said at last, in a stifled voice.

"There is nothing more," returned Katrine, dejectedly.

She thought she was being condemned and despised, and to none is that a
cheering feeling. Stephen sat up suddenly, and then bent over, clasping
his hands round her waist, lithe and supple even in her rough clothing,
and drew her up to him.

"Is there nothing?" he whispered eagerly in her ear. "Have you nothing
more to confess to me?"

Katrine gave herself up to his embrace, a delicious sense of peace and
protection and warm comfort stealing over her such as she had never
known.

"Nothing," she murmured, with her soft lips close to his ear and her
silky curls touching his neck. She felt Stephen grasp her close to him,
and a tremor ran through his whole frame.

"Have you never lain like this in a man's arms before? never felt a kiss
on your lips?" he persisted, holding her to him with a fierce intensity
of growing passion.

"Never, never," Katrine answered, opening her calm dark eyes and looking
straight up to his.

Stephen met their gaze for one long second, a proud, tranquil, fearless
look that sunk deep into his soul and poured balm into every wound she
had ever made there. The next moment she felt a torrent of hot kisses on
her face, a pressure that almost stifled her on her breast, a murmur of
"Darling, my darling," and knew nothing very clearly any more except
that she was loved and very happy.

CHAPTER V

GOLD-PLATED

The next afternoon, when Stephen returned to the west gulch and Talbot
heard his news, he said he was glad, and meant it. Life at the gulch was
very desolate and dreary, and such a bright glad presence as the girl's
would alleviate the monotony and disperse the gloom.

For the following week both men were busy preparing Stephen's cabin for
her reception and trying to impart to it a bridal appearance. The hands
were left to do the work on the claims, and Talbot and Stephen were too
busy indoors to even oversee them. The cabin was large and well built.
It stood looking across the gulch, and half-way down it, over the tops
of the dark green pines and facing towards the western horizon, where
the pink lights played and the little sundogs gambolled in the fall of
the short grey snowy afternoons. Stephen was down in town once in the
week, and came back with his pony laden with mysterious packages, and
when Talbot came in in the evening he found Stephen on his knees,
tacking down strips of carp