ot yet passed over
the serrated edges of the forest.

"I'm afraid you'll find it mighty cold, ma'am," ventured the
conductor. "Hope you ain't got to go far in them clothes. Maybe your
friends 'll be bringing warmer things for you. Run right into the
station; there's a fire there. Joe 'll bring your baggage inside. Good
morning, ma'am."

She noticed that he was looking at her with some curiosity, and her
courage forsook her once more. It was as if, for the first time in her
life, she had undertaken to walk into a lion's cage, with the animal
growling and roaring. She felt upon her cheeks the bite of the hard
frost, but there was no wind and she was not so very cold, at first.
She looked about her as the train started. Scattered within a few
hundred yards there were perhaps two score of small frame houses. At
the edge of what might have been a pasture, all dotted with stumps,
stood a large deserted sawmill, the great wire-guyed sheet-iron pipe
leaning over a little, dismally. A couple of very dark men she
recognized as Indians looked at her without evincing the slightest
show of interest. From a store across the street a young woman with a
thick head of red hair peeped out for an instant, staring at her. Then
the door closed again. After this a monstrously big man with long,
tow-colored wisps of straggling hair showing at the edges of his heavy
muskrat cap, and a ragged beard of the same color, came to her as she
stood upon the platform, undecided, again a prey to her fears. The man
smiled at her, pleasantly, and touched his cap.

"Ay tank you're de gal is going ofer to Hugo Ennis," he said, in a
deep, pleasant voice.

She opened her mouth to answer but the words refused to come. Her
mouth felt unaccountably dry--she could not swallow. But she nodded
her head in assent.

"I took de telegraft ofer to his shack," the Swede further informed
her, "but Hugo he ain't here yet. I tank he come soon. Come inside de
vaiting-room or you freeze qvick. Ain't you got skins to put on?"

She shook her head and he grasped her bag with one hand and one of her
elbows with the other and hurried her into the little station. Joe
Follansbee had a redhot fire going in the stove, whose top was
glowing. The man pointed at a bench upon which she could sit and stood
at her side, shaving tobacco from a big black plug. She decided that
his was a reassuring figure and that his face was a good and friendly
one.

"Do you think that--that Mr. En