them. So, paper I ask, and of crayon--Alas! It is
in the box! What to do?"

"Listen. We'll have that box, and bring it here on the mountain. I'll
get it."

"Ah, no! No. Will you break my heart?" She seized his arm and looked
in his eyes, her own brimming with tears. Then she flung up her arms
in her dramatic way, and covered her eyes. "I can see it all so
terrible. If you should go there and the Indian strike you dead--or
the snow come too soon and kill you with the cold--in the great drift
lying white--all the terrible hours never to see you again--Ah, no!"

In that instant his heart leaped toward her and the blood roared in
his ears. He would have clasped her to him, but he only stood rigidly
still. "Hands off, murderer!" The words seemed shouted at him by his
own conscience. "I would rather die--than that you should not have
your box," was all he said, and left the cabin. He, too, had need to
think things out alone.

CHAPTER XVIII

LARRY KILDENE'S STORY

"Man, but this is none so bad--none so bad."

Larry Kildene sat on a bench before a roaring fire in the room added
on to the fodder shed. The chimney which Harry King had built,
although not quite completed to its full height, was being tried for
the first time, as the night was too cold for comfort in the long, low
shed without fire, and the men had come down early this evening to
talk over their plans before Larry should start down the mountain in
the morning. They had heaped logs on the women's fire and seen that
all was right for them, and with cheerful good-nights had left them to
themselves.

Now, as they sat by their own fire, Harry could see Amalia by hers,
seated on a low bench of stone, close to the blazing torch of pine, so
placed that its smoke would be drawn up the large chimney. It was all
the light they had for their work in the evenings, other than the
firelight. He could see her fingers moving rapidly and mechanically at
some pretty open-work pattern, and now and then grasping deftly at the
ball of fine white thread that seemed to be ever taking little leaps,
and trying to roll into the fire, or out over the cabin floor. She
used a fine, slender needle and seemed to be performing some delicate
magic with her fingers. Was she one of the three fates continually
drawing out the thread of his life and weaving therewith a charmed
web? And if so--when would she cease?

"It's a good job and draws well."

"The chimney? Yes, it seems to