owner lying dead but a bare mile
away. It gave her an uncanny sensation as she glanced at all the little
things that belonged to him, that his cold hands had touched but a few
hours ago. She reflected that a year ago such an incident as this would
have chilled her with horror. But apart from arousing a small amount of
sentimentality it affected her now very little. It came as a shock to her
to realize that fact--she was becoming as wild as this "cowpuncher"
husband of hers, who even now was sallying forth with spade and ax to
excavate a shallow grave in the frozen earth, to save a man's body from
prowling wolves. And all without an atom of sentiment!

So little did she know of him! She did not see him remove his cap as he
gently placed the luckless man in his last resting-place, or hear the
short whispered prayer that he uttered.

The dogs were unharnessed and driven into the outhouse which was to serve
as their future domicile. Jim collected the dead man's belongings together
and made a neat pile of them in one corner of the outer room. Angela's
personal things were taken into the more comfortable inner room, which
boasted of a match-boarded wall--not to mention half a dozen rather
indelicate prints tacked on to the same.

When he had occasion to go into the room again, after Angela had been
there, he noticed that the prints had been torn from the walls. Angela was
certainly very proper--for a married woman!

CHAPTER XIV

THE BREAKING-POINT

The weeks that followed were a testing-time for Angela. Her resolutions
wavered and died, confronted as she was by the terrible isolation and
loneliness. Stoicism was easy enough in theory but most difficult in
practice. The unchanging icy vista and the eternal silence drove her to
desperation. She tried work as an antidote, and found it dulled the edge
of her despair.

They were fortunate enough to find a fish-trap in the outhouse. Jim
regarded this discovery with great satisfaction. He chopped a hole in the
river ice and, baiting the trap with a canned herring, managed to entice a
"two-pounder" into the wicker basket. Angela's attempt to cook it was not
entirely a failure, and the repast was a pleasant change from the eternal
beans and pork.

Thereafter Angela took over the piscatorial department. It meant going to
the river each morning and breaking the newly formed ice over the
fish-hole--a task that called forth all her physical energy. At times the
fish wer