nimal. The very follies for which he was doing
penance had been bred of his excessive sociability. And here, in the
fourth year of his exile, he found himself in company--which were to
travesty the word--with a morose and speechless creature in whose sombre
eyes smouldered a hatred as bitter as it was unwarranted. And Bonner, to
whom speech and fellowship were as the breath of life, went about as a
ghost might go, tantalized by the gregarious revelries of some former
life. In the day his lips were compressed, his face stern; but in the
night he clenched his hands, rolled about in his blankets, and cried
aloud like a little child. And he would remember a certain man in
authority and curse him through the long hours. Also, he cursed God. But
God understands. He cannot find it in his heart to blame weak mortals
who blaspheme in Alaska.

And here, to the post of Twenty Mile, came Jees Uck, to trade for flour
and bacon, and beads, and bright scarlet cloths for her fancy work. And
further, and unwittingly, she came to the post of Twenty Mile to make a
lonely man more lonely, make him reach out empty arms in his sleep. For
Neil Bonner was only a man. When she first came into the store, he
looked at her long, as a thirsty man may look at a flowing well. And
she, with the heritage bequeathed her by Spike O'Brien, imagined daringly
and smiled up into his eyes, not as the swart-skinned peoples should
smile at the royal races, but as a woman smiles at a man. The thing was
inevitable; only, he did not see it, and fought against her as fiercely
and passionately as he was drawn towards her. And she? She was Jees
Uck, by upbringing wholly and utterly a Toyaat Indian woman.

She came often to the post to trade. And often she sat by the big wood
stove and chatted in broken English with Neil Bonner. And he came to
look for her coming; and on the days she did not come he was worried and
restless. Sometimes he stopped to think, and then she was met coldly,
with a resolve that perplexed and piqued her, and which, she was
convinced, was not sincere. But more often he did not dare to think, and
then all went well and there were smiles and laughter. And Amos Pentley,
gasping like a stranded catfish, his hollow cough a-reek with the grave,
looked upon it all and grinned. He, who loved life, could not live, and
it rankled his soul that others should be able to live. Wherefore he
hated Bonner, who was so very much alive and i