ith thee!" Also, he had a
calendar pinned on the wall above the table, and his first act each
morning was to check off the day and to count the days that were left ere
his partner would come booming down the Yukon ice in the spring. Another
whim of his was to permit no one to sleep in the new cabin on the hill.
It must be as fresh for her occupancy as the square-hewed wood was fresh;
and when it stood complete, he put a padlock on the door. No one entered
save himself, and he was wont to spend long hours there, and to come
forth with his face strangely radiant and in his eyes a glad, warm light.

In December he received a letter from Corry Hutchinson. He had just seen
Mabel Holmes. She was all she ought to be, to be Lawrence Pentfield's
wife, he wrote. He was enthusiastic, and his letter sent the blood
tingling through Pentfield's veins. Other letters followed, one on the
heels of another, and sometimes two or three together when the mail
lumped up. And they were all in the same tenor. Corry had just come
from Myrdon Avenue; Corry was just going to Myrdon Avenue; or Corry was
at Myrdon Avenue. And he lingered on and on in San Francisco, nor even
mentioned his trip to Detroit.

Lawrence Pentfield began to think that his partner was a great deal in
the company of Mabel Holmes for a fellow who was going east to see his
people. He even caught himself worrying about it at times, though he
would have worried more had he not known Mabel and Corry so well. Mabel's
letters, on the other hand, had a great deal to say about Corry. Also, a
thread of timidity that was near to disinclination ran through them
concerning the trip in over the ice and the Dawson marriage. Pentfield
wrote back heartily, laughing at her fears, which he took to be the mere
physical ones of danger and hardship rather than those bred of maidenly
reserve.

But the long winter and tedious wait, following upon the two previous
long winters, were telling upon him. The superintendence of the men and
the pursuit of the pay streak could not break the irk of the daily round,
and the end of January found him making occasional trips to Dawson, where
he could forget his identity for a space at the gambling tables. Because
he could afford to lose, he won, and "Pentfield's luck" became a stock
phrase among the faro players.

His luck ran with him till the second week in February. How much farther
it might have run is conjectural; for, after one big gam