. Johnson very soon. As one of the neighbours sensibly,
if rather crudely, remarked, "Their cabins were too small for them to
keep corpses knocking around in them." And so the second day after her
death, in a flood of thin, sweet sunshine, they buried her who had so
loved the light and the sun, and had longed so wearily for them through
so many days.

Katrine and Talbot stood side by side at the open grave. He had been in
the town that day and met Katrine on the street, learned from her where
she was going, and accompanied her. He knew something of all she had
done for the dead woman, and he watched her now with interest and
surprise at her composure. Katrine's face was unmoved, and her eyes
were dry through it all.

"Another that gold has killed," she said to him as they turned away, and
her face looked grave and grey in the flood of the cold sunlight.

Will was not present. He was down at the "Pistol Shot." He had been on a
big drunk for the past two days, not even returning to his cabin at
night, and the body of his wife would have lain unguarded had not
Katrine brought her fur bag and slept beside it each night on the
deserted hearth. Little Tim had been taken in by a neighbour, all the
mothers round seeming anxious for the honour after it was known that
Will had "made his strike."

They walked in absolute silence for some time up the incline. Talbot was
going back to the west gulch, and Katrine said she would walk a little
of the way in that direction too. The afternoon was bright and clear,
and the air singularly still, so still that the intense cold was hardly
realised. The rays of sunshine struck warmly across the snow banks piled
on each side of the narrow path they were treading. The sky was pale
blue, and the points of the straight larches on the summit of the ridges
cut darkly into it like the points of lances. There was something in the
atmosphere that recalled a day in late autumn in England. They were
nearing the top of the ridge, and both had their gaze bent on the narrow
ascending path before them, when suddenly a tiny object darted into the
middle of it and ran up the opposite bank. On the instant Katrine drew
one of the pistols from her belt and fired. The little dark form rolled
down the bank, dropped back into their path, and lay there motionless.
It was a fine shot, for the tiny moving thing was fully thirty yards
from them and looked hardly the size of a dollar. Talbot glanced at her
with star