t's a winter by ourselves compared to that. And _she_ didn't think
it so great a hardship. Don't you worry about me, Mr. Bill. I think
it will be fun. I'm a real pioneer at heart. The wild places look
good to me--when you're along."

She received her due reward for that, and then, the long twilight
having brought the hour to a lateness that manifested itself by sundry
yawns on their part, they went to bed.

With breakfast over, Bill put a compass in his pocket, after having
ground his ax blade to a keen edge.

"Come on," said he, then; "I'm going to transact some important
business."

"What is it?" she promptly demanded with much curiosity.

"This domicile of ours, girl," he told her, while he led the way
through the surrounding timber, "is ours only by grace of the
wilderness. It's built on unsurveyed government land--land that I have
no more legal claim to than any passing trapper. I never thought of it
before--which goes to show that this double-harness business puts a
different face on 'most everything. But I'm going to remedy that. Of
course, it may be twenty years before this country begins to settle up
enough so that some individual may cast a covetous eye on this
particular spot--but I'm not going to take any chances. I'm going to
formally stake a hundred and sixty acres of this and apply for its
purchase. Then we'll have a cinch on our home. We'll always have a
refuge to fly to, no matter where we go."

She nodded appreciation of this. The cabin in the clearing stood for
some of those moments that always loom large and unforgettable in every
woman's experience. She had come there once in hot, shamed anger, and
she had come again as a bride. It was the handiwork of a man she loved
with a passion that sometimes startled her by its intensity. She had
plumbed depths of bitterness there, and, contrariwise, reached a point
of happiness she had never believed possible. Just the mere
possibility of that place being given over to others roused in her a
pang of resentment. It was theirs, hers and Bill's, and, being a
woman, she viewed its possession jealously.

So she watched with keen interest what he did. Which, in truth, was
simple enough. He worked his way to a point southeast of the clearing
till they gained a little rise whence through the treetops they could
look back and see the cabin roof. There Bill cut off an eight-inch
jack pine, leaving the stump approximately four feet high. Th