ot discern the path for more than a yard or two
ahead, and by the side of her yawned that dreadful chasm!

She edged in close to the perpendicular wall, peering into the whirling
mass of snow. The dogs stopped, and she urged them on again, knowing that
the pass must soon descend to the river.

Suddenly there was a fierce uproar among the dogs. The sled jerked
forward, and commenced to move at tremendous speed. A slight wind created
a funnel-like opening in the dense white cloud before her. She gave one
long shriek of horror at the sight which met her eyes. The sled was on the
very brink of a precipice! It hovered there for a moment--just long enough
for her to fling herself sideways against the wall; then it, and the team,
vanished over the side, taking a mass of snow down, down into the
bottomless depths.

She crouched against the wall, petrified by what had happened. A
thundering noise came up from the black hole, reverberating through the
pass and over the mountains as sled and dogs were hurled to their doom.
She put her fingers in her ears to keep out the dreadful sound.

It ceased, and the great silence came again. Faint and sick, she realized
that her left shoulder was aching with intense pain through contact with
the rock wall.

There was nothing to be done but go back and confess the catastrophe to
Jim. She stood up and commenced creeping along the dreadful path. Her left
arm was hanging in useless fashion, setting up acute pain at the
shoulder.

The full significance of her folly came to her. She had driven a team of
dogs worth at least a thousand dollars to oblivion. Their chief means of
travel was gone, and hundreds of miles lay between them and civilization.
How could she confess the loss to Jim? What would he say?

For an hour she plodded on through the deep snow, her mind ranging over
the past. Whatever might be said of this wild husband of hers, he had
played the game as he saw it. She had to admit this. Culture and breeding
were very desirable things, but had he not some other natural quality
which, at the least computation, balanced these attributes? Could any man
of her own set have acted with greater respect for her womanhood than he?

Until recently she had been no companion to him--nothing but a continual
drag on the wheel. She had hurt him in speech and action. She had
deliberately set her mind on making clear to him his cultural and moral
inferiority. In return for this he had given her to