window
of oiled paper furnished light. The lower portion of the paper, on the
inside, was coated an inch deep with the frozen moisture of the men's
breath.

They played a momentous rubber of whist, for the pair that lost was to
dig a fishing hole through the seven feet of ice and snow that covered
the Yukon.

"It's mighty unusual, a cold snap like this in March," remarked the man
who shuffled. "What would you call it, Bob?"

"Oh, fifty-five or sixty below--all of that. What do you make it, Doc?"

Doc turned his head and glanced at the lower part of the door with a
measuring eye.

"Not a bit worse than fifty. If anything, slightly under--say
forty-nine. See the ice on the door. It's just about the fifty mark, but
you'll notice the upper edge is ragged. The time she went seventy the
ice climbed a full four inches higher." He picked up his hand, and
without ceasing from sorting called "Come in," to a knock on the door.

The man who entered was a big, broad-shouldered Swede, though his
nationality was not discernible until he had removed his ear-flapped cap
and thawed away the ice which had formed on beard and moustache and
which served to mask his face. While engaged in this, the men at the
table played out the hand.

"I hear one doctor faller stop this camp," the Swede said inquiringly,
looking anxiously from face to face, his own face haggard and drawn from
severe and long endured pain. "I come long way. North fork of the Whyo."

"I'm the doctor. What's the matter?"

In response, the man held up his left hand, the second finger of which
was monstrously swollen. At the same time he began a rambling,
disjointed history of the coming and growth of his affliction.

"Let me look at it," the doctor broke in impatiently. "Lay it on the
table. There, like that."

Tenderly, as if it were a great boil, the man obeyed.

"Humph," the doctor grumbled. "A weeping sinew. And travelled a hundred
miles to have it fixed. I'll fix it in a jiffy. You watch me, and next
time you can do it yourself."

Without warning, squarely and at right angles, and savagely, the doctor
brought the edge of his hand down on the swollen crooked finger. The man
yelled with consternation and agony. It was more like the cry of a wild
beast, and his face was a wild beast's as he was about to spring on the
man who had perpetrated the joke.

"That's all right," the doctor placated sharply and authoritatively.
"How do you feel? Better, eh? Of cour