answer, Corry plucked him by the sleeve and drew him
aside.

"See here, old man, what's this mean?" Corry demanded in a low tone,
indicating Lashka with his eyes.

"I can hardly see, Corry, where you can have any concern in the matter,"
Pentfield answered mockingly.

But Corry drove straight to the point.

"What is that squaw doing on your sled? A nasty job you've given me to
explain all this away. I only hope it can be explained away. Who is
she? Whose squaw is she?"

Then Lawrence Pentfield delivered his stroke, and he delivered it with a
certain calm elation of spirit that seemed somewhat to compensate for the
wrong that had been done him.

"She is my squaw," he said; "Mrs. Pentfield, if you please."

Corry Hutchinson gasped, and Pentfield left him and returned to the two
women. Mabel, with a worried expression on her face, seemed holding
herself aloof. He turned to Dora and asked, quite genially, as though
all the world was sunshine:- "How did you stand the trip, anyway? Have
any trouble to sleep warm?"

"And, how did Mrs. Hutchinson stand it?" he asked next, his eyes on
Mabel.

"Oh, you dear ninny!" Dora cried, throwing her arms around him and
hugging him. "Then you saw it, too! I thought something was the matter,
you were acting so strangely."

"I--I hardly understand," he stammered.

"It was corrected in next day's paper," Dora chattered on. "We did not
dream you would see it. All the other papers had it correctly, and of
course that one miserable paper was the very one you saw!"

"Wait a moment! What do you mean?" Pentfield demanded, a sudden fear at
his heart, for he felt himself on the verge of a great gulf.

But Dora swept volubly on.

"Why, when it became known that Mabel and I were going to Klondike,
_Every Other Week_ said that when we were gone, it would be lovely on
Myrdon Avenue, meaning, of course, lonely."

"Then--"

"I am Mrs. Hutchinson," Dora answered. "And you thought it was Mabel all
the time--"

"Precisely the way of it," Pentfield replied slowly. "But I can see now.
The reporter got the names mixed. The Seattle and Portland paper
copied."

He stood silently for a minute. Mabel's face was turned toward him
again, and he could see the glow of expectancy in it. Corry was deeply
interested in the ragged toe of one of his moccasins, while Dora was
stealing sidelong glances at the immobile face of Lashka sitting on the
sled. Lawrence Pentfield stared straig