e scarce and the journeys without result, but they were not
entirely wasted. She found that her body glowed with the exercise and her
soft arms began to develop muscle.

Each day Jim took the sled and the dogs, and explored the creek in the
neighborhood. Farther and farther afield he went, staying away at nights
and leaving Angela to the melancholia of her soul. The shack seemed full
of a strange presence, a ghostly kind of ego that made itself felt. Then
along the valley came the bloodcurdling howl of a wolf, to add to her
terror and misery.

The icehole froze up on one bitter night, and all the efforts of Jim could
not reach water again. He eventually gave up the task as hopeless.

"Frozen right down to the river bed," he explained.

The great loneliness took deeper hold of her. The eternal gloom began to
affect her mentally. She became the victim of prolonged fits of
depression; Jim, tired and heavy-hearted with his arduous wanderings,
noticed the change in her. It caused him acute mental agony, and not a
little self-reproach. At nights he pondered the problem. Was he subjecting
her to unjustifiable misery? Had he a right to do this? He knew he had
not, but he was hoping--hoping vainly that she might abandon that spirit
of antagonism, manifest in her every movement, and speak and act as one
human being to another. He grew sick to realize that her will was no less
strong than his own. What was there left to do but take her back and
acknowledge defeat?

Defeat! The word aroused all his innate stubbornness. Never had he
acknowledged defeat before. He had won through by sticking to the task at
hand. Was he to give in now--to let this frozen-hearted woman beat him all
round? How Featherstone would purr with pleasure when he knew! How all
those high-browed aristocrats would congratulate this ill-treated wife on
disposing of her unfortunate husband!

The old grievance still rankled, and his refusal to forget it reacted upon
himself. This wilderness of great cold and hardship could not break his
endeavor, but a woman was slowly and surely doing so. All his dreams
evolved around her--maddening dreams in which he was grasping and missing
her....

The climax was to come, and it came in a way that was totally unexpected.
It came with such crushing relentless weight that it left him a mere wreck
of a man.

For three days Angela had spoken no word. When he arrived back at the
shack after the usual vain hunt for gold, she