t
there wouldn't have been any scene if it hadn't been for that McFee
woman. If he were the Governor, he would put a poll tax of a hundred
ounces a quarter upon her and her kind and all gospel sharks and sky
pilots. And certainly Freda had behaved very ladylike, held her own with
Mrs. Eppingwell besides. Never gave the girl credit for the grit. He
looked lingeringly over her, coming back now and again to the eyes,
behind the deep earnestness of which he could not guess lay concealed a
deeper sneer. And, Jove, wasn't she well put up! Wonder why she looked
at him so? Did she want to marry him, too? Like as not; but she wasn't
the only one. Her looks were in her favor, weren't they? And
young--younger than Loraine Lisznayi. She couldn't be more than twenty-
three or four, twenty-five at most. And she'd never get stout. Anybody
could guess that the first time. He couldn't say it of Loraine, though.
_She_ certainly had put on flesh since the day she served as model. Huh!
once he got her on trail he'd take it off. Put her on the snowshoes to
break ahead of the dogs. Never knew it to fail, yet. But his thought
leaped ahead to the palace under the lazy Mediterranean sky--and how
would it be with Loraine then? No frost, no trail, no famine now and
again to cheer the monotony, and she getting older and piling it on with
every sunrise. While this girl Freda--he sighed his unconscious regret
that he had missed being born under the flag of the Turk, and came back
to Alaska.

"Well?" Both hands of the clock pointed perpendicularly to midnight, and
it was high time he was getting down to the water-hole.

"Oh!" Freda started, and she did it prettily, delighting him as his
fellows have ever been delighted by their womankind. When a man is made
to believe that a woman, looking upon him thoughtfully, has lost herself
in meditation over him, that man needs be an extremely cold-blooded
individual in order to trim his sheets, set a lookout, and steer clear.

"I was just wondering what you wanted to see me about," he explained,
drawing his chair up to hers by the table.

"Floyd," she looked him steadily in the eyes, "I am tired of the whole
business. I want to go away. I can't live it out here till the river
breaks. If I try, I'll die. I am sure of it. I want to quit it all and
go away, and I want to do it at once."

She laid her hand in mute appeal upon the back of his, which turned over
and became a prison.