tommy gibed.  "One wouldna think
+they could lead a strong man to hell."
+
+"By the way you grumble, they're leading you fast enough," Corliss
+answered angrily.
+
+"Forty mile an hour," Tommy retorted, as he walked away, gloating over
+having the last word.
+
+"One moment.  You've two shirts.  Lend me one."
+
+The Scotsman's face lighted inquisitively, till he comprehended.  Then
+he shook his head and started on again.
+
+Frona scrambled to her feet.  "What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing.  Sit down."
+
+"But what is the matter?"
+
+Corliss put his hands on her shoulders and pressed her back.  "Your
+feet.  You can't go on in such shape.  They're in ribbons.  See!"  He
+brushed the sole of one of them and held up a blood-dripping palm.
+"Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"Oh, they didn't bother--much."
+
+"Give me one of your skirts," he demanded.
+
+"I . . ."  She faltered.  "I only have one."
+
+He looked about him.  Tommy had disappeared among the ice-floes.
+
+"We must be getting on," Frona said, attempting to rise.
+
+But he held her back.  "Not another step till I fix you.  Here goes, so
+shut your eyes."
+
+She obeyed, and when she opened them he was naked to the waist, and his
+undershirt, torn in strips, was being bound about her feet.
+
+"You were in the rear, and I did not know--"
+
+"Don't apologize, pray," she interrupted.  "I could have spoken."
+
+"I'm not; I'm reproaching you.  Now, the other one.  Put it up!"
+
+The nearness to her bred a madness, and he touched his lips lightly to
+the same white little toe that had won the Baron Courbertin a kiss.
+
+Though she did not draw back, her face flushed, and she thrilled as she
+had thrilled once before in her life.  "You take advantage of your own
+goodness," she rebuked him.
+
+"Then I will doubly advantage myself."
+
+"Please don't," she begged.
+
+"And why not?  It is a custom of the sea to broach the spirits as the
+ship prepares to sink.  And since this is a sort of a forlorn hope, you
+know, why not?"
+
+"But . . ."
+
+"But what, Miss Prim?"
+
+"Oh!  Of all things, you know I do not deserve that!  If there were
+nobody else to be considered, why, under the circumstances . . ."
+
+He drew the last knot tight and dropped her foot.  "Damn St. Vincent,
+anyway!  Come on!"
+
+"So would I, were I you," she laughed, taking up her end of the canoe.
+"But how you have changed, Vance.  You are not the same man I met on
+the Dyea Trail.  You hadn't learned to swear, then, among other things."
+
+"No, I'm not the same; for which I thank God and you.  Only I think I
+am honester than you.  I always live up to my philosophy."
+
+"Now confess that's unfair.  You ask too much under the
+circumstances--"
+
+"Only a little toe."
+
+"Or else, I suppose, you just care for me in a kind, big-brotherly way.
+In which case, if you really wish it, you may--"
+
+"Do keep quiet," he broke in, roughly, "or I'll be making a gorgeous
+fool of myself."
+
+"Kiss all my toes," she finished.
+
+He grunted, but did not deign a reply.  The work quickly took their
+breath, and they went on in silence till they descended the last steep
+to where McPherson waited by the open river.
+
+"Del hates St. Vincent," she said boldly.  "Why?"
+
+"Yes, it seems that way."  He glanced back at her curiously.  "And
+wherever he goes, Del lugs an old Russian book, which he can't read but
+which he nevertheless regards, in some sort of way, as St. Vincent's
+Nemesis.  And do you know, Frona, he has such faith in it that I can't
+help catching a little myself.  I don't know whether you'll come to me,
+or whether I'll go to you, but--"
+
+She dropped her end of the canoe and broke out in laughter.  He was
+annoyed, and a hurt spread of blood ruddied his face.
+
+"If I have--" he began.
+
+"Stupid!" she laughed.  "Don't be silly!  And above all don't be
+dignified.  It doesn't exactly become you at the present moment,--your
+hair all tangled, a murderous knife in your belt, and naked to the
+waist like a pirate stripped for battle.  Be fierce, frown, swear,
+anything, but please don't be dignified.  I do wish I had my camera.
+In after years I could say: 'This, my friends, is Corliss, the great
+Arctic explorer, just as he looked at the conclusion of his
+world-famous trip _Through Darkest Alaska_.'"
+
+He pointed an ominous finger at her and said sternly, "Where is your
+skirt?"
+
+She involuntarily looked down.  But its tatterdemalion presence
+relieved her, and her face jerked up scarlet.
+
+"You should be ashamed!"
+
+"Please, please do not be dignified," he laughed.  "Very true, it
+doesn't exactly become you at the present moment.  Now, if I had my
+camera--"
+
+"Do be quiet and go on," she said.  "Tommy is waiting.  I hope the sun
+takes the skin all off your back," she panted vindictively, as they
+slid the canoe down the last shelf and dropped it into the water.
+
+Ten minutes later they climbed the ice-wall, and on and up the bank,
+which was partly a hillside, to where the signal of distress still
+fluttered.  Beneath it, on the ground, lay stretched the man.  He lay
+very quietly, and the fear that they were too late was upon them, when
+he moved his head slightly and moaned.  His rough clothes were in rags,
+and the black, bruised flesh of his feet showed through the remnants of
+his moccasins.  His body was thin and gaunt, without flesh-pads or
+muscles, while the bones seemed ready to break through the
+tight-stretched skin.  As Corliss felt his pulse, his eyes fluttered
+open and stared glassily.  Frona shuddered.
+
+"Man, it's fair gruesome," McPherson muttered, running his hand up a
+shrunken arm.
+
+"You go on to the canoe, Frona," Corliss said.  "Tommy and I will carry
+him down."
+
+But her lips set firmly.  Though the descent was made easier by her
+aid, the man was well shaken by the time they laid him in the bottom of
+the canoe,--so well shaken that some last shreds of consciousness were
+aroused.  He opened his eyes and whispered hoarsely, "Jacob Welse . . .
+despatches . . .  from the Outside."  He plucked feebly at his open
+shirt, and across his emaciated chest they saw the leather strap, to
+which, doubtless, the despatch-pouch was slung.
+
+At either end of the canoe there was room to spare, but amidships
+Corliss was forced to paddle with the man between his knees.  La Bijou
+swung out blithely from the bank.  It was down-stream at last, and
+there was little need for exertion.
+
+Vance's arms and shoulders and back, a bright scarlet, caught Frona's
+attention.  "My hopes are realized," she exulted, reaching out and
+softly stroking a burning arm.  "We shall have to put cold cream on it
+when we get back."
+
+"Go ahead," he encouraged.  "That feels awfully good."
+
+She splashed his hot back with a handful of the ice-cold water from
+over-side.  He caught his breath with a gasp, and shivered.  Tommy
+turned about to look at them.
+
+"It's a guid deed we'll 'a doon this day," he remarked, pleasantly.
+"To gie a hand in distress is guid i' the sight of God."
+
+"Who's afeared ?" Frona laughed.
+
+"Weel," he deliberated, "I was a bit fashed, no doot, but--"
+
+His utterance ceased, and he seemed suddenly to petrify.  His eyes
+fixed themselves in a terrible stare over Frona's shoulder.  And then,
+slowly and dreamily, with the solemnity fitting an invocation of Deity,
+murmured, "Guid Gawd Almichty!"
+
+They whirled their heads about.  A wall of ice was sweeping round the
+bend, and even as they looked the right-hand flank, unable to compass
+the curve, struck the further shore and flung up a ridge of heaving
+mountains.
+
+"Guid Gawd!  Guid Gawd!  Like rats i' the trap!" Tommy jabbed his
+paddle futilely in the water.
+
+"Get the stroke!" Corliss hissed in his ear, and La Bijou sprang away.
+
+Frona steered straight across the current, at almost right angles, for
+Split-up; but when the sandspit, over which they had portaged, crashed
+at the impact of a million tons, Corliss glanced at her anxiously.  She
+smiled and shook her head, at the same time slacking off the course.
+
+"We can't make it," she whispered, looking back at the ice a couple of
+hundred feet away.  "Our only chance is to run before it and work in
+slowly."
+
+She cherished every inward inch jealously, holding the canoe up as
+sharply as she dared and at the same time maintaining a constant
+distance ahead of the ice-rim.
+
+"I canna stand the pace," Tommy whimpered once; but the silence of
+Corliss and Frona seemed ominous, and he kept his paddle going.
+
+At the very fore of the ice was a floe five or six feet thick and a
+couple of acres in extent.  Reaching out in advance of the pack, it
+clove through the water till on either side there formed a bore like
+that of a quick flood-tide in an inland passage.  Tommy caught sight of
+it, and would have collapsed had not Corliss prodded him, between
+strokes, with the point of his paddle.
+
+"We can keep ahead," Frona panted; "but we must get time to make the
+landing?"
+
+"When the chance comes, drive her in, bow on," Corliss counselled; "and
+when she strikes, jump and run for it."
+
+"Climb, rather.  I'm glad my skirt is short."
+
+Repulsed by the bluffs of the left bank, the ice was forced towards the
+right.  The big floe, in advance, drove in upon the precise point of
+Split-up Island.
+
+"If you look back, I'll brain you with the paddle," Corliss threatened.
+
+"Ay," Tommy groaned.
+
+But Corliss looked back, and so did Frona.  The great berg struck the
+land with an earthquake shock.  For fifty feet the soft island was
+demolished.  A score of pines swayed frantically and went down, and
+where they went down rose up a mountain of ice, which rose, and fell,
+and rose again.  Below, and but a few feet away, Del Bishop ran out to
+the bank, and above the roar they could hear faintly his "Hit 'er up!
+Hit 'er up!" Then the ice-rim wrinkled up and he sprang back to escape
+it.
+
+"The first opening," Corliss gasped.
+
+Frona's lips spread apart; she tried to speak but failed, then nodded
+her head that she had heard.  They swung along in rapid rhythm under
+the rainbow-wall, looking for a place where it might be quickly
+cleared.  And down all the length of Split-up Island they raced vainly,
+the shore crashing behind them as they fled.
+
+As they darted across the mouth of the back-channel to Roubeau Island
+they found themselves heading directly for an opening in the rim-ice.
+La Bijou drove into it full tilt, and went half her length out of water
+on a shelving cake.  The three leaped together, but while the two of
+them gripped the canoe to run it up, Tommy, in the lead, strove only to
+save himself.  And he would have succeeded had he not slipped and
+fallen midway in the climb.  He half arose, slipped, and fell again.
+Corliss, hauling on the bow of the canoe, trampled over him.  He
+reached up and clutched the gunwale.  They did not have the strength,
+and this clog brought them at once to a standstill.  Corliss looked
+back and yelled for him to leave go, but he only turned upward a
+piteous face, like that of a drowning man, and clutched more tightly.
+Behind them the ice was thundering.  The first flurry of coming
+destruction was upon them.  They endeavored desperately to drag up the
+canoe, but the added burden was too much, and they fell on their knees.
+The sick man sat up suddenly and laughed wildly.  "Blood of my soul!"
+he ejaculated, and laughed again.
+
+Roubeau Island swayed to the first shock, and the ice was rocking under
+their feet.  Frona seized a paddle and smashed the Scotsman's knuckles;
+and the instant he loosed his grip, Corliss carried the canoe up in a
+mad rush, Frona clinging on and helping from behind.  The rainbow-wall
+curled up like a scroll, and in the convolutions of the scroll, like a
+bee in the many folds of a magnificent orchid, Tommy disappeared.
+
+They fell, breathless, on the earth.  But a monstrous cake shoved up
+from the jam and balanced above them.  Frona tried to struggle to her
+feet, but sank on her knees; and it remained for Corliss to snatch her
+and the canoe out from underneath.  Again they fell, this time under
+the trees, the sun sifting down upon them through the green pine
+needles, the robins singing overhead, and a colony of crickets chirping
+in the warmth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Frona woke, slowly, as though from a long dream.  She was lying where
+she had fallen, across Corliss's legs, while he, on his back, faced the
+hot sun without concern.  She crawled up to him.  He was breathing
+regularly, with closed eyes, which opened to meet hers.  He smiled, and
+she sank down again.  Then he rolled over on his side, and they looked
+at each other.
+
+"Vance."
+
+"Yes."
+
+She reached out her hand; his closed upon it, and their eyelids
+fluttered and drooped down.  The river still rumbled en, somewhere in
+the infinite distance, but it came to them like the murmur of a world
+forgotten.  A soft languor encompassed them.  The golden sunshine
+dripped down upon them through the living green, and all the life of
+the warm earth seemed singing.  And quiet was very good.  Fifteen long
+minutes they drowsed, and woke again.
+
+Frona sat up.  "I--I was afraid," she said.
+
+"Not you."
+
+"Afraid that I might be afraid," she amended, fumbling with her hair.
+
+"Leave it down.  The day merits it."
+
+She complied, with a toss of the head which circled it with a nimbus of
+rippling yellow.
+
+"Tommy's gone," Corliss mused, the race with the ice coming slowly back.
+
+"Yes," she answered.  "I rapped him on the knuckles.  It was terrible.
+But the chance is we've a better man in the canoe, and we must care for
+him at once.  Hello!  Look there!"  Through the trees, not a score of
+feet away, she saw the wall of a large cabin.  "Nobody in sight.  It
+must be deserted, or else they're visiting, whoever they are.  You look
+to our man, Vance,--I'm more presentable,--and I'll go and see."
+
+She skirted the cabin, which was a large one for the Yukon country, and
+came around to where it fronted on the river.  The door stood open,
+and, as she paused to knock, the whole interior flashed upon her in an
+astounding picture,--a cumulative picture, or series of pictures, as it
+were.  For first she was aware of a crowd of men, and of some great
+common purpose upon which all were seriously bent.  At her knock they
+instinctively divided, so that a lane opened up, flanked by their
+pressed bodies, to the far end of the room.  And there, in the long
+bunks on either side, sat two grave rows of men.  And midway between,
+against the wall, was a table.  This table seemed the centre of
+interest.  Fresh from the sun-dazzle, the light within was dim and
+murky, but she managed to make out a bearded American sitting by the
+table and hammering it with a heavy caulking-mallet.  And on the
+opposite side sat St. Vincent.  She had time to note his worn and
+haggard face, before a man of Scandinavian appearance slouched up to
+the table.
+
+The man with the mallet raised his right hand and said glibly, "You do
+most solemnly swear that what you are about to give before the
+court--"  He abruptly stopped and glowered at the man before him.
+"Take off your hat!" he roared, and a snicker went up from the crowd as
+the man obeyed.
+
+Then he of the mallet began again.  "You do most solemnly swear that
+what you are about to give before the court shall be the truth, the
+whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"
+
+The Scandinavian nodded and dropped his hand.
+
+"One moment, gentlemen."  Frona advanced up the lane, which closed
+behind her.
+
+St. Vincent sprang to his feet and stretched out his arms to her.
+"Frona," he cried, "oh, Frona, I am innocent!"
+
+It struck her like a blow, the unexpectedness of it, and for the
+instant, in the sickly light, she was conscious only of the ring of
+white faces, each face set with eyes that burned.  Innocent of what?
+she thought, and as she looked at St. Vincent, arms still extended, she
+was aware, in a vague, troubled way, of something distasteful.
+Innocent of what?  He might have had more reserve.  He might have
+waited till he was charged.  She did not know that he was charged with
+anything.
+
+"Friend of the prisoner," the man with the mallet said authoritatively.
+"Bring a stool for'ard, some of you."
+
+"One moment . . ."  She staggered against the table and rested a hand
+on it.  "I do not understand.  This is all new . . ."  But her eyes
+happened to come to rest on her feet, wrapped in dirty rags, and she
+knew that she was clad in a short and tattered skirt, that her arm
+peeped forth through a rent in her sleeve, and that her hair was down
+and flying.  Her cheek and neck on one side seemed coated with some
+curious substance.  She brushed it with her hand, and caked mud rattled
+to the floor.
+
+"That will do," the man said, not unkindly.  "Sit down.  We're in the
+same box.  We do not understand.  But take my word for it, we're here
+to find out.  So sit down."
+
+She raised her hand.  "One moment--"
+
+"Sit down!" he thundered.  "The court cannot be disturbed."
+
+A hum went up from the crowd, words of dissent, and the man pounded the
+table for silence.  But Frona resolutely kept her feet.
+
+When the noise had subsided, she addressed the man in the chair.  "Mr.
+Chairman: I take it that this is a miners' meeting."  (The man nodded.)
+"Then, having an equal voice in the managing of this community's
+affairs, I demand to be heard.  It is important that I should be heard."
+
+"But you are out of order.  Miss--er--"
+
+"Welse!" half a dozen voices prompted.
+
+"Miss Welse," he went on, an added respect marking his demeanor, "it
+grieves me to inform you that you are out of order.  You had best sit
+down."
+
+"I will not," she answered.  "I rise to a question of privilege, and if
+I am not heard, I shall appeal to the meeting."
+
+She swept the crowd with her eyes, and cries went up that she be given
+a fair show.  The chairman yielded and motioned her to go on.
+
+"Mr. Chairman and men: I do not know the business you have at present
+before you, but I do know that I have more important business to place
+before you.  Just outside this cabin is a man probably dying from
+starvation.  We have brought him from across the river.  We should not
+have bothered you, but we were unable to make our own island.  This man
+I speak of needs immediate attention."
+
+"A couple of you nearest the door go out and look after him," the
+chairman ordered.  "And you, Doc Holiday, go along and see what you can
+do."
+
+"Ask for a recess," St. Vincent whispered.
+
+Frona nodded her head.  "And, Mr. Chairman, I make a motion for a
+recess until the man is cared for."
+
+Cries of "No recess!" and "Go on with the business!" greeted the
+putting of it, and the motion was lost.
+
+"Now, Gregory," with a smile and salutation as she took the stool
+beside him, "what is it?"
+
+He gripped her hand tightly.  "Don't believe them, Frona.  They are
+trying to"--with a gulping swallow--"to kill me."
+
+"Why?  Do be calm.  Tell me."
+
+"Why, last night," he began hurriedly, but broke off to listen to the
+Scandinavian previously sworn, who was speaking with ponderous slowness.
+
+"I wake wide open quick," he was saying.  "I coom to the door.  I there
+hear one shot more."
+
+He was interrupted by a warm-complexioned man, clad in faded mackinaws.
+"What did you think?" he asked.
+
+"Eh?" the witness queried, his face dark and troubled with perplexity.
+
+"When you came to the door, what was your first thought?"
+
+"A-w-w," the man sighed, his face clearing and infinite comprehension
+sounding in his voice.  "I have no moccasins.  I t'ink pretty damn
+cold."  His satisfied expression changed to naive surprise when an
+outburst of laughter greeted his statement, but he went on stolidly.
+"One more shot I hear, and I run down the trail."
+
+Then Corliss pressed in through the crowd to Frona, and she lost what
+the man was saying.
+
+"What's up?" the engineer was asking.  "Anything serious?  Can I be of
+any use?"
+
+"Yes, yes."  She caught his hand gratefully.  "Get over the
+back-channel somehow and tell my father to come.  Tell him that Gregory
+St. Vincent is in trouble; that he is charged with--  What are you
+charged with, Gregory?" she asked, turning to him.
+
+"Murder."
+
+"Murder?" from Corliss.
+
+"Yes, yes.  Say that he is charged with murder; that I am here; and
+that I need him.  And tell him to bring me some clothes.  And,
+Vance,"--with a pressure of the hand and swift upward look,--"don't
+take any . . . any big chances, but do try to make it."
+
+"Oh, I'll make it all right."  He tossed his head confidently and
+proceeded to elbow his way towards the door.
+
+"Who is helping you in your defence?" she asked St. Vincent.
+
+He shook his head.  "No.  They wanted to appoint some one,--a renegade
+lawyer from the States, Bill Brown,--but I declined him.  He's taken
+the other side, now.  It's lynch law, you know, and their minds are
+made up.  They're bound to get me."
+
+"I wish there were time to hear your side."
+
+"But, Frona, I am innocent.  I--"
+
+"S-sh!"  She laid her hand on his arm to hush him, and turned her
+attention to the witness.
+
+"So the noospaper feller, he fight like anything; but Pierre and me, we
+pull him into the shack.  He cry and stand in one place--"
+
+"Who cried?" interrupted the prosecuting lawyer.
+
+"Him.   That feller there."  The Scandinavian pointed directly at St.
+Vincent.  "And I make a light.  The slush-lamp I find spilt over most
+everything, but I have a candle in my pocket.  It is good practice to
+carry a candle in the pocket," he affirmed gravely.  "And Borg he lay
+on the floor dead.  And the squaw say he did it, and then she die, too."
+
+"Said who did it?"
+
+Again his accusing finger singled out St. Vincent.  "Him.  That feller
+there."
+
+"Did she?" Frona whispered.
+
+"Yes," St. Vincent whispered back, "she did.  But I cannot imagine what
+prompted her.  She must have been out of her head."
+
+The warm-faced man in the faded mackinaws then put the witness through
+a searching examination, which Frona followed closely, but which
+elicited little new.
+
+"You have the right to cross-examine the witness," the chairman
+informed St. Vincent.  "Any questions you want to ask?"
+
+The correspondent shook his head.
+
+"Go on," Frona urged.
+
+"What's the use?" he asked, hopelessly.  "I'm fore-doomed.  The verdict
+was reached before the trial began."
+
+"One moment, please."  Frona's sharp command arrested the retiring
+witness.  "You do not know of your own knowledge who committed this
+murder?"
+
+The Scandinavian gazed at her with a bovine expression on his leaden
+features, as though waiting for her question to percolate to his
+understanding.
+
+"You did not see who did it?" she asked again.
+
+"Aw, yes.  That feller there," accusative finger to the fore.  "She say
+he did."
+
+There was a general smile at this.
+
+"But you did not see it?"
+
+"I hear some shooting."
+
+"But you did not see who did the shooting?"
+
+"Aw, no; but she said--"
+
+"That will do, thank you," she said sweetly, and the man retired.
+
+The prosecution consulted its notes.  "Pierre La Flitche!" was called
+out.
+
+A slender, swart-skinned man, lithe of figure and graceful, stepped
+forward to the open space before the table.  He was darkly handsome,
+with a quick, eloquent eye which roved frankly everywhere.  It rested
+for a moment on Frona, open and honest in its admiration, and she
+smiled and half-nodded, for she liked him at first glance, and it
+seemed as though they had met of old time.  He smiled pleasantly back,
+the smooth upper lip curling brightly and showing beautiful teeth,
+immaculately white.
+
+In answer to the stereotyped preliminaries he stated that his name was
+that of his father's, a descendant of the _coureurs du bois_.  His
+mother--with a shrug of the shoulders and flash of teeth--was a
+_breed_.  He was born somewhere in the Barrens, on a hunting trip, he
+did not know where.  Ah, _oui_, men called him an old-timer.  He had
+come into the country in the days of Jack McQuestion, across the
+Rockies from the Great Slave.
+
+On being told to go ahead with what he knew of the matter in hand, he
+deliberated a moment, as though casting about for the best departure.
+
+"In the spring it is good to sleep with the open door," he began, his
+words sounding clear and flute-like and marked by haunting memories of
+the accents his forbears put into the tongue.  "And so I sleep last
+night.  But I sleep like the cat.  The fall of the leaf, the breath of
+the wind, and my ears whisper to me, whisper, whisper, all the night
+long.  So, the first shot," with a quick snap of the fingers, "and I am
+awake, just like that, and I am at the door."
+
+St. Vincent leaned forward to Frona.  "It was not the first shot."
+
+She nodded, with her eyes still bent on La Flitche, who gallantly
+waited.
+
+"Then two more shot," he went on, "quick, together, boom-boom, just
+like that.  'Borg's shack,' I say to myself, and run down the trail.  I
+think Borg kill Bella, which was bad.  Bella very fine girl," he
+confided with one of his irresistible smiles.  "I like Bella.  So I
+run.  And John he run from his cabin like a fat cow, with great noise.
+'What the matter?' he say; and I say, 'I don't know.'  And then
+something come, wheugh! out of the dark, just like that, and knock John
+down, and knock me down.  We grab everywhere all at once.  It is a man.
+He is in undress.  He fight.  He cry, 'Oh!  Oh!  Oh!' just like that.
+We hold him tight, and bime-by pretty quick, he stop.  Then we get up,
+and I say, 'Come along back.'"
+
+"Who was the man?"
+
+La Flitche turned partly, and rested his eyes on St. Vincent.
+
+"Go on."
+
+"So?  The man he will not go back; but John and I say yes, and he go."
+
+"Did he say anything?"
+
+"I ask him what the matter; but he cry, he . . .  he sob, _huh-tsch_,
+_huh-tsch_, just like that."
+
+"Did you see anything peculiar about him?"
+
+La Flitche's brows drew up interrogatively.
+
+^Anything uncommon, out of the ordinary?"
+
+"Ah, _oui_; blood on the hands."  Disregarding the murmur in the room,
+he went on, his facile play of feature and gesture giving dramatic
+value to the recital.  "John make a light, and Bella groan, like the
+hair-seal when you shoot him in the body, just like that when you shoot
+him in the body under the flipper.  And Borg lay over in the corner.  I
+look.  He no breathe 'tall.
+
+"Then Bella open her eyes, and I look in her eyes, and I know she know
+me, La Flitche.  'Who did it, Bella?' I ask.  And she roll her head on
+the floor and whisper, so low, so slow, 'Him dead?'  I know she mean
+Borg, and I say yes.  Then she lift up on one elbow, and look about
+quick, in big hurry, and when she see Vincent she look no more, only
+she look at Vincent all the time.  Then she point at him, just like
+that."  Suiting the action to the word, La Flitche turned and thrust a
+wavering finger at the prisoner.  "And she say, 'Him, him, him.'  And I
+say, 'Bella, who did it?'  And she say, 'Him, him, him.  St. Vincha,
+him do it.'  And then"--La Flitche's head felt limply forward on his
+chest, and came back naturally erect, as he finished, with a flash of
+teeth, "Dead."
+
+The warm-faced man, Bill Brown, put the quarter-breed through the
+customary direct examination, which served to strengthen his testimony
+and to bring out the fact that a terrible struggle must have taken
+place in the killing of Borg.  The heavy table was smashed, the stool
+and the bunk-board splintered, and the stove over-thrown.  "Never did I
+see anything like it," La Flitche concluded his description of the
+wreck.  "No, never."
+
+Brown turned him over to Frona with a bow, which a smile of hers paid
+for in full.  She did not deem it unwise to cultivate cordiality with
+the lawyer.  What she was working for was time--time for her father to
+come, time to be closeted with St. Vincent and learn all the details of
+what really had occurred.  So she put questions, questions,
+interminable questions, to La Flitche.  Twice only did anything of
+moment crop up.
+
+"You spoke of the first shot, Mr. La Flitche.  Now, the walls of a log
+cabin are quite thick.  Had your door been closed, do you think you
+could have heard that first shot?"
+
+He shook his head, though his dark eyes told her he divined the point
+she was endeavoring to establish.
+
+"And had the door of Borg's cabin been closed, would you have heard?"
+
+Again he shook his head.
+
+"Then, Mr. La Flitche, when you say the first shot, you do not mean
+necessarily the first shot fired, but rather the first shot you heard
+fired?"
+
+He nodded, and though she had scored her point she could not see that
+it had any material bearing after all.
+
+Again she worked up craftily to another and stronger climax, though she
+felt all the time that La Flitche fathomed her.
+
+"You say it was very dark, Mr. La Flitche?"
+
+"Ah, oui; quite dark."
+
+"How dark?  How did you know it was John you met?"
+
+"John make much noise when he run.  I know that kind of noise."
+
+"Could you see him so as to know that it was he?"
+
+"Ah, no."
+
+"Then, Mr. La Flitche," she demanded, triumphantly, "will you please
+state how you knew there was blood on the hands of Mr. St. Vincent?"
+
+His lip lifted in a dazzling smile, and he paused a moment.  "How?  I
+feel it warm on his hands.  And my nose--ah, the smoke of the hunter
+camp long way off, the hole where the rabbit hide, the track of the
+moose which has gone before, does not my nose tell me?"  He flung his
+head back, and with tense face, eyes closed, nostrils quivering and
+dilated, he simulated the quiescence of all the senses save one and the
+concentration of his whole being upon that one.  Then his eyes
+fluttered partly open and he regarded her dreamily.  "I smell the blood
+on his hands, the warm blood, the hot blood on his hands."
+
+"And by gad he can do it!" some man exclaimed.
+
+And so convinced was Frona that she glanced involuntarily at St.
+Vincent's hands, and saw there the rusty-brown stains on the cuffs of
+his flannel shirt.
+
+As La Flitche left the stand, Bill Brown came over to her and shook
+hands.  "No more than proper I should know the lawyer for the defence,"
+he said, good-naturedly, running over his notes for the next witness.
+
+"But don't you think it is rather unfair to me?" she asked, brightly.
+"I have not had time to prepare my case.  I know nothing about it
+except what I have gleaned from your two witnesses.  Don't you think,
+Mr. Brown," her voice rippling along in persuasive little notes, "don't
+you think it would be advisable to adjourn the meeting until to-morrow?"
+
+"Hum," he deliberated, looking at his watch.
+
+"Wouldn't be a bad idea.  It's five o'clock, anyway, and the men ought
+to be cooking their suppers."
+
+She thanked him, as some women can, without speech; yet, as he looked
+down into her face and eyes, he experienced a subtler and greater
+satisfaction than if she had spoken.
+
+He stepped to his old position and addressed the room.  "On
+consultation of the defence and the prosecution, and upon consideration
+of the lateness of the hour and the impossibility of finishing the
+trial within a reasonable limit, I--hum--I take the liberty of moving
+an adjournment until eight o'clock to-morrow morning."
+
+"The ayes have it," the chairman proclaimed, coming down from his place
+and proceeding to build the fire, for he was a part-owner of the cabin
+and cook for his crowd.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+Frona turned to St. Vincent as the last of the crowd filed out.  He
+clutched her hands spasmodically, like a drowning man.
+
+"Do believe me, Frona.  Promise me."
+
+Her face flushed.  "You are excited," she said, "or you would not say
+such things.  Not that I blame you," she relented.  "I hardly imagine
+the situation can be anything else but exciting."
+
+"Yes, and well I know it," he answered, bitterly.  "I am acting like a
+fool, and I can't help it.  The strain has been terrible.  And as
+though the horror of Borg's end were not enough, to be considered the
+murderer, and haled up for mob justice!  Forgive me, Frona.  I am
+beside myself.  Of course, I know that you will believe me."
+
+"Then tell me, Gregory."
+
+"In the first place, the woman, Bella, lied.  She must have been crazed
+to make that dying statement when I fought as I did for her and Borg.
+That is the only explanation--"
+
+"Begin at the beginning," she interrupted.  "Remember, I know nothing."
+
+He settled himself more comfortably on the stool, and rolled a
+cigarette as he took up the history of the previous night.
+
+"It must have been about one in the morning when I was awakened by the
+lighting of the slush-lamp.  I thought it was Borg; wondered what he
+was prowling about for, and was on the verge of dropping off to sleep,
+when, though I do not know what prompted me, I opened my eyes.  Two
+strange men were in the cabin.  Both wore masks and fur caps with the
+flaps pulled down, so that I could see nothing of their faces save the
+glistening of the eyes through the eye-slits.
+
+"I had no first thought, unless it was that danger threatened.  I lay
+quietly for a second and deliberated.  Borg had borrowed my pistol, and
+I was actually unarmed.  My rifle was by the door.  I decided to make a
+rush for it.  But no sooner had I struck the floor than one of the men
+turned on me, at the same time firing his revolver.  That was the first
+shot, and the one La Flitche did not hear.  It was in the struggle
+afterwards that the door was burst open, which enabled him to hear the
+last three.
+
+"Well; I was so close to the man, and my leap out of the bunk was so
+unexpected, that he missed me.  The next moment we grappled and rolled
+on the floor.  Of course, Borg was aroused, and the second man turned
+his attention to him and Bella.  It was this second man who did the
+killing, for my man, naturally, had his hands full.  You heard the
+testimony.  From the way the cabin was wrecked, you can picture the
+struggle.  We rolled and tossed about and fought till stools, table,
+shelves--everything was smashed.
+
+"Oh, Frona, it was terrible!  Borg fighting for life, Bella helping
+him, though wounded and groaning, and I unable to aid.  But finally, in
+a very short while, I began to conquer the man with whom I was
+struggling.  I had got him down on his back, pinioned his arms with my
+knees, and was slowly throttling him, when the other man finished his
+work and turned on me also.  What could I do?  Two to one, and winded!
+So I was thrown into the corner, and they made their escape.  I confess
+that I must have been badly rattled by that time, for as soon as I
+caught my breath I took out after them, and without a weapon.  Then I
+collided with La Flitche and John, and--and you know the rest.  Only,"
+he knit his brows in puzzlement, "only, I cannot understand why Bella
+should accuse me."
+
+He looked at her appealingly, and, though she pressed his hand
+sympathetically, she remained silent, weighing pro and con what she had
+heard.
+
+She shook her head slowly.  "It's a bad case, and the thing is to
+convince them--"
+
+"But, my God, Frona, I am innocent!  I have not been a saint, perhaps,
+but my hands are clean from blood."
+
+"But remember, Gregory," she said, gently, "I am not to judge you.
+Unhappily, it rests with the men of this miners' meeting, and the
+problem is: how are they to be convinced of your innocence?  The two
+main points are against you,--Bella's dying words and the blood on your
+sleeve."
+
+"The place was areek with blood," St. Vincent cried passionately,
+springing to his feet.  "I tell you it was areek!  How could I avoid
+floundering in it, fighting as I was for life?  Can you not take my
+word--"
+
+"There, there, Gregory.  Sit down.  You are truly beside yourself.  If
+your case rested with me, you know you would go free and clean.  But
+these men,--you know what mob rule is,--how are we to persuade them to
+let you go?  Don't you see?  You have no witnesses.  A dying woman's
+words are more sacred than a living man's.  Can you show cause for the
+woman to die with a lie on her lips?  Had she any reason to hate you?
+Had you done her or her husband an injury?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Certainly, to us the thing is inexplicable; but the miners need no
+explanation.  To them it is obvious.  It rests with us to disprove the
+obvious.  Can we do it?"
+
+The correspondent sank down despondently, with a collapsing of the
+chest and a drooping forward of the shoulders.  "Then am I indeed lost."
+
+"No, it's not so bad as that.  You shall not be hanged.  Trust me for
+that."
+
+"But what can you do?" he asked, despairingly.  "They have usurped the
+law, have made themselves the law."
+
+"In the first place, the river has broken.  That means everything.  The
+Governor and the territorial judges may be expected in at any moment
+with a detachment of police at their backs.  And they're certain to
+stop here.  And, furthermore, we may be able to do something ourselves.
+The river is open, and if it comes to the worst, escape would be
+another way out; and escape is the last thing they would dream of."
+
+"No, no; impossible.  What are you and I against the many?"
+
+"But there's my father and Baron Courbertin.  Four determined people,
+acting together, may perform miracles, Gregory, dear.  Trust me, it
+shall come out well."
+
+She kissed him and ran her hand through his hair, but the worried look
+did not depart.
+
+Jacob Welse crossed over the back-channel long before dark, and with
+him came Del, the baron, and Corliss.  While Frona retired to change
+her clothes in one of the smaller cabins, which the masculine owners
+readily turned over to her, her father saw to the welfare of the
+mail-carrier.  The despatches were of serious import, so serious that
+long after Jacob Welse had read and re-read them his face was dark and
+clouded; but he put the anxiety from him when he returned to Frona.
+St. Vincent, who was confined in an adjoining cabin, was permitted to
+see them.
+
+"It looks bad," Jacob Welse said, on parting for the night.  "But rest
+assured, St. Vincent, bad or not, you'll not be stretched up so long as
+I've a hand to play in the rumpus.  I am certain you did not kill Borg,
+and there's my fist on it."
+
+"A long day," Corliss remarked, as he walked back with Frona to her
+cabin.
+
+"And a longer to-morrow," she answered, wearily.  "And I'm so sleepy."
+
+"You're a brave little woman, and I'm proud of you."  It was ten
+o'clock, and he looked out through the dim twilight to the ghostly ice
+drifting steadily by.  "And in this trouble," he went on, "depend upon
+me in any way."
+
+"In any way?" she queried, with a catch in her voice.
+
+"If I were a hero of the melodrama I'd say; 'To the death!' but as I'm
+not; I'll just repeat, in any way."
+
+"You are good to me, Vance.  I can never repay--"
+
+"Tut! tut!  I do not put myself on sale.  Love is service, I believe."
+
+She looked at him for a long time, but while her face betrayed soft
+wonder, at heart she was troubled, she knew not why, and the events of
+the day, and of all the days since she had known him, came fluttering
+through her mind.
+
+"Do you believe in a white friendship?" she asked at last.  "For I do
+hope that such a bond may hold us always.  A bright, white friendship,
+a comradeship, as it were?"  And as she asked, she was aware that the
+phrase did not quite express what she felt and would desire.  And when
+he shook his head, she experienced a glad little inexplicable thrill.
+
+"A comradeship?" he questioned.  "When you know I love you?"
+
+"Yes," she affirmed in a low voice.
+
+"I am afraid, after all, that your knowledge of man is very limited.
+Believe me, we are not made of such clay.  A comradeship?  A coming in
+out of the cold to sit by your fire?  Good.  But a coming in when
+another man sits with you by your fire?  No.  Comradeship would demand
+that I delight in your delights, and yet, do you think for a moment
+that I could see you with another man's child in your arms, a child
+which might have been mine; with that other man looking out at me
+through the child's eyes, laughing at me through its mouth?  I say, do
+you think I could delight in your delights?  No, no; love cannot
+shackle itself with white friendships."
+
+She put her hand on his arm.
+
+"Do you think I am wrong?" he asked, bewildered by the strange look in
+her face.
+
+She was sobbing quietly.
+
+"You are tired and overwrought.  So there, good-night.  You must get to
+bed."
+
+"No, don't go, not yet."  And she arrested him.  "No, no; I am foolish.
+As you say, I am tired.  But listen, Vance.  There is much to be done.
+We must plan to-morrow's work.  Come inside.  Father and Baron
+Courbertin are together, and if the worst comes, we four must do big
+things."
+
+"Spectacular," Jacob Welse commented, when Frona had briefly outlined
+the course of action and assigned them their parts.  "But its very
+unexpectedness ought to carry it through."
+
+"A _coup d'etat_!" was the Baron's verdict.  "Magnificent!  Ah!  I feel
+warm all over at the thought.  'Hands up!' I cry, thus, and very fierce.
+
+"And if they do not hold up their hands?" he appealed to Jacob Welse.
+
+"Then shoot.  Never bluff when you're behind a gun, Courbertin.  It's
+held by good authorities to be unhealthy."
+
+"And you are to take charge of La Bijou, Vance," Frona said.  "Father
+thinks there will be little ice to-morrow if it doesn't jam to-night.
+All you've to do is to have the canoe by the bank just before the door.
+Of course, you won't know what is happening until St. Vincent comes
+running.  Then in with him, and away you go--Dawson!  So I'll say
+good-night and good-by now, for I may not have the opportunity in the
+morning."
+
+"And keep the left-hand channel till you're past the bend," Jacob Welse
+counselled him; "then take the cut-offs to the right and follow the
+swiftest water.  Now off with you and into your blankets.  It's seventy
+miles to Dawson, and you'll have to make it at one clip."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+Jacob Welse was given due respect when he arose at the convening of the
+miners' meeting and denounced the proceedings.  While such meetings had
+performed a legitimate function in the past, he contended, when there
+was no law in the land, that time was now beyond recall; for law was
+now established, and it was just law.  The Queen's government had shown
+itself fit to cope with the situation, and for them to usurp its powers
+was to step backward into the night out of which they had come.
+Further, no lighter word than "criminal" could characterize such
+conduct.  And yet further, he promised them, in set, sober terms, if
+anything serious were the outcome, to take an active part in the
+prosecution of every one of them.  At the conclusion of his speech he
+made a motion to hold the prisoner for the territorial court and to
+adjourn, but was voted down without discussion.
+
+"Don't you see," St. Vincent said to Frona, "there is no hope?"
+
+"But there is.  Listen!"  And she swiftly outlined the plot of the
+night before.
+
+He followed her in a half-hearted way, too crushed to partake of her
+enthusiasm.  "It's madness to attempt it," he objected, when she had
+done.
+
+"And it looks very much like hanging not to attempt it," she answered a
+little spiritedly.  "Surely you will make a fight?"
+
+"Surely," he replied, hollowly.
+
+The first witnesses were two Swedes, who told of the wash-tub incident,
+when Borg had given way to one of his fits of anger.   Trivial as the
+incident was, in the light of subsequent events it at once became
+serious.  It opened the way for the imagination into a vast familiar
+field.  It was not so much what was said as what was left unsaid.  Men
+born of women, the rudest of them, knew life well enough to be aware of
+its significance,--a vulgar common happening, capable of but one
+interpretation.  Heads were wagged knowingly in the course of the
+testimony, and whispered comments went the rounds.
+
+Half a dozen witnesses followed in rapid succession, all of whom had
+closely examined the scene of the crime and gone over the island
+carefully, and all of whom were agreed that there was not the slightest
+trace to be found of the two men mentioned by the prisoner in his
+preliminary statement.
+
+To Frona's surprise, Del Bishop went upon the stand.  She knew he
+disliked St. Vincent, but could not imagine any evidence he could
+possess which would bear upon the case.
+
+Being sworn, and age and nationality ascertained, Bill Brown asked him
+his business.
+
+"Pocket-miner," he challenged back, sweeping the assemblage with an
+aggressive glance.
+
+Now, it happens that a very small class of men follow pocketing, and
+that a very large class of men, miners, too, disbelieve utterly in any
+such method or obtaining gold.
+
+"Pocket-miner!" sneered a red-shirted, patriarchal-looking man, a man
+who had washed his first pan in the Californian diggings in the early
+fifties.
+
+"Yep," Del affirmed.
+
+"Now, look here, young feller," his interlocutor continued, "d'ye mean
+to tell me you ever struck it in such-fangled way?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"Don't believe it," with a contemptuous shrug.
+
+Del swallowed fast and raised his head with a jerk.  "Mr. Chairman, I
+rise to make a statement.  I won't interfere with the dignity of the
+court, but I just wish to simply and distinctly state that after the
+meeting's over I'm going to punch the head of every man that gets gay.
+Understand?"
+
+"You're out of order," the chairman replied, rapping the table with the
+caulking-mallet.
+
+"And your head, too," Del cried, turning upon him.  "Damn poor order
+you preserve.  Pocketing's got nothing to do with this here trial, and
+why don't you shut such fool questions out?  I'll take care of you
+afterwards, you potwolloper!"
+
+"You will, will you?" The chairman grew red in the face, dropped the
+mallet, and sprang to his feet.
+
+Del stepped forward to meet him, but Bill Brown sprang in between and
+held them apart.
+
+"Order, gentlemen, order," he begged.  "This is no time for unseemly
+exhibitions.  And remember there are ladies present."
+
+The two men grunted and subsided, and Bill Brown asked, "Mr. Bishop, we
+understand that you are well acquainted with the prisoner.  Will you
+please tell the court what you know of his general character?"
+
+Del broadened into a smile.  "Well, in the first place, he's an
+extremely quarrelsome disposition--"
+
+"Hold!  I won't have it!"  The prisoner was on his feet, trembling with
+anger.  "You shall not swear my life away in such fashion!  To bring a
+madman, whom I have only met once in my life, to testify as to my
+character!"
+
+The pocket-miner turned to him.  "So you don't know me, eh, Gregory St.
+Vincent?"
+
+"No," St.  Vincent replied, coldly, "I do not know you, my man."
+
+"Don't you man me!" Del shouted, hotly.
+
+But St. Vincent ignored him, turning to the crowd.
+
+"I never saw the fellow but once before, and then for a few brief
+moments in Dawson."
+
+"You'll remember before I'm done," Del sneered; "so hold your hush and
+let me say my little say.  I come into the country with him way back in
+'84."
+
+St. Vincent regarded him with sudden interest.
+
+"Yep, Mr. Gregory St. Vincent.  I see you begin to recollect.  I
+sported whiskers and my name was Brown, Joe Brown, in them days."
+
+He grinned vindictively, and the correspondent seemed to lose all
+interest.
+
+"Is it true, Gregory?" Frona whispered.
+
+"I begin to recognize," he muttered, slowly.  "I don't know . . . no,
+folly!  The man must have died."
+
+"You say in '84, Mr. Bishop?" Bill Brown prompted.
+
+"Yep, in '84.  He was a newspaper-man, bound round the world by way of
+Alaska and Siberia.  I'd run away from a whaler at Sitka,--that squares
+it with Brown,--and I engaged with him for forty a month and found.
+Well, he quarrelled with me--"
+
+A snicker, beginning from nowhere in particular, but passing on from
+man to man and swelling in volume, greeted this statement.  Even Frona
+and Del himself were forced to smile, and the only sober face was the
+prisoner's.
+
+"But he quarrelled with Old Andy at Dyea, and with Chief George of the
+Chilcoots, and the Factor at Pelly, and so on down the line.  He got us
+into no end of trouble, and 'specially woman-trouble.  He was always
+monkeying around--"
+
+"Mr.  Chairman, I object."  Frona stood up, her face quite calm and
+blood under control.  "There is no necessity for bringing in the amours
+of Mr. St. Vincent.  They have no bearing whatsoever upon the case;
+and, further, none of the men of this meeting are clean enough to be
+prompted by the right motive in conducting such an inquiry.  So I
+demand that the prosecution at least confine itself to relevant
+testimony."
+
+Bill Brown came up smugly complacent and smiling.  "Mr. Chairman, we
+willingly accede to the request made by the defence.  Whatever we have
+brought out has been relevant and material.  Whatever we intend to
+bring out shall be relevant and material.  Mr. Bishop is our star
+witness, and his testimony is to the point.  It must be taken into
+consideration that we nave no direct evidence as to the murder of John
+Borg.  We can bring no eye-witnesses into court.  Whatever we have is
+circumstantial.  It is incumbent upon us to show cause.  To show cause
+it is necessary to go into the character of the accused.  This we
+intend to do.  We intend to show his adulterous and lustful nature,
+which has culminated in a dastardly deed and jeopardized his neck.  We
+intend to show that the truth is not in him; that he is a liar beyond
+price; that no word he may speak upon the stand need be accepted by a
+jury of his peers.  We intend to show all this, and to weave it
+together, thread by thread, till we have a rope long enough and strong
+enough to hang him with before the day is done.  So I respectfully
+submit, Mr. Chairman, that the witness be allowed to proceed."
+
+The chairman decided against Frona, and her appeal to the meeting was
+voted down.  Bill Brown nodded to Del to resume.
+
+"As I was saying, he got us into no end of trouble.  Now, I've been
+mixed up with water all my life,--never can get away from it, it
+seems,--and the more I'm mixed the less I know about it.  St. Vincent
+knew this, too, and him a clever hand at the paddle; yet he left me to
+run the Box Canyon alone while he walked around.  Result: I was turned
+over, lost half the outfit and all the tobacco, and then he put the
+blame on me besides.  Right after that he got tangled up with the Lake
+Le Barge Sticks, and both of us came near croaking."
+
+"And why was that?" Bill Brown interjected.
+
+"All along of a pretty squaw that looked too kindly at him.  After we
+got clear, I lectured him on women in general and squaws in particular,
+and he promised to behave.  Then we had a hot time with the Little
+Salmons.  He was cuter this time, and I didn't know for keeps, but I
+guessed.  He said it was the medicine man who got horstile; but
+nothing'll stir up a medicine man quicker'n women, and the facts
+pointed that way.  When I talked it over with him in a fatherly way he
+got wrathy, and I had to take him out on the bank and give him a
+threshing.  Then he got sulky, and didn't brighten up till we ran into
+the mouth of the Reindeer River, where a camp of Siwashes were fishing
+salmon.  But he had it in for me all the time, only I didn't know
+it,--was ready any time to give me the double cross.
+
+"Now, there's no denying he's got a taking way with women.  All he has
+to do is to whistle 'em up like dogs.  Most remarkable faculty, that.
+There was the wickedest, prettiest squaw among the Reindeers.  Never
+saw her beat, excepting Bella.  Well, I guess he whistled her up, for
+he delayed in the camp longer than was necessary.  Being partial to
+women--"
+
+"That will do, Mr. Bishop," interrupted the chairman, who, from
+profitless watching of Frona's immobile face, had turned to her hand,
+the nervous twitching and clinching of which revealed what her face had
+hidden.  "That will do, Mr. Bishop.  I think we have had enough of
+squaws."
+
+"Pray do not temper the testimony," Frona chirruped, sweetly.  "It
+seems very important."
+
+"Do you know what I am going to say next?" Del demanded hotly of the
+chairman.  "You don't, eh?  Then shut up.  I'm running this particular
+sideshow."
+
+Bill Brown sprang in to avert hostilities, but the chairman restrained
+himself, and Bishop went on.
+
+"I'd been done with the whole shooting-match, squaws and all, if you
+hadn't broke me off.  Well, as I said, he had it in for me, and the
+first thing I didn't know, he'd hit me on the head with a rifle-stock,
+bundled the squaw into the canoe, and pulled out.  You all know what
+the Yukon country was in '84.  And there I was, without an outfit, left
+alone, a thousand miles from anywhere.  I got out all right, though
+there's no need of telling how, and so did he.  You've all heard of his
+adventures in Siberia.  Well," with an impressive pause, "I happen to
+know a thing or two myself."
+
+He shoved a hand into the big pocket of his mackinaw jacket and pulled
+out a dingy leather-bound volume of venerable appearance.
+
+"I got this from Pete Whipple's old woman,--Whipple of Eldorado.  It
+concerns her grand-uncle or great-grand-uncle, I don't know which; and
+if there's anybody here can read Russian, why, it'll go into the
+details of that Siberian trip.  But as there's no one here that can--"
+
+"Courbertin!  He can read it!" some one called in the crowd.
+
+A way was made for the Frenchman forthwith, and he was pushed and
+shoved, protestingly, to the front.
+
+"Savve the lingo?" Del demanded.
+
+"Yes; but so poorly, so miserable," Courbertin demurred.  "It is a long
+time.  I forget."
+
+"Go ahead.  We won't criticise."
+
+"No, but--"
+
+"Go ahead!" the chairman commanded.
+
+Del thrust the book into his hands, opened at the yellow title-page.
+"I've been itching to get my paws on some buck like you for months and
+months," he assured him, gleefully.  "And now I've got you, you can't
+shake me, Charley.  So fire away."
+
+Courbertin began hesitatingly: "'_The Journal of Father Yakontsk,
+Comprising an Account in Brief of his Life in the Benedictine Monastery
+at Obidorsky, and in Full of his Marvellous Adventures in East Siberia
+among the Deer Men_.'"
+
+The baron looked up for instructions.
+
+"Tell us when it was printed," Del ordered him.
+
+"In Warsaw, 1807."
+
+The pocket-miner turned triumphantly to the room.  "Did you hear that?
+Just keep track of it.  1807, remember!"
+
+The baron took up the opening paragraph.  "'_It was because of
+Tamerlane_,'" he commenced, unconsciously putting his translation into
+a construction with which he was already familiar.
+
+At his first words Frona turned white, and she remained white
+throughout the reading.  Once she stole a glance at her father, and was
+glad that he was looking straight before him, for she did not feel able
+to meet his gaze just them.  On the other hand, though she knew St.
+Vincent was eying her narrowly, she took no notice of him, and all he
+could see was a white face devoid of expression.
+
+"'_When Tamerlane swept with fire and sword over Eastern Asia_,'"
+Courbertin read slowly, "'_states were disrupted, cities overthrown,
+and tribes scattered like--like star-dust.  A vast people was hurled
+broadcast over the land.  Fleeing before the conquerors_,'--no,
+no,--'_before the mad lust of the conquerors, these refugees swung far
+into Siberia, circling, circling to the north and east and fringing the
+rim of the polar basin with a spray of Mongol tribes_.'"
+
+"Skip a few pages," Bill Brown advised, "and read here and there.  We
+haven't got all night."
+
+Courbertin complied.  "'_The coast people are Eskimo stock, merry of
+nature and not offensive.  They call themselves the Oukilion, or the
+Sea Men.  From them I bought dogs and food.  But they are subject to
+the Chow Chuen, who live in the interior and are known as the Deer Men.
+The Chow Chuen are a fierce and savage race.  When I left the coast
+they fell upon me, took from me my goods, and made me a slave_.'"  He
+ran over a few pages.  "'_I worked my way to a seat among the head men,
+but I was no nearer my freedom.  My wisdom was of too great value to
+them for me to depart. . .  Old Pi-Une was a great chief, and it was
+decreed that I should marry his daughter Ilswunga.  Ilswunga was a
+filthy creature.  She would not bathe, and her ways were not good . . .
+I did marry Ilswunga, but she was a wife to me only in name.  Then did
+she complain to her father, the old Pi-Une, and he was very wroth.  And
+dissension was sown among the tribes; but in the end I became mightier
+than ever, what of my cunning and resource; and Ilswunga made no more
+complaint, for I taught her games with cards which she might play by
+herself, and other things_.'"
+
+"Is that enough?" Courbertin asked.
+
+"Yes, that will do," Bill Brown answered.  "But one moment.  Please
+state again the date of publication."
+
+"1807, in Warsaw."
+
+"Hold on, baron," Del Bishop spoke up.  "Now that you're on the stand,
+I've got a question or so to slap into you."  He turned to the
+court-room.  "Gentlemen, you've all heard somewhat of the prisoner's
+experiences in Siberia.  You've caught on to the remarkable sameness
+between them and those published by Father Yakontsk nearly a hundred
+years ago.  And you have concluded that there's been some wholesale
+cribbing somewhere.  I propose to show you that it's more than
+cribbing.  The prisoner gave me the shake on the Reindeer River in '88.
+Fall of '88 he was at St. Michael's on his way to Siberia.  '89 and '90
+he was, by his talk, cutting up antics in Siberia.  '91 he come back to
+the world, working the conquering-hero graft in 'Frisco.  Now let's see
+if the Frenchman can make us wise.
+
+"You were in Japan?" he asked.
+
+Courbertin, who had followed the dates, made a quick calculation, and
+could but illy conceal his surprise.  He looked appealingly to Frona,
+but she did not help him.  "Yes," he said, finally.
+
+"And you met the prisoner there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What year was it?"
+
+There was a general craning forward to catch the answer.
+
+"1889," and it came unwillingly.
+
+"Now, how can that be, baron?" Del asked in a wheedling tone.  "The
+prisoner was in Siberia at that time."
+
+Courbertin shrugged his shoulders that it was no concern of his, and
+came off the stand.  An impromptu recess was taken by the court-room
+for several minutes, wherein there was much whispering and shaking of
+heads.
+
+"It is all a lie."  St. Vincent leaned close to Frona's ear, but she
+did not hear.
+
+"Appearances are against me, but I can explain it all."
+
+But she did not move a muscle, and he was called to the stand by the
+chairman.  She turned to her father, and the tears rushed up into her
+eyes when he rested his hand on hers.
+
+"Do you care to pull out?" he asked after a momentary hesitation.
+
+She shook her head, and St. Vincent began to speak.  It was the same
+story he had told her, though told now a little more fully, and in
+nowise did it conflict with the evidence of La Flitche and John.  He
+acknowledged the wash-tub incident, caused, he explained, by an act of
+simple courtesy on his part and by John Borg's unreasoning anger.  He
+acknowledged that Bella had been killed by his own pistol, but stated
+that the pistol had been borrowed by Borg several days previously and
+not returned.  Concerning Bella's accusation he could say nothing.  He
+could not see why she should die with a lie on her lips.  He had never
+in the slightest way incurred her displeasure, so even revenge could
+not be advanced.  It was inexplicable.  As for the testimony of Bishop,
+he did not care to discuss it.  It was a tissue of falsehood cunningly
+interwoven with truth.  It was true the man had gone into Alaska with
+him in 1888, but his version of the things which happened there was
+maliciously untrue.  Regarding the baron, there was a slight mistake in
+the dates, that was all.
+
+In questioning him.  Bill Brown brought out one little surprise.  From
+the prisoner's story, he had made a hard fight against the two
+mysterious men.  "If," Brown asked, "such were the case, how can you
+explain away the fact that you came out of the struggle unmarked?  On
+examination of the body of John Borg, many bruises and contusions were
+noticeable.  How is it, if you put up such a stiff fight, that you
+escaped being battered?"
+
+St. Vincent did not know, though he confessed to feeling stiff and sore
+all over.  And it did not matter, anyway.  He had killed neither Borg
+nor his wife, that much he did know.
+
+Frona prefaced her argument to the meeting with a pithy discourse on
+the sacredness of human life, the weaknesses and dangers of
+circumstantial evidence, and the rights of the accused wherever doubt
+arose.  Then she plunged into the evidence, stripping off the
+superfluous and striving to confine herself to facts.  In the first
+place, she denied that a motive for the deed had been shown.  As it
+was, the introduction of such evidence was an insult to their
+intelligence, and she had sufficient faith in their manhood and
+perspicacity to know that such puerility would not sway them in the
+verdict they were to give.
+
+And, on the other hand, in dealing with the particular points at issue,
+she denied that any intimacy had been shown to have existed between
+Bella and St. Vincent; and she denied, further, that it had been shown
+that any intimacy had been attempted on the part of St. Vincent.
+Viewed honestly, the wash-tub incident--the only evidence brought
+forward--was a laughable little affair, portraying how the simple
+courtesy of a gentleman might be misunderstood by a mad boor of a
+husband.  She left it to their common sense; they were not fools.
+
+They had striven to prove the prisoner bad-tempered.  She did not need
+to prove anything of the sort concerning John Borg.  They all knew his
+terrible fits of anger; they all knew that his temper was proverbial in
+the community; that it had prevented him having friends and had made
+him many enemies.  Was it not very probable, therefore, that the masked
+men were two such enemies?  As to what particular motive actuated these
+two men, she could not say; but it rested with them, the judges, to
+know whether in all Alaska there were or were not two men whom John
+Borg could have given cause sufficient for them to take his life.
+
+Witness had testified that no traces had been found of these two men;
+but the witness had not testified that no traces had been found of St.
+Vincent, Pierre La Flitche, or John the Swede.  And there was no need
+for them so to testify.  Everybody knew that no foot-marks were left
+when St. Vincent ran up the trail, and when he came back with La
+Flitche and the other man.  Everybody knew the condition of the trail,
+that it was a hard-packed groove in the ground, on which a soft
+moccasin could leave no impression; and that had the ice not gone down
+the river, no traces would have been left by the murderers in passing
+from and to the mainland.
+
+At this juncture La Flitche nodded his head in approbation, and she
+went on.
+
+Capital had been made out of the blood on St. Vincent's hands.  If they
+chose to examine the moccasins at that moment on the feet of Mr. La
+Flitche, they would also find blood.  That did not argue that Mr. La
+Flitche had been a party to the shedding of the blood.
+
+Mr. Brown had drawn attention to the fact that the prisoner had not
+been bruised or marked in the savage encounter which had taken place.
+She thanked him for having done so.  John Borg's body showed that it
+had been roughly used.  He was a larger, stronger, heavier man than St.
+Vincent.  If, as charged, St. Vincent had committed the murder, and
+necessarily, therefore, engaged in a struggle severe enough to bruise
+John Borg, how was it that he had come out unharmed?  That was a point
+worthy of consideration.
+
+Another one was, why did he run down the trail?  It was inconceivable,
+if he had committed the murder, that he should, without dressing or
+preparation for escape, run towards the other cabins.  It was, however,
+easily conceivable that he should take up the pursuit of the real
+murderers, and in the darkness--exhausted, breathless, and certainly
+somewhat excited--run blindly down the trail.
+
+Her summing up was a strong piece of synthesis; and when she had done,
+the meeting applauded her roundly.  But she was angry and hurt, for she
+knew the demonstration was for her sex rather than for her cause and
+the work she had done.
+
+Bill Brown, somewhat of a shyster, and his ear ever cocked to the
+crowd, was not above taking advantage when opportunity offered, and
+when it did not offer, to dogmatize artfully.  In this his native humor
+was a strong factor, and when he had finished with the mysterious
+masked men they were as exploded sun-myths,--which phrase he promptly
+applied to them.
+
+They could not have got off the island.  The condition of the ice for
+the three or four hours preceding the break-up would not have permitted
+it.  The prisoner had implicated none of the residents of the island,
+while every one of them, with the exception of the prisoner, had been
+accounted for elsewhere.  Possibly the prisoner was excited when he ran
+down the trail into the arms of La Flitche and John the Swede.  One
+should have thought, however, that he had grown used to such things in
+Siberia.  But that was immaterial; the facts were that he was
+undoubtedly in an abnormal state of excitement, that he was
+hysterically excited, and that a murderer under such circumstances
+would take little account of where he ran.  Such things had happened
+before.  Many a man had butted into his own retribution.
+
+In the matter of the relations of Borg, Bella, and St. Vincent, he made
+a strong appeal to the instinctive prejudices of his listeners, and for
+the time being abandoned matter-of-fact reasoning for all-potent
+sentimental platitudes.  He granted that circumstantial evidence never
+proved anything absolutely.  It was not necessary it should.  Beyond
+the shadow of a reasonable doubt was all that was required.  That this
+had been done, he went on to review the testimony.
+
+"And, finally," he said, "you can't get around Bella's last words.  We
+know nothing of our own direct knowledge.  We've been feeling around in
+the dark, clutching at little things, and trying to figure it all out.
+But, gentlemen," he paused to search the faces of his listeners, "Bella
+knew the truth.  Hers is no circumstantial evidence.  With quick,
+anguished breath, and life-blood ebbing from her, and eyeballs glazing,
+she spoke the truth.  With dark night coming on, and the death-rattle
+in her throat, she raised herself weakly and pointed a shaking finger
+at the accused, thus, and she said, 'Him, him, him.  St. Vincha, him do
+it.'"
+
+With Bill Brown's finger still boring into him, St. Vincent struggled
+to his feet.  His face looked old and gray, and he looked about him
+speechlessly.  "Funk!  Funk!" was whispered back and forth, and not so
+softly but what he heard.  He moistened his lips repeatedly, and his
+tongue fought for articulation.  "It is as I have said," he succeeded,
+finally.  "I did not do it.  Before God, I did not do it!"  He stared
+fixedly at John the Swede, waiting the while on his laggard thought.
+"I . . .  I did not do it . . .  I did not . . .  I . . .  I did not."
+
+He seemed to have become lost in some supreme meditation wherein John
+the Swede figured largely, and as Frona caught him by the hand and
+pulled him gently down, some man cried out, "Secret ballot!"
+
+But Bill Brown was on his feet at once.  "No!  I say no!  An open
+ballot!  We are men, and as men are not afraid to put ourselves on
+record."
+
+A chorus of approval greeted him, and the open ballot began.  Man after
+man, called upon by name, spoke the one word, "Guilty."
+
+Baron Courbertin came forward and whispered to Frona.  She nodded her
+head and smiled, and he edged his way back, taking up a position by the
+door.  He voted "Not guilty" when his turn came, as did Frona and Jacob
+Welse.  Pierre La Flitche wavered a moment, looking keenly at Frona and
+St. Vincent, then spoke up, clear and flute-like, "Guilty."
+
+As the chairman arose, Jacob Welse casually walked over to the opposite
+side of the table and stood with his back to the stove.  Courbertin,
+who had missed nothing, pulled a pickle-keg out from the wall and
+stepped upon it.
+
+The chairman cleared his throat and rapped for order.  "Gentlemen," he
+announced, "the prisoner--"
+
+"Hands up!" Jacob Welse commanded peremptorily, and a fraction of a
+second after him came the shrill "Hands up, gentlemen!" of Courbertin.
+
+Front and rear they commanded the crowd with their revolvers.  Every
+hand was in the air, the chairman's having gone up still grasping the
+mallet.  There was no disturbance.  Each stood or sat in the same
+posture as when the command went forth.  Their eyes, playing here and
+there among the central figures, always returned to Jacob Welse.
+
+St. Vincent sat as one dumfounded.  Frona thrust a revolver into his
+hand, but his limp fingers refused to close on it.
+
+"Come, Gregory," she entreated.  "Quick!  Corliss is waiting with the
+canoe.  Come!"
+
+She shook him, and he managed to grip the weapon.  Then she pulled and
+tugged, as when awakening a heavy sleeper, till he was on his feet.
+But his face was livid, his eyes like a somnambulist's, and he was
+afflicted as with a palsy.  Still holding him, she took a step backward
+for him to come on.  He ventured it with a shaking knee.  There was no
+sound save the heavy breathing of many men.  A man coughed slightly and
+cleared his throat.  It was disquieting, and all eyes centred upon him
+rebukingly.  The man became embarrassed, and shifted his weight
+uneasily to the other leg.  Then the heavy breathing settled down again.
+
+St. Vincent took another step, but his fingers relaxed and the revolver
+fell with a loud noise to the floor.  He made no effort to recover it.
+Frona stooped hurriedly, but Pierre La Flitche had set his foot upon
+it.  She looked up and saw his hands above his head and his eyes fixed
+absently on Jacob Welse.  She pushed at his leg, and the muscles were
+tense and hard, giving the lie to the indifference on his face.  St.
+Vincent looked down helplessly, as though he could not understand.
+
+But this delay drew the attention of Jacob Welse, and, as he tried to
+make out the cause, the chairman found his chance.  Without crooking,
+his right arm swept out and down, the heavy caulking-mallet leaping
+from his hand.  It spanned the short distance and smote Jacob Welse
+below the ear.  His revolver went off as he fell, and John the Swede
+grunted and clapped a hand to his thigh.
+
+Simultaneous with this the baron was overcome.  Del Bishop, with hands
+still above his head and eyes fixed innocently before him, had simply
+kicked the pickle-keg out from under the Frenchman and brought him to
+the floor.  His bullet, however, sped harmlessly through the roof.  La
+Flitche seized Frona in his arms.  St. Vincent, suddenly awakening,
+sprang for the door, but was tripped up by the breed's ready foot.
+
+The chairman pounded the table with his fist and concluded his broken
+sentence, "Gentlemen, the prisoner is found guilty as charged."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+Frona had gone at once to her father's side, but he was already
+recovering.  Courbertin was brought forward with a scratched face,
+sprained wrist, and an insubordinate tongue.  To prevent discussion and
+to save time, Bill Brown claimed the floor.
+
+"Mr. Chairman, while we condemn the attempt on the part of Jacob Welse,
+Frona Welse, and Baron Courbertin to rescue the prisoner and thwart
+justice, we cannot, under the circumstances, but sympathize with them.
+There is no need that I should go further into this matter.  You all
+know, and doubtless, under a like situation, would have done the same.
+And so, in order that we may expeditiously finish the business, I make
+a motion to disarm the three prisoners and let them go."
+
+The motion was carried, and the two men searched for weapons.  Frona
+was saved this by giving her word that she was no longer armed.  The
+meeting then resolved itself into a hanging committee, and began to
+file out of the cabin.
+
+"Sorry I had to do it," the chairman said, half-apologetically,
+half-defiantly.
+
+Jacob Welse smiled.  "You took your chance," he answered, "and I can't
+blame you.  I only wish I'd got you, though."
+
+Excited voices arose from across the cabin.  "Here, you!  Leggo!" "Step
+on his fingers, Tim!"  "Break that grip!"  "Ouch!  Ow!"  "Pry his mouth
+open!"
+
+Frona saw a knot of struggling men about St. Vincent, and ran over.  He
+had thrown himself down on the floor and, tooth and nail, was fighting
+like a madman.  Tim Dugan, a stalwart Celt, had come to close quarters
+with him, and St. Vincent's teeth were sunk in the man's arm.
+
+"Smash 'm, Tim!  Smash 'm!"
+
+"How can I, ye fule?  Get a pry on his mouth, will ye?"
+
+"One moment, please."  The men made way for her, drawing back and
+leaving St. Vincent and Tim.
+
+Frona knelt down by him.  "Leave go, Gregory.  Do leave go."
+
+He looked up at her, and his eyes did not seem human.  He breathed
+stertorously, and in his throat were the queer little gasping noises of
+one overwrought.
+
+"It is I, Gregory."  She brushed her hand soothingly across his brow.
+"Don't you understand?  It is I, Frona.  Do leave go."
+
+His whole body slowly relaxed, and a peaceful expression grew upon his
+face.  His jaw dropped, and the man's arm was withdrawn.
+
+"Now listen, Gregory.  Though you are to die--"
+
+"But I cannot!  I cannot!" he groaned.  "You said that I could trust to
+you, that all would come well."
+
+She thought of the chance which had been given, but said nothing.
+
+"Oh, Frona!  Frona!" He sobbed and buried his face in her lap.
+
+"At least you can be a man.  It is all that remains."
+
+"Come on!" Tim Dugan commanded.  "Sorry to bother ye, miss, but we've
+got to fetch 'm along.  Drag 'm out, you fellys!  Catch 'm by the legs,
+Blackey, and you, too, Johnson."
+
+St. Vincent's body stiffened at the words, the rational gleam went out
+of his eyes, and his fingers closed spasmodically on Frona's.  She
+looked entreaty at the men, and they hesitated.
+
+"Give me a minute with him," she begged, "just a minute."
+
+"He ain't worth it," Dugan sneered, after they had drawn apart.  "Look
+at 'm."
+
+"It's a damned shame," corroborated Blackey, squinting sidewise at
+Frona whispering in St. Vincent's ear, the while her hand wandered
+caressingly through his hair.
+
+What she said they did not hear, but she got him on his feet and led
+him forward.  He walked as a dead man might walk, and when he entered
+the open air gazed forth wonderingly upon the muddy sweep of the Yukon.
+The crowd had formed by the bank, about a pine tree.  A boy, engaged in
+running a rope over one of the branches, finished his task and slid
+down the trunk to the ground.  He looked quickly at the palms of his
+hands and blew upon them, and a laugh went up.  A couple of wolf-dogs,
+on the outskirts, bristled up to each other and bared their fangs.  Men
+encouraged them.  They closed in and rolled over, but were kicked aside
+to make room for St. Vincent.
+
+Corliss came up the bank to Frona.  "What's up?" he whispered.  "Is it
+off?"
+
+She tried to speak, but swallowed and nodded her head.
+
+"This way, Gregory."  She touched his arm and guided him to the box
+beneath the rope.
+
+Corliss, keeping step with them, looked over the crowd speculatively
+and felt into his jacket-pocket.  "Can I do anything?" he asked,
+gnawing his under lip impatiently.  "Whatever you say goes, Frona.  I
+can stand them off."
+
+She looked at him, aware of pleasure in the sight.  She knew he would
+dare it, but she knew also that it would be unfair.  St. Vincent had
+had his chance, and it was not right that further sacrifice should be
+made.  "No, Vance.  It is too late.  Nothing can be done."
+
+"At least let me try," he persisted.
+
+"No; it is not our fault that our plan failed, and . . . and . . ." Her
+eyes filled.  "Please do not ask it of me."
+
+"Then let me take you away.  You cannot remain here."
+
+"I must," she answered, simply, and turned to St. Vincent, who seemed
+dreaming.
+
+Blackey was tying the hangman's knot in the rope's end, preparatory to
+slipping the noose over St. Vincent's head.
+
+"Kiss me, Gregory," she said, her hand on his arm.
+
+He started at the touch, and saw all eager eyes centred upon him, and
+the yellow noose, just shaped, in the hands of the hangman.  He threw
+up his arms, as though to ward it off, and cried loudly, "No! no!  Let
+me confess!  Let me tell the truth, then you'll believe me!"
+
+Bill Brown and the chairman shoved Blackey back, and the crowd gathered
+in.  Cries and protestations rose from its midst.  "No, you don't," a
+boy's shrill voice made itself heard.  "I'm not going to go.  I climbed
+the tree and made the rope fast, and I've got a right to stay."
+"You're only a kid," replied a man's voice, "and it ain't good for
+you."  "I don't care, and I'm not a kid.  I'm--I'm used to such things.
+And, anyway, I climbed the tree.  Look at my hands."  "Of course he can
+stay," other voices took up the trouble.  "Leave him alone, Curley."
+"You ain't the whole thing."  A laugh greeted this, and things quieted
+down.
+
+"Silence!" the chairman called, and then to St. Vincent, "Go ahead,
+you, and don't take all day about it."
+
+"Give us a chance to hear!" the crowd broke out again.  "Put 'm on the
+box!  Put 'm on the box!"
+
+St. Vincent was helped up, and began with eager volubility.
+
+"I didn't do it, but I saw it done.  There weren't two men--only one.
+He did it, and Bella helped him."
+
+A wave of laughter drowned him out.
+
+"Not so fast," Bill Brown cautioned him.  "Kindly explain how Bella
+helped this man kill herself.  Begin at the beginning."
+
+"That night, before he turned in, Borg set his burglar alarm--"
+
+"Burglar alarm?"
+
+"That's what I called it,--a tin bread-pan attached to the latch so the
+door couldn't open without tumbling it down.  He set it every night, as
+though he were afraid of what might happen,--the very thing which did
+happen, for that matter.  On the night of the murder I awoke with the
+feeling that some one was moving around.  The slush-lamp was burning
+low, and I saw Bella at the door.  Borg was snoring; I could hear him
+plainly.  Bella was taking down the bread-pan, and she exercised great
+care about it.  Then she opened the door, and an Indian came in softly.
+He had no mask, and I should know him if ever I see him again, for a
+scar ran along the forehead and down over one eye."
+
+"I suppose you sprang out of bed and gave the alarm?"
+
+"No, I didn't," St. Vincent answered, with a defiant toss of the head,
+as though he might as well get the worst over with.  "I just lay there
+and waited."
+
+"What did you think?"
+
+"That Bella was in collusion with the Indian, and that Borg was to be
+murdered.  It came to me at once."
+
+"And you did nothing?"
+
+"Nothing."  His voice sank, and his eyes dropped to Frona, leaning
+against the box beneath him and steadying it.  She did not seem to be
+affected.  "Bella came over to me, but I closed my eyes and breathed
+regularly.  She held the slush-lamp to me, but I played sleep naturally
+enough to fool her.  Then I heard a snort of sudden awakening and
+alarm, and a cry, and I looked out.  The Indian was hacking at Borg
+with a knife, and Borg was warding off with his arms and trying to
+grapple him.  When they did grapple, Bella crept up from behind and
+threw her arm in a strangle-hold about her husband's neck.  She put her
+knee into the small of his back, and bent him backward and, with the
+Indian helping, threw him to the floor."
+
+"And what did you do?"
+
+"I watched."
+
+"Had you a revolver?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The one you previously said John Borg had borrowed?"
+
+"Yes; but I watched."
+
+"Did John Borg call for help?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Can you give his words?"
+
+"He called, 'St. Vincent!  Oh, St. Vincent!  Oh, my God!  Oh, St.
+Vincent, help me!'"  He shuddered at the recollection, and added, "It
+was terrible."
+
+"I should say so," Brown grunted.  "And you?"
+
+"I watched," was the dogged reply, while a groan went up from the
+crowd.  "Borg shook clear of them, however, and got on his legs.  He
+hurled Bella across the cabin with a back-sweep of the arm and turned
+upon the Indian.  Then they fought.  The Indian had dropped the knife,
+and the sound of Borg's blows was sickening.  I thought he would surely
+beat the Indian to death.  That was when the furniture was smashed.
+They rolled and snarled and struggled like wild beasts.  I wondered the
+Indian's chest did not cave in under some of Borg's blows.  But Bella
+got the knife and stabbed her husband repeatedly about the body.  The
+Indian had clinched with him, and his arms were not free; so he kicked
+out at her sideways.  He must have broken her legs, for she cried out
+and fell down, and though she tried, she never stood up again.  Then he
+went down, with the Indian under him, across the stove."
+
+"Did he call any more for help?"
+
+"He begged me to come to him."
+
+"And?"
+
+"I watched.  He managed to get clear of the Indian and staggered over
+to me.  He was streaming blood, and I could see he was very weak.
+'Give me your gun,' he said; 'quick, give me it.'  He felt around
+blindly.  Then his mind seemed to clear a bit, and he reached across me
+to the holster hanging on the wall and took the pistol.  The Indian
+came at him with the knife again, but he did not try to defend himself.
+Instead, he went on towards Bella, with the Indian still hanging to him
+and hacking at him.  The Indian seemed to bother and irritate him, and
+he shoved him away.  He knelt down and turned Bella's face up to the
+light; but his own face was covered with blood and he could not see.
+So he stopped long enough to brush the blood from his eyes.  He
+appeared to look in order to make sure.  Then he put the revolver to
+her breast and fired.
+
+"The Indian went wild at this, and rushed at him with the knife, at the
+same time knocking the pistol out of his hand.  It was then the shelf
+with the slush-lamp was knocked down.  They continued to fight in the
+darkness, and there were more shots fired, though I do not know by
+whom.  I crawled out of the bunk, but they struck against me in their
+struggles, and I fell over Bella.  That's when the blood got on my
+hands.  As I ran out the door, more shots were fired.  Then I met La
+Flitche and John, and . . . and you know the rest.  This is the truth I
+have told you, I swear it!"
+
+He looked down at Frona.  She was steadying the box, and her face was
+composed.  He looked out over the crowd and saw unbelief.  Many were
+laughing.
+
+"Why did you not tell this story at first?" Bill Brown demanded.
+
+"Because . . . because . . ."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Because I might have helped."
+
+There was more laughter at this, and Bill Brown turned away from him.
+"Gentlemen, you have heard this pipe dream.  It is a wilder fairy story
+than his first.  At the beginning of the trial we promised to show that
+the truth was not in him.  That we succeeded, your verdict is ample
+testimony.  But that he should likewise succeed, and more brilliantly,
+we did not expect.  That he has, you cannot doubt.  What do you think
+of him?  Lie upon lie he has given us; he has been proven a chronic
+liar; are you to believe this last and fearfully impossible lie?
+Gentlemen, I can only ask that you reaffirm your judgment.  And to
+those who may doubt his mendacity,--surely there are but few,--let me
+state, that if his story is true; if he broke salt with this man, John
+Borg, and lay in his blankets while murder was done; if he did hear,
+unmoved, the voice of the man calling to him for help; if he did lie
+there and watch that carnival of butchery without his manhood prompting
+him,--let me state, gentlemen, I say, let me state that he is none the
+less deserveful of hanging.  We cannot make a mistake.  What shall it
+be?"
+
+"Death!"  "String him up!"  "Stretch 'm!" were the cries.
+
+But the crowd suddenly turned its attention to the river, and even
+Blackey refrained from his official task.  A large raft, worked by a
+sweep at either end, was slipping past the tail of Split-up Island,
+close to the shore.  When it was at their feet, its nose was slewed
+into the bank, and while its free end swung into the stream to make the
+consequent circle, a snubbing-rope was flung ashore and several turns
+taken about the tree under which St. Vincent stood.  A cargo of
+moose-meat, red and raw, cut into quarters, peeped from beneath a cool
+covering of spruce boughs.  And because of this, the two men on the
+raft looked up to those on the bank with pride in their eyes.
+
+"Tryin' to make Dawson with it," one of them explained, "and the sun's
+all-fired hot."
+
+"Nope," said his comrade, in reply to a query, "don't care to stop and
+trade.  It's worth a dollar and a half a pound down below, and we're
+hustlin' to get there.  But we've got some pieces of a man we want to
+leave with you."  He turned and pointed to a loose heap of blankets
+which slightly disclosed the form of a man beneath.  "We gathered him
+in this mornin', 'bout thirty mile up the Stewart, I should judge."
+
+"Stands in need of doctorin'," the other man spoke up, "and the meat's
+spoilin', and we ain't got time for nothin'."  "Beggar don't have
+anythin' to say.  Don't savve the burro."  "Looks as he might have been
+mixin' things with a grizzly or somethin',--all battered and gouged.
+Injured internally, from the looks of it.  Where'll you have him?"
+
+Frona, standing by St. Vincent, saw the injured man borne over the
+crest of the bank and through the crowd.  A bronzed hand drooped down
+and a bronzed face showed from out the blankets.  The bearers halted
+near them while a decision could be reached as to where he should be
+carried.  Frona felt a sudden fierce grip on her arm.
+
+"Look! look!"  St. Vincent was leaning forward and pointing wildly at
+the injured man.  "Look!  That scar!"
+
+The Indian opened his eyes and a grin of recognition distorted his face.
+
+"It is he!  It is he!"  St. Vincent, trembling with eagerness, turned
+upon the crowd.  "I call you all to witness!  That is the man who
+killed John Borg!"
+
+No laughter greeted this, for there was a terrible earnestness in his
+manner.  Bill Brown and the chairman tried to make the Indian talk, but
+could not.  A miner from British Columbia was pressed into service, but
+his Chinook made no impression.  Then La Flitche was called.  The
+handsome breed bent over the man and talked in gutturals which only his
+mother's heredity made possible.  It sounded all one, yet it was
+apparent that he was trying many tongues.  But no response did he draw,
+and he paused disheartened.  As though with sudden recollection, he
+made another attempt.  At once a gleam of intelligence shot across the
+Indian's face, and his larynx vibrated to similar sounds.
+
+"It is the Stick talk of the Upper White," La Flitche stopped long
+enough to explain.
+
+Then, with knit brows and stumbling moments when he sought
+dim-remembered words, he plied the man with questions.  To the rest it
+was like a pantomime,--the meaningless grunts and waving arms and
+facial expressions of puzzlement, surprise, and understanding.  At
+times a passion wrote itself on the face of the Indian, and a sympathy
+on the face of La Flitche.  Again, by look and gesture, St. Vincent was
+referred to, and once a sober, mirthless laugh shaped the mouths of
+them.
+
+"So?  It is good," La Flitche said, when the Indian's head dropped
+back.  "This man make true talk.  He come from White River, way up.  He
+cannot understand.  He surprised very much, so many white men.  He
+never think so many white men in the world.  He die soon.  His name Gow.
+
+"Long time ago, three year, this man John Borg go to this man Gow's
+country.  He hunt, he bring plenty meat to the camp, wherefore White
+River Sticks like him.  Gow have one squaw, Pisk-ku.  Bime-by John Borg
+make preparation to go 'way.  He go to Gow, and he say, 'Give me your
+squaw.  We trade.  For her I give you many things.'  But Gow say no.
+Pisk-ku good squaw.  No woman sew moccasin like she.  She tan
+moose-skin the best, and make the softest leather.  He like Pisk-ku.
+Then John Borg say he don't care; he want Pisk-ku.  Then they have a
+_skookum_ big fight, and Pisk-ku go 'way with John Borg.  She no want
+to go 'way, but she go anyway.  Borg call her 'Bella,' and give her
+plenty good things, but she like Gow all the time."  La Flitche pointed
+to the scar which ran down the forehead and past the eye of the Indian.
+"John Borg he do that."
+
+"Long time Gow pretty near die.  Then he get well, but his head sick.
+He don't know nobody.  Don't know his father, his mother, or anything.
+Just like a little baby.  Just like that.  Then one day, quick, click!
+something snap, and his head get well all at once.  He know his father
+and mother, he remember Pisk-ku, he remember everything.  His father
+say John Borg go down river.  Then Gow go down river.  Spring-time, ice
+very bad.  He very much afraid, so many white men, and when he come to
+this place he travel by night.  Nobody see him 'tall, but he see
+everybody.  He like a cat, see in the dark.  Somehow, he come straight
+to John Borg's cabin.  He do not know how this was, except that the
+work he had to do was good work."
+
+St. Vincent pressed Frona's hand, but she shook her fingers clear and
+withdrew a step.
+
+"He see Pisk-ku feed the dogs, and he have talk with her.  That night
+he come and she open the door.  Then you know that which was done.  St.
+Vincent do nothing, Borg kill Bella.  Gow kill Borg.  Borg kill Gow,
+for Gow die pretty quick.  Borg have strong arm.  Gow sick inside, all
+smashed up.  Gow no care; Pisk-ku dead.
+
+"After that he go 'cross ice to the land.  I tell him all you people
+say it cannot be; no man can cross the ice at that time.  He laugh, and
+say that it is, and what is, must be.  Anyway, he have very hard time,
+but he get 'cross all right.  He very sick inside.  Bime-by he cannot
+walk; he crawl.  Long time he come to Stewart River.  Can go no more,
+so he lay down to die.  Two white men find him and bring him to this
+place.  He don't care.  He die anyway."
+
+La Flitche finished abruptly, but nobody spoke.  Then he added, "I
+think Gow damn good man."
+
+Frona came up to Jacob Welse.  "Take me away, father," she said.  "I am
+so tired."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+Next morning, Jacob Welse, for all of the Company and his millions in
+mines, chopped up the day's supply of firewood, lighted a cigar, and
+went down the island in search of Baron Courbertin.  Frona finished the
+breakfast dishes, hung out the robes to air, and fed the dogs.  Then
+she took a worn Wordsworth from her clothes-bag, and, out by the bank,
+settled herself comfortably in a seat formed by two uprooted pines.
+But she did no more than open the book; for her eyes strayed out and
+over the Yukon to the eddy below the bluffs, and the bend above, and
+the tail of the spit which lay in the midst of the river.  The rescue
+and the race were still fresh with her, though there were strange
+lapses, here and there, of which she remembered little.  The struggle
+by the fissure was immeasurable; she knew not how long it lasted; and
+the race down Split-up to Roubeau Island was a thing of which her
+reason convinced her, but of which she recollected nothing.
+
+The whim seized her, and she followed Corliss through the three days'
+events, but she tacitly avoided the figure of another man whom she
+would not name.  Something terrible was connected therewith, she knew,
+which must be faced sooner or later; but she preferred to put that
+moment away from her.  She was stiff and sore of mind as well as of
+body, and will and action were for the time being distasteful.  It was
+more pleasant, even, to dwell on Tommy, on Tommy of the bitter tongue
+and craven heart; and she made a note that the wife and children in
+Toronto should not be forgotten when the Northland paid its dividends
+to the Welse.
+
+The crackle of a foot on a dead willow-twig roused her, and her eyes
+met St. Vincent's.
+
+"You have not congratulated me upon my escape," he began, breezily.
+"But you must have been dead-tired last night.  I know I was.  And you
+had that hard pull on the river besides."
+
+He watched her furtively, trying to catch some cue as to her attitude
+and mood.
+
+"You're a heroine, that's what you are, Frona," he began again, with
+exuberance.  "And not only did you save the mail-man, but by the delay
+you wrought in the trial you saved me.  If one more witness had gone on
+the stand that first day, I should have been duly hanged before Gow put
+in an appearance.  Fine chap, Gow.  Too bad he's going to die."
+
+"I am glad that I could be of help," she replied, wondering the while
+what she could say.
+
+"And of course I am to be congratulated--"
+
+"Your trial is hardly a thing for congratulation," she spoke up
+quickly, looking him straight in the eyes for the moment.  "I am glad
+that it came out as it did, but surely you cannot expect me to
+congratulate you."
+
+"O-o-o," with long-drawn inflection.  "So that's where it pinches."  He
+smiled good-humoredly, and moved as though to sit down, but she made no
+room for him, and he remained standing.  "I can certainly explain.  If
+there have been women--"
+
+Frona had been clinching her hand nervously, but at the word burst out
+in laughter.
+
+"Women?" she queried.  "Women?" she repeated.  "Do not be ridiculous,
+Gregory."
+
+"After the way you stood by me through the trial," he began,
+reproachfully, "I thought--"
+
+"Oh, you do not understand," she said, hopelessly.  "You do not
+understand.  Look at me, Gregory, and see if I can make you understand.
+Your presence is painful to me.  Your kisses hurt me.  The memory of
+them still burns my cheek, and my lips feel unclean.  And why?  Because
+of women, which you may explain away?  How little do you understand!
+But shall I tell you?"
+
+Voices of men came to her from down the river-bank, and the splashing
+of water.  She glanced quickly and saw Del Bishop guiding a poling-boat
+against the current, and Corliss on the bank, bending to the tow-rope.
+
+"Shall I tell you why, Gregory St. Vincent?" she said again.  "Tell you
+why your kisses have cheapened me?  Because you broke the faith of food
+and blanket.  Because you broke salt with a man, and then watched that
+man fight unequally for life without lifting your hand.  Why, I had
+rather you had died in defending him; the memory of you would have been
+good.  Yes, I had rather you had killed him yourself.  At least, it
+would have shown there was blood in your body."
+
+"So this is what you would call love?" he began, scornfully, his
+fretting, fuming devil beginning to rouse.  "A fair-weather love,
+truly.  But, Lord, how we men learn!"
+
+"I had thought you were well lessoned," she retorted; "what of the
+other women?"
+
+"But what do you intend to do?" he demanded, taking no notice.  "I am
+not an easy man to cross.  You cannot throw me over with impunity.  I
+shall not stand for it, I warn you.  You have dared do things in this
+country which would blacken you were they known.  I have ears.  I have
+not been asleep.  You will find it no child's play to explain away
+things which you may declare most innocent."
+
+She looked at him with a smile which carried pity in its cold mirth,
+and it goaded him.
+
+"I am down, a thing to make a jest upon, a thing to pity, but I promise
+you that I can drag you with me.  My kisses have cheapened you, eh?
+Then how must you have felt at Happy Camp on the Dyea Trail?"
+
+As though in answer, Corliss swung down upon them with the tow-rope.
+
+Frona beckoned a greeting to him.  "Vance," she said, "the mail-carrier
+has brought important news to father, so important that he must go
+outside.  He starts this afternoon with Baron Courbertin in La Bijou.
+Will you take me down to Dawson?  I should like to go at once, to-day.
+
+"He . . . he suggested you," she added shyly, indicating St. Vincent.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS***
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