he sleigh to-morrow and go up the gulch and get
some more wood somehow, if we can. There's only a few bundles left," he
said, blowing out the candle and dragging some heavy logs over to the
fire.

"Can I come with you?" asked Katrine, looking at him with her soft
pathetic eyes, still brimming with tears.

"Why--yes--I suppose so," returned Stephen, slowly opening the stove and
looking in.

"I shall enjoy it so much," answered Katrine, her face beginning to
sparkle with its accustomed smiles. "We have not had a sleigh ride
together once, have we? I'd like to go with you better than anything.
You'll like it too, won't you?"

"I don't know; it's a confounded nuisance having to leave the claims a
whole afternoon, I think."

Katrine got up suddenly from where she was sitting and walked into the
next room without a word. Her tears were dried, her smiles killed.

The following day was clear and bright, and a cold, pinky-looking winter
sunlight filled the air. Katrine and Stephen started early, and Talbot
did not expect them back till dark. He was out on the claims all the
morning, and came in to his lunch late and did not go out again
immediately. It was a day for a half-holiday, and all his men left
early; the claims were deserted, and Talbot found himself in solitary
possession of the gulch. He felt restless and unsettled, and walked
about his little bare room in an aimless way quite unusual to him, and
the early part of the afternoon had passed away before he realised it.

In one of his walks he went up to the window and stood looking out. The
gulch always impressed him; it had a solemn melancholy majesty and
desolate grandeur that is not easy to define in words: an icy splendour
by moonlight, and a horrible gloomy beauty towards the fall of the day.
It was at this time that Talbot stood looking out at its rugged edges
and the snow-drifts turning grey as the sunlight left them, and
listening with a sort of mechanical tension to the unbroken and
oppressive stillness round him, when his eye caught sight of a man's
figure, moving slowly towards the house. It had appeared so suddenly
where for hours there had reigned unbroken silence and loneliness, that
Talbot started a little with sheer surprise; and then another appeared,
and another. They were coming, one behind the other, singly, round the
corner of the house, and as they emerged into view on the level platform
in front of it Talbot looked them over and saw at a gl