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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talbot gave his slight, quiet laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He drew her into his arms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talbot laid his six-shooter on the table.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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