od with a
lance-like straightness, very tall, very pliant, and as he stared with
a fixity which would have amounted to impertinence had it not been
disarmed by amazement she looked past him and through him as if he were
himself without substance.

Then she took off the heavy Nor'wester that had shaded her face, and
the firelight fell on masses of hair deeply and redly gold; upon
features exquisitely modeled, in no wise masculine or heavy, yet full
of dominance. Duskily-lashed eyes of dark violet were brimming with a
contagious energy and her rounded chin was splendidly atilt. A
sculptor might have modeled her as she stood, and entitled his bronze
"Victory."

Her coloring too was rich, almost dazzling, and Brent thought that he
had never seen such arresting beauty or such an unusual though
harmonious blending of feminine allurement--and masculine spirit.
Though in height she approached the heroic of scale, the first summary
of impression which he drew from feature and coloring was "delicately
gorgeous."

The girl vouchsafed him no attention of any kind but remained silent
for a moment with her eyes raining so resolute a fire that those of the
exhausted workers kindled into faint responsiveness.

Then the vibrant clarity of the voice sounded again--and the voice too
had that strangely hypnotic quality that one felt in the glance. "You
boys have all worked here hour on hour, till ye're nigh dead. My paw
an' me are already powerful beholden to ye all but----" She paused and
under just such an emotion the ordinary woman's throat would have
caught with a sob and her eyes would have filled with tears. It was
not so with Alexander. Her note only softened into a deeper gravity.
"But he lays over thar an' I mistrusts he's a-dyin' ternight. He
wouldn't suffer me ter tarry by his bed-side because he 'lowed thet you
boys needed a man ter work along with ye in his place. If ye quits now
all the labor ye've done spent goes fer naught." She paused a moment
and then impulsively she broke out: "An' I couldn't hardly endure ter
go back thar an' tell him that we'd failed."

As she paused the hollow-eyed men shuffled their feet but none of them
spoke. They had given generously, prodigally even, of their effort and
it had not been for hire. Yet under the burning appeal of her eyes
they flushed as though they had been self-confessed malingerers.

"But as fer me," went on Alexander, "I've got ter git ter work."

She unbutt