ifteen and twenty dollars a
day. The brief Alaskan summer protracted itself beyond its usual length,
and they took advantage of the opportunity, delaying their return to
Skaguay to the last moment. And then it was too late. Arrangements had
been made to accompany the several dozen local Indians on their fall
trading trip down the coast. The Siwashes had waited on the white people
until the eleventh hour, and then departed. There was no course left the
party but to wait for chance transportation. In the meantime the claim
was cleaned up and firewood stocked in.

The Indian summer had dreamed on and on, and then, suddenly, with the
sharpness of bugles, winter came. It came in a single night, and the
miners awoke to howling wind, driving snow, and freezing water. Storm
followed storm, and between the storms there was the silence, broken only
by the boom of the surf on the desolate shore, where the salt spray
rimmed the beach with frozen white.

All went well in the cabin. Their gold-dust had weighed up something
like eight thousand dollars, and they could not but be contented. The
men made snowshoes, hunted fresh meat for the larder, and in the long
evenings played endless games of whist and pedro. Now that the mining
had ceased, Edith Nelson turned over the fire-building and the
dish-washing to the men, while she darned their socks and mended their
clothes.

There was no grumbling, no bickering, nor petty quarrelling in the little
cabin, and they often congratulated one another on the general happiness
of the party. Hans Nelson was stolid and easy-going, while Edith had
long before won his unbounded admiration by her capacity for getting on
with people. Harkey, a long, lank Texan, was unusually friendly for one
with a saturnine disposition, and, as long as his theory that gold grew
was not challenged, was quite companionable. The fourth member of the
party, Michael Dennin, contributed his Irish wit to the gayety of the
cabin. He was a large, powerful man, prone to sudden rushes of anger
over little things, and of unfailing good-humor under the stress and
strain of big things. The fifth and last member, Dutchy, was the willing
butt of the party. He even went out of his way to raise a laugh at his
own expense in order to keep things cheerful. His deliberate aim in life
seemed to be that of a maker of laughter. No serious quarrel had ever
vexed the serenity of the party; and, now that each had sixteen hu