e fire
to burn any too well, while the wind cut through their clothes and
chilled their bodies. They held but little conversation. The wind
interfered with speech. Beyond wondering at what could have been
Dennin's motive, they remained silent, oppressed by the horror of the
tragedy. At one o'clock, looking toward the cabin, Hans announced that
he was hungry.

"No, not now, Hans," Edith answered. "I couldn't go back alone into that
cabin the way it is, and cook a meal."

At two o'clock Hans volunteered to go with her; but she held him to his
work, and four o'clock found the two graves completed. They were
shallow, not more than two feet deep, but they would serve the purpose.
Night had fallen. Hans got the sled, and the two dead men were dragged
through the darkness and storm to their frozen sepulchre. The funeral
procession was anything but a pageant. The sled sank deep into the
drifted snow and pulled hard. The man and the woman had eaten nothing
since the previous day, and were weak from hunger and exhaustion. They
had not the strength to resist the wind, and at times its buffets hurled
them off their feet. On several occasions the sled was overturned, and
they were compelled to reload it with its sombre freight. The last
hundred feet to the graves was up a steep slope, and this they took on
all fours, like sled-dogs, making legs of their arms and thrusting their
hands into the snow. Even so, they were twice dragged backward by the
weight of the sled, and slid and fell down the hill, the living and the
dead, the haul-ropes and the sled, in ghastly entanglement.

"To-morrow I will put up head-boards with their names," Hans said, when
the graves were filled in.

Edith was sobbing. A few broken sentences had been all she was capable
of in the way of a funeral service, and now her husband was compelled to
half-carry her back to the cabin.

Dennin was conscious. He had rolled over and over on the floor in vain
efforts to free himself. He watched Hans and Edith with glittering eyes,
but made no attempt to speak. Hans still refused to touch the murderer,
and sullenly watched Edith drag him across the floor to the men's bunk-
room. But try as she would, she could not lift him from the floor into
his bunk.

"Better let me shoot him, and we'll have no more trouble," Hans said in
final appeal.

Edith shook her head and bent again to her task. To her surprise the
body rose easily, and she knew Hans ha