y red, and the fiddler's
music--a half-breed fiddler--and the music of a pianist who spends most
of his time getting sober. The folks who are all different from what we
see them every day. Tough, hard-living, hard-swearing men all hidden up
in their Sunday suits, and handing you ceremony as if you were some
queen. Then the sense of pleasure in every heart, with all the cares and
troubles of life pushed into the background--at least for a while. These
things are a glimpse of life to us poor folk who spend all our years in
the endless chores of an inhospitable country. You can smile, Steve. You
can sneer at Abe's saloon. But I tell you you haven't a right to just
because these things don't mean a thing to you. There's nothing means
anything to you but your work----"

"And my wife, and my kiddie, and my--home."

The man's deep voice broke in sharply upon the light, strident tones of
the angry girl. He spoke while he stirred the contents of the saucepan
he had placed on the stove. But the interruption only seemed to add fuel
to the girl's volcanic flood of bitter feeling. A laugh was the prompt
retort he received.

"Your wife. Oh, yes, I know. You'd have her around all the time in her
home, slaving at the chores that would break the spirit of a galley
slave. Oh, it's no use pretending. It's got to come out. It's here," she
rushed on, pressing her hands hysterically against her softly rounded
bosom. "The dream is past. All dreams are past. I'm awake now--to this,"
she indicated the room about her, simple almost to bareness in its
furnishing, with a gesture of indescribable feeling. "It's all I've got
to waken to. All I've got to look forward to. I've tried to tell myself
there's a good time coming, when I can peer into the great light world,
and snatch something of the joy of it all. I've tried, I've tried. But
there isn't. It's the cold drear of this northland. It's chores from
daylight to dark, and all the best years of life hurrying behind me as
if they were yearning to make me old before I can get a chance to--live.
I'm sick thinking. Show me. What is there? You're an Inspector, and we
get a thousand dollars a year, and the rations we draw from the Indian
Agency. You'll never get a Superintendent. You've no political pull,
shut off up here well nigh in sight of the Arctic ice. I'm twenty-two
with years and years of it before me, and all the time I'll need to go
on counting up my cents how I can get through till next pa