ization, beholding
with clear vision its futilities and powers. It was a simple little
philosophy he evolved. Clean living was the way to grace. Duty
performed was sanctification. One must live clean and do his duty in
order that he might work. Work was salvation. And to work toward life
abundant, and more abundant, was to be in line with the scheme of things
and the will of God.

Primarily, he was of the city. And his fresh earth grip and virile
conception of humanity gave him a finer sense of civilization and
endeared civilization to him. Day by day the people of the city clung
closer to him and the world loomed more colossal. And, day by day,
Alaska grew more remote and less real. And then he met Kitty Sharon--a
woman of his own flesh and blood and kind; a woman who put her hand into
his hand and drew him to her, till he forgot the day and hour and the
time of the year the first snow flies on the Yukon.

Jees Uck moved into her grand log-house and dreamed away three golden
summer months. Then came the autumn, post-haste before the down rush of
winter. The air grew thin and sharp, the days thin and short. The river
ran sluggishly, and skin ice formed in the quiet eddies. All migratory
life departed south, and silence fell upon the land. The first snow
flurries came, and the last homing steamboat bucked desperately into the
running mush ice. Then came the hard ice, solid cakes and sheets, till
the Yukon ran level with its banks. And when all this ceased the river
stood still and the blinking days lost themselves in the darkness.

John Thompson, the new agent, laughed; but Jees Uck had faith in the
mischances of sea and river. Neil Bonner might be frozen in anywhere
between Chilkoot Pass and St. Michael's, for the last travellers of the
year are always caught by the ice, when they exchange boat for sled and
dash on through the long hours behind the flying dogs.

But no flying dogs came up the trail, nor down the trail, to Twenty Mile.
And John Thompson told Jees Uck, with a certain gladness ill concealed,
that Bonner would never come back again. Also, and brutally, he
suggested his own eligibility. Jees Uck laughed in his face and went
back to her grand log-house. But when midwinter came, when hope dies
down and life is at its lowest ebb, Jees Uck found she had no credit at
the store. This was Thompson's doing, and he rubbed his hands, and
walked up and down, and came to his door and looked up a