e your claims. I've been thinking of it
all day. I won't do it, and I will come and help you work them."

Stephen felt the room whirl round him as he heard. Was he not in some
rich, warm dream that would dissolve and leave him suddenly? His claims,
those golden claims! and Katrine too--he seemed to see her dressed in
gold, framed in gold, gold in her eyes and hair. Her movement, as she
turned to look at him, brought him back to realities.

"Do you mean it?" he said, stooping over her and catching her hands
almost roughly in his. She met his feverish eyes with a bright, tranquil
smile. He looked at her keenly for an instant, and involuntarily an
exclamation broke from his lips: "Katrine! it's too much happiness for
any man!"

Perhaps the gods above, who eye jealously the lives of mortals, here
made a note of this remark in their pocket-books.

Katrine knitted her brows angrily. "I don't think so," she said. "You
had better hear what sort of girl I am."

Stephen turned pale, and leaned down over her as she sat on the hearth,
her head against his knees. The cabin was full of the warm red
firelight, that leaped over the walls and up to the rough blackened
rafters above them. It glistened on the silky dark hair beneath his
hand, and fell ruddily over the smooth oval face turned up to him.
Stephen looked down at her and felt content.

"No, no," he said hastily; "never mind anything in the past; we will
efface it all; we make a fresh start from to-night." He would have
stooped and silenced her with a kiss, but an arrogant look came over her
pale face, and she pushed him back with her hand.

"No, I don't like that idea. We must have things cleared up and tidy
before we marry. You must know the truth from me, and then you will
know how to meet any one who comes to you with talk about me afterwards;
and they may come, for I'm known in all the saloons of Dawson."

Stephen shuddered.

"If they keep to the truth about me, you must just accept it; if they
tell lies, you'll just shoot them."

Again a cold thrill passed through her lover. To talk of
shooting--taking a human life--murder--as though it were no more than a
snapping of the fingers! His mind flew on a sudden bound of remembrance
back to the little school teacher in the village of Arden, who could not
bear the sight of a rabbit's blood on the trap, and whose quiet days
were spent between the village schoolroom and the village church; yet he
knew he had never love