. Then the man followed her, and together, with a swift rush, they
drew up the canoe. The dogs were in a whining mass about them, and as
the girl stooped among them caressingly, the man's gaze fell upon Mrs.
Sayther, who had arisen. He looked, brushed his eyes unconsciously as
though his sight were deceiving him, and looked again.

"Karen," he said simply, coming forward and extending his hand, "I
thought for the moment I was dreaming. I went snow-blind for a time,
this spring, and since then my eyes have been playing tricks with me."

Mrs. Sayther, whose flush had deepened and whose heart was urging
painfully, had been prepared for almost anything save this coolly
extended hand; but she tactfully curbed herself and grasped it heartily
with her own.

"You know, Dave, I threatened often to come, and I would have, too,
only--only--"

"Only I didn't give the word." David Payne laughed and watched the
Indian girl disappearing into the cabin.

"Oh, I understand, Dave, and had I been in your place I'd most probably
have done the same. But I have come--now."

"Then come a little bit farther, into the cabin and get something to
eat," he said genially, ignoring or missing the feminine suggestion of
appeal in her voice. "And you must be tired too. Which way are you
travelling? Up? Then you wintered in Dawson, or came in on the last
ice. Your camp?" He glanced at the _voyageurs_ circled about the fire
in the open, and held back the door for her to enter.

"I came up on the ice from Circle City last winter," he continued, "and
settled down here for a while. Am prospecting some on Henderson Creek,
and if that fails, have been thinking of trying my hand this fall up the
Stuart River."

"You aren't changed much, are you?" she asked irrelevantly, striving to
throw the conversation upon a more personal basis.

"A little less flesh, perhaps, and a little more muscle. How did _you_
mean?"

But she shrugged her shoulders and peered I through the dim light at the
Indian girl, who had lighted the fire and was frying great chunks of
moose meat, alternated with thin ribbons of bacon.

"Did you stop in Dawson long?" The man was whittling a stave of
birchwood into a rude axe-handle, and asked the question without raising
his head.

"Oh, a few days," she answered, following the girl with her eyes, and
hardly hearing. "What were you saying? In Dawson? A month, in fact,
and glad to get away. The arctic male is elem