ntless ages stirring and heaving
imperceptibly but irresistibly.

The sound died out and the evening peace settled once more upon the
world. In the years of their life upon this river these people had
witnessed thousands, ay, perhaps millions of tons of the discolored ice
of the glacier hurled into the summer melting pot. The tremendous
voice of the glacial world was powerless to disturb them.

Murray gave a short laugh.

"Guess romance has no sort of place in these regions," he said, his
thoughts evidently claimed by the voice they had both just listened to.

Jessie looked round.

"Romance doesn't belong to regions," she said. "Only to the human
heart."

Murray nodded.

"That's so--too." His amiable smile beamed into the girl's serious
eyes. "Those pore darn fools that don't know better than to hunt fish
through holes in the polar ice are just as chock full of romance as any
school miss. Sure. If it depended on conditions I guess we'd need to
go hungry for it. Facts, and desperate hard facts at that, go to make
up life north of 'sixty,' and any one guessing different is li'ble to
find all the trouble Providence is so generous handing out hereabouts."

"I think that way, too--now. I didn't always."

The girl sighed.

"No."

The man seemed to have nothing further to add, and his smile died out.
Jessie was once more reflectively contemplating the masses of
overhanging ice on the opposite bank. The thoughts of both had drifted
back over a space of seven months.

It was the man who finally broke the spell which seemed to have fallen.
He broke it with a movement of impatience.

"What's the use?" he said at last.

"No--there's no use. Nothing can ever bring him back to us." The girl
suddenly flung out her hands in a gesture of helpless earnestness and
longing. "Oh, if he might have been spared to me. My daddy, my brave,
brave daddy."

Again a silence fell between them, and again it was the man who finally
broke it. This time there was no impatience. His strange eyes were
serious; they were as deeply earnest as the girl's. But the light in
them suggested a stirring of deep emotion which had nothing of regret
in it.

"His day had to come," he said reflectively. "A man can live and
prosper on the northern trail, I guess, if he's built right. He can
beat it right out, maybe for years. But it's there all the time
waiting--waiting. And it's going to get us all--in the end. That is
if we