thing
embrace, "unless you could persuade Will to take me home, and nobody
could do that now, he's so set upon the gold. That's the second bleeding
from the chest that I've had this month; now the third'll do for me."

She shivered as if from cold, and Katrine kissed her and hastened back
to her work at the fire. It is not a pleasant nor an easy thing to do to
clean out a stove that has been left to itself for a week or more and
fresh fires kindled on the old ashes every day, but in a few minutes
Katrine had the work completed and the fresh wood crackling and filling
the stove with red flame. Then she made the tea rapidly, and neither of
them spoke again till Annie held a great tin mug of it to her white
lips. Katrine pulled her chair close to the stove again, and took Tim on
her own lap, where he found a new toy in her cartridge belt. Annie
sipped from her mug and gazed absently into the flames.

"Lord, we were so happy," she said musingly, a little colour coming into
her face under the influence of the hot tea and the warmth from the
re-invigorated fire. "We had the nicest little home down in Brixham. I
daresay you don't know where that is?" Katrine shook her head. "It's
just the prettiest, sweetest village in the world, down in Devonshire;
and we had a cottage there, quite in the country, with pink roses all
over the front,--I can smell those roses now. Oh, it was lovely; and
Will had regular work all the time, and he was the best husband woman
ever had. He used to bring his wages in Saturdays, and say to me,
'Annie, old girl, ain't there enough there to get you a new ribbon for
Sunday or a fresh sash for the baby?' He never spent a penny for drink
nor tobacco. And Sunday we'd go out on the downs and stand looking at
the sea; it do come in so splendid there, and the wind from it seems to
put new life in yer. We was as happy and as well as could be, all of us;
and then them newspapers got to printing all those tales of the gold in
the Klondike, and Will he just got mad like, and nothing would do but he
must sell the house and come out here. He thought he'd come back so
rich; well, so he may, but he won't have no wife to go back with."

She lay back in her chair, and Katrine, gazing at her white face and
transparent hands, said nothing.

"I'm glad I stuck to Will, though," the woman went on softly after a
minute, "and didn't let him come out here alone. A wife's place is by
her husband wherever he goes, and I'd rath