il. There are such men in this world.

How such a man and such a woman came to take each other for better and
for worse is unimportant to this narrative. These things are familiar
to us all, and those people who do them, or even question them too
closely, are apt to lose a beautiful faith which is known as Eternal
Fitness.

Edwin Bentham was a boy, thrust by mischance into a man's body,--a boy
who could complacently pluck a butterfly, wing from wing, or cower in
abject terror before a lean, nervy fellow, not half his size. He was a
selfish cry-baby, hidden behind a man's mustache and stature, and
glossed over with a skin-deep veneer of culture and conventionality.
Yes; he was a clubman and a society man, the sort that grace social
functions and utter inanities with a charm and unction which is
indescribable; the sort that talk big, and cry over a toothache; the
sort that put more hell into a woman's life by marrying her than can
the most graceless libertine that ever browsed in forbidden pastures.
We meet these men every day, but we rarely know them for what they are.
Second to marrying them, the best way to get this knowledge is to eat
out of the same pot and crawl under the same blanket with them
for--well, say a week; no greater margin is necessary.

To see Grace Bentham, was to see a slender, girlish creature; to know
her, was to know a soul which dwarfed your own, yet retained all the
elements of the eternal feminine. This was the woman who urged and
encouraged her husband in his Northland quest, who broke trail for him
when no one was looking, and cried in secret over her weakling woman's
body.

So journeyed this strangely assorted couple down to old Fort Selkirk,
then through fivescore miles of dismal wilderness to Stuart River. And
when the short day left them, and the man lay down in the snow and
blubbered, it was the woman who lashed him to the sled, bit her lips
with the pain of her aching limbs, and helped the dog haul him to
Malemute Kid's cabin. Malemute Kid was not at home, but Meyers, the
German trader, cooked great moose-steaks and shook up a bed of fresh
pine boughs. Lake, Langham, and Parker, were excited, and not unduly so
when the cause was taken into account.

'Oh, Sandy! Say, can you tell a porterhouse from a round? Come out and
lend us a hand, anyway!' This appeal emanated from the cache, where
Langham was vainly struggling with divers quarters of frozen moose.

'Don't you budge from those