ed in her palms. She looked up
at his quiet entrance, and her face must have given him his cue. He
leaned a little toward her.

"How long do you think you can stand it?" he asked gently.

"God knows," she answered, surprised into speaking the thought that lay
uppermost in her mind, surprised beyond measure that Be should read that
thought.

He stood looking down at her for a second or two. His lips parted, but
he closed them again over whatever rose to his tongue and passed
silently through the dining room and into the bunkhouse, where Benton
had preceded him a matter of ten minutes.

It lacked a week of Christmas. That day three of Benton's men had gone
in the _Chickamin_ to Roaring Springs for supplies. They had returned in
mid-afternoon, and Stella guessed by the new note of hilarity in the
bunkhouse that part of the supplies had been liquid. This had happened
more than once since the big snow closed in. She remembered Charlie's
fury at the logger who started Matt the cook on his spree, and she
wondered at this relaxation, but it was not in her province, and she
made no comment.

Jack Fyfe stayed to supper that evening. Neither he nor Charlie came
back to Benton's quarters when the meal was finished. While she stacked
up the dishes, Katy John observed:

"Goodness sakes, Miss Benton, them fellers was fresh at supper. They was
half-drunk, some of them. I bet they'll be half a dozen fights before
mornin'."

Stella passed that over in silence, with a mental turning up of her
nose. It was something she could neither defend nor excuse. It was a
disgusting state of affairs, but nothing she could change. She kept
harking back to it, though, when she was in her own quarters, and Katy
John had vanished for the night into her little room off the kitchen.
Tired as she was, she remained wakeful, uneasy. Over in the bunkhouse
disturbing sounds welled now and then into the cold, still
night,--incoherent snatches of song, voices uproariously raised, bursts
of laughter. Once, as she looked out the door, thinking she heard
footsteps crunching in the snow, some one rapped out a coarse oath that
drove her back with burning face.

As the evening wore late, she began to grow uneasily curious to know in
what manner Charlie and Jack Fyfe were lending countenance to this minor
riot, if they were even participating in it. Eleven o'clock passed, and
still there rose in the bunkhouse that unabated hum of voices.

Suddenly there rose