bbing temples, and she stared
into the blackness whose whirling chaos voiced the violence of the
heart-storm that raged within her breast. _He_ had conquered the storm!

She shivered as an icy blast sent the snow-powder flying half across
the room, closed the door, and resumed her tireless journey to and fro,
to and fro, and at each turn she glanced at the sleeping man.

She dropped to her knees beside the bunk and looked long into his
rugged face. He, too, had suffered. She remembered the deep hurt in his
eyes at their parting. Yet he was not beaten.

She had sent him from her, heartsick and alone into the great world,
and he had fought and conquered and earned a place among men.

And as the girl looked, her eyes grew tender and the pain in her heart
seemed more than she could bear. When she rose to her feet the savage
hatred was gone from her heart, and in its place was determination--the
determination to win back the love of this man.

She, too, would fight, even as he had fought--and win. He had not been
discouraged and beaten. She remembered the look upon his face as he
strode toward her that morning on the skidway in search of Leduc.

Unconsciously her tiny fists doubled, her delicate white jaw squared,
and her eyes narrowed to slits, even as his had narrowed--but her lips
did not smile.

He was _her_ man! She could give him more than this half-breed girl
could give him, and she would fight to win back her own--that which had
been her own from the first.

Almost at her feet upon the floor, just under the edge of the bunk
where it had been carelessly tossed, lay his mackinaw of coarse,
striped cloth. The girl stooped, drew it forth, and smoothed it out.

"His coat," she breathed almost reverently as she patted its rough
folds. "He took it off and wrapped it around Charlie. Oh, it must have
been terrible--_terrible_!"

She was about to hang it upon its peg when something fell to the floor
with a sharp slap--a long, heavy envelope that had dropped from a
ragged tear in the lining where the men had ripped it from the body of
the boy.

She hung the garment upon its peg and stooped to recover the packet.
The envelope was old, and had evidently been exposed to the action of
water, for the flap gaped open and the edges were worn through at the
ends. Upon one side was tightly bound a photograph, dim and indistinct
from the rub of the coarse cloth.

Her lips tightened at the corners as she stepped to the desk