nd price
to the men who for months had tasted little but beans and hard bacon.
Katrine felt quite happy if she could return through the suddenly
falling gloom of the afternoon and cross the darkened threshold just as
the men came back, half frozen, from the creek, and show her cluster of
victims swinging by their long-necked heads from her waist.

She thought of them, planned for their comfort, and worked for them all
day; while to her husband she was absolutely devoted, and one would
think that for such devotion a few smiles, a kiss, and some kind words
was a small price to pay. Yet after the first few weeks, and even during
them, Stephen, who worked all day to secure his mining gains, would not
even exert himself to that degree to return the affection that was worth
all his claims put together. One kiss given before he went out to his
work in the morning would have made Katrine happy all day, one tender
inquiry on his return would have amply rewarded her for all her labours,
yet he invariably went out to the claims without bestowing the one, and
returned without making the other. Hard work, privations, loneliness,
even the absence of all the amusements she had delighted in, would not
have broken her spirits; she would have accepted them all cheerfully, if
her husband had only thrown over them the little light and warmth of his
affection that she longed for. Each day she hoped it might be
different; but no, he grew more and more absorbed by the gold fever that
was eating away his heart and brain, and the girl grew more and more
depressed and resentful. "It would be no trouble to him," she murmured
to herself over and over again, as she stood at the wash-tub, wringing
out his shirts, or knelt on the floor of the cabin scrubbing the boards,
"just a kiss or a smile."

She did not in the meantime relax any of her attention to him. Her smile
for him was always as sweet when he returned, her efforts to please him
as untiring, but in her heart her thoughts turned more and more
constantly day by day to the idea of leaving him, of returning to her
own life, where at least she had not been tormented by this perpetual
hope and expectation and disappointment.

Stephen never dreamed that the girl's thoughts were as they were; though
if he had done so, he probably would not have altered his own
course--for Katrine in several angry outbursts had appealed to him, had
told him how she hungered after, not great and difficult proofs of