ing along morbid ways, seemed but a natural
aspect of life, of which she herself was a part.

Often, sitting before her glowing fireplace, watching a flame kindled
with her own hands with wood she herself had carried from the pile
outside, she pondered this. It defied her powers of self-analysis.
She could only accept it as a fact, and be glad. Granville and all
that Granville stood for had withdrawn to a more or less remote
background. She could look out over the frost-spangled forests and
feel that she lacked nothing--nothing save her mate. There was no
impression of transient abiding; no chafing to be elsewhere, to do
otherwise. It was home, she reflected; perhaps that was why.

A simple routine served to fill her days. She kept her house shining,
she cooked her food, carried in her fuel. Except on days of forthright
storm she put on her snowshoes, and with a little rifle in the crook of
her arm prowled at random through the woods--partly because it gave her
pleasure to range sturdily afield, partly for the physical brace of
exertion in the crisp air. Otherwise she curled comfortably before the
fire-place, and sewed, or read something out of Bill's catholic
assortment of books.

It was given her, also, to learn the true meaning of neighborliness,
that kindliness of spirit which is stifled by stress in the crowded
places, and stimulated by like stress amid surroundings where life is
noncomplex, direct, where cause and effect tread on each other's heels.
Every day, if she failed to drop into their cabin, came one of her
neighbors to see if all were well with her. Quite as a matter of
course Jake kept steadily replenished for her a great pile of firewood.
Or they would come, babies and all, bundled in furs of Jake's trapping,
jingling up of an evening behind the frisky bays. And while the bays
munched hay in Roaring Bill Wagstaff's stable, they would cluster about
the open hearth, popping corn for the children, talking, always with
cheerful optimism.

Behind Lauer's mild blue eyes lurked a mind that burrowed incessantly
to the roots of things. He had lived and worked and read, and,
pondering it all, he had summed up a few of the verities.

"Life, it iss giffen us, und ve must off it make der best ve can," he
said once to Hazel, fondling a few books he had borrowed to read at
home. "Life iss goot, yust der liffing off life, if only ve go not
astray afder der voolish dings--und if der self-breservation st