d closed the door and was returning, and I sat and meditated
upon the fact that this man who told me to shut up received from me a
salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a month and his board.

Lon washed the dishes, while I smoked and watched the woman. She seemed
more beautiful than ever--strangely and weirdly beautiful, it is true.
After looking at her steadfastly for five minutes, I was compelled to
come back to the real world and to glance at Lon McFane. This enabled me
to know, without discussion, that the woman, too, was real. At first I
had taken her for the wife of Dave Walsh; but if Dave Walsh were dead, as
Lon had said, then she could be only his widow.

It was early to bed, for we faced a long day on the morrow; and as Lon
crawled in beside me under the blankets, I ventured a question.

"That woman's crazy, isn't she?"

"Crazy as a loon," he answered.

And before I could formulate my next question, Lon McFane, I swear, was
off to sleep. He always went to sleep that way--just crawled into the
blankets, closed his eyes, and was off, a demure little heavy breathing
rising on the air. Lon never snored.

And in the morning it was quick breakfast, feed the dogs, load the sled,
and hit the trail. We said good-bye as we pulled out, and the woman
stood in the doorway and watched us off. I carried the vision of her
unearthly beauty away with me, just under my eyelids, and all I had to
do, any time, was to close them and see her again. The way was unbroken,
Surprise Lake being far off the travelled trails, and Lon and I took turn
about at beating down the feathery snow with our big, webbed shoes so
that the dogs could travel. "But you said you expected to meet Dave
Walsh at the cabin," trembled on the tip of my tongue a score of times. I
did not utter it. I could wait until we knocked off in the middle of the
day. And when the middle of the day came, we went right on, for, as Lon
explained, there was a camp of moose hunters at the forks of the Teelee,
and we could make there by dark. But we didn't make there by dark, for
Bright, the lead-dog, broke his shoulder-blade, and we lost an hour over
him before we shot him. Then, crossing a timber jam on the frozen bed of
the Teelee, the sled suffered a wrenching capsize, and it was a case of
make camp and repair the runner. I cooked supper and fed the dogs while
Lon made the repairs, and together we got in the night's supply of ice
and firewood. Then we