would be very miserable for both of us,--a
night without tent, blankets, or fire. Besides, we're not going to
blow ashore."

She stepped out on the slippery rocks and helped him heave up the
canvas craft and tilt the water out. On either side uprose bare wet
walls of rock. A heavy sleet was falling steadily, through which a few
streaming caches showed in the gathering darkness.

"You'd better hurry up," he advised, thanking her for the assistance
and relaunching the boat. "Two miles of stiff trail from here to Happy
Camp. No wood until you get there, so you'd best hustle along.
Good-by."

Frona reached out and took his hand, and said, "You are a brave man."

"Oh, I don't know." He returned the grip with usury and looked his
admiration.

A dozen tents held grimly to their pegs on the extreme edge of the
timber line at Happy Camp. Frona, weary with the day, went from tent
to tent. Her wet skirts clung heavily to her tired limbs, while the
wind buffeted her brutally about. Once, through a canvas wall, she
heard a man apostrophizing gorgeously, and felt sure that it was Del
Bishop. But a peep into the interior told a different tale; so she
wandered fruitlessly on till she reached the last tent in the camp.
She untied the flap and looked in. A spluttering candle showed the one
occupant, a man, down on his knees and blowing lustily into the
fire-box of a smoky Yukon stove.

CHAPTER IV

She cast off the lower flap-fastenings and entered. The man still blew
into the stove, unaware of his company. Frona coughed, and he raised a
pair of smoke-reddened eyes to hers.

"Certainly," he said, casually enough. "Fasten the flaps and make
yourself comfortable." And thereat returned to his borean task.

"Hospitable, to say the least," she commented to herself, obeying his
command and coming up to the stove.

A heap of dwarfed spruce, gnarled and wet and cut to proper
stove-length, lay to one side. Frona knew it well, creeping and
crawling and twisting itself among the rocks of the shallow alluvial
deposit, unlike its arboreal prototype, rarely lifting its head more
than a foot from the earth. She looked into the oven, found it empty,
and filled it with the wet wood. The man arose to his feet, coughing
from the smoke which had been driven into his lungs, and nodding
approval.

When he had recovered his breath, "Sit down and dry your skirts. I'll
get supper."

He put a coffee-pot on the front l