o himself. Then aloud: "Thank you,
mother, for telling me that story. Perhaps some day I'll have to
fight it out alone, and when I do, I'll try to remember Sergeant
Black. Good-night, mother."

"Good-night, my boy."

* * * * *

The long, long winter was doing its worst, and that was unspeakable
in its dreariness and its misery. The "Fort" was just about
completed before things froze up--narrow, small quarters
constructed of rough logs, surrounded by a stockade--but above its
roof the Union Jack floated, and beneath it flashed the scarlet
tunics, the buffalo-head buttons, the clanking spurs of as brave
a band of men, "queened over" by as courageous a woman, as ever
Gibraltar or the Throne Room knew.

As time went on the major's wife began to find herself "Mother o'
the Men" (as an old Klondyker named her), as well as of her own
boy. Those blizzard-blown, snow-hardened, ice-toughened soldiers
went to her for everything--sympathy, assistance, advice--for in
that lonely outpost military lines were less strictly drawn, and
she could oftentimes do for the men what would be considered
amazingly unofficial, were those little humane kindnesses done in
barracks at Regina or Macleod or Calgary. She nursed the men
through every illness, preparing the food herself for the invalids.
She attended to many a frozen face and foot and finger. She
smoothed out their differences, inspirited them when they grew
discouraged, talked to them of their own people, so that their
home ties should not be entirely severed because they could write
letters or receive them but once a year. But there were days when
the sight of a woman's face would have been a glimpse of paradise
to her, days when she almost wildly regretted her boy had not been
a girl--just a little sweet-voiced girl, a thing of her own sex and
kind. But it always seemed at these moments that Grahamie would
providentially rush in to her with some glad story of sport or
adventure, and she would snatch him tightly in her arms and say,
"No, no, boy of mine, I don't want even a girlie, if I may only
keep you." And once when her thoughts had been more than usually
traitorous in wishing he had been a girl, the child seemed to
divine some idea of her struggle; for a moment his firm little
fingers caught her hand encouragingly, and he said in a whisper,
"Are you fighting it out alone, mother--just single-handed?"

"Just single-handed, dearest," she replied