utes, 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 d