, filled the whole air. Katrine walked fast with springing
steps down the side-walk, and the two men plunged along beside her. Such
a side-walk it was: in the summer a mere mass of mud and melted snow and
accumulated rubbish--for in Dawson the inhabitants will not take the
trouble to convey their refuse to any definite spot, but simply throw it
out from their cabins a few yards from their own door, with a vague
notion that they may have moved elsewhere before it rots badly,--now
frozen solid but horribly uneven, and worn into deep holes. On the top
of this had been laid some narrow planks, covered now by a thick glaze
of ice, which rendered them things to be avoided and a line of danger
down the middle of the path. Katrine made nothing of these slight
inconveniences of the ground, but went swinging on in her large rubber
boots, and talking and jesting all the way. At the bottom of the street,
at the corner, there was a large wooden building, a double log-cabin
turned into a saloon. Lights were fixed outside in tin shades, and the
word "Dancing" was painted in white letters on the lintel. Katrine
stopped suddenly.

"Let's go in and have a dance," she said, and turned towards Talbot, as
if she felt instinctively he was the more likely to assent.

"If you like," he answered from behind his collar. "But can you dance in
those boots?"

"Oh, I can dance in anything," said Katrine, laughing.

"Oh, don't go in, come on," remonstrated Stephen, trying to push on past
the saloon.

"Why not?" said Katrine; "it's too early to go to bed. Come in, I'll
pay," and before either of them could answer she had pushed open the
door, and was holding it for them with one hand, while with the other
she laid down three quarters on a small trestle inside, where an old man
was sitting as doorkeeper.

It was a large oblong room, with a partition running half-way down the
middle, dividing it into the front part, where they were standing and
where the bar was, and the back part, which was strictly the dancing
portion. Stephen sat down on a bench that faced the inner portion, with
the determination of a man who was not to be moved from his seat. At the
other side of the room was a low raised platform, where some very
seedy-looking musicians were sawing out a jerky tune from their feeble
violins. The room was fairly full, and a more heterogeneous collection
of human beings Stephen thought he had never seen. There were miners in
the roughest and