n cannot stand. I promise you, however, in spite of hell
and high water--"

"Oh! Oh!" Mrs. Schoville screamed, thrusting her fingers into her ears.

"Madame," Baron Courbertin spoke up gravely, "it is a fact, a lamentable
fact, that the dogs of the north are responsible for more men's souls
than all other causes put together. Is it not so? I leave it to the
gentlemen."

Both Corliss and St. Vincent solemnly agreed, and proceeded to detonate
the lady by swapping heart-rending and apposite dog tales.

St. Vincent and the baron remained behind to take lunch with the Gold
Commissioner's wife, leaving Frona and Corliss to go down the hill
together. Silently consenting, as though to prolong the descent, they
swerved to the right, cutting transversely the myriad foot-paths and sled
roads which led down into the town. It was a mid-December day, clear and
cold; and the hesitant high-noon sun, having laboriously dragged its pale
orb up from behind the southern land-rim, balked at the great climb to
the zenith, and began its shamefaced slide back beneath the earth. Its
oblique rays refracted from the floating frost particles till the air was
filled with glittering jewel-dust--resplendent, blazing, flashing light
and fire, but cold as outer space.

They passed down through the scintillant, magical sheen, their moccasins
rhythmically crunching the snow and their breaths wreathing mysteriously
from their lips in sprayed opalescence. Neither spoke, nor cared to
speak, so wonderful was it all. At their feet, under the great vault of
heaven, a speck in the midst of the white vastness, huddled the golden
city--puny and sordid, feebly protesting against immensity, man's
challenge to the infinite!

Calls of men and cries of encouragement came sharply to them from close
at hand, and they halted. There was an eager yelping, a scratching of
feet, and a string of ice-rimed wolf-dogs, with hot-lolling tongues and
dripping jaws, pulled up the slope and turned into the path ahead of
them. On the sled, a long and narrow box of rough-sawed spruce told the
nature of the freight. Two dog-drivers, a woman walking blindly, and a
black-robed priest, made up the funeral cortege. A few paces farther on
the dogs were again put against the steep, and with whine and shout and
clatter the unheeding clay was hauled on and upward to its ice-hewn
hillside chamber.

"A zone-conqueror," Frona broke voice.

Corliss found his thought following