carved, one great throne especially, awkward, pretentious,
and carefully ornate.

There was, too, a solid table in the center of the floor; and on it a
woman was setting heavy earthenware plates nicked and discolored. She
was heavy and discolored herself, but like the stove, she too seemed
to have a dull glow. She was no longer young, but she might still have
encouraged her youthfulness to linger pleasantly; she was not in the
least degree beautiful, but she might have fostered a charm that lurked
somewhere about her small, compact body and in her square, dark face.
Her hair of a sandy brown was stretched back brutally so that her
bright, devoted eyes--gray and honest eyes, very deep-set beneath their
brows--lacked the usual softness and mystery of women's eyes. Her lips
were tight set; her chin held out with an air of dogged effort which
seemed to possess no relation to her mechanical occupation, yet to have
a strong habitual relation to her state of mind. She seemed, in fact,
under a shell of self-control, to conceal an inner light, like a dimly
burning dark-lantern. Her expression was dumb. She moved about like
a deaf-mute. Indeed, her stillness and stony self-repression were
extraordinary.

A youth rose from a chair near the stove and greeted Hugh as he entered.

"Hullo," he said. "How many did you get?"

It was the eager questioning of a modest, affectionate boy who curbs his
natural effervescence of greeting like a well-trained dog. The tone was
astonishingly young, a quiet, husky boy-voice.

"Damn you, Pete!" was snarled at him for answer. "Haven't you got my
boot mended yet?"

The boot, still lacking its heel, lay on the floor near the stove, and
Hugh now picked it up and hurled it half across the room.

"I have to get out into this ice chest of a wilderness and this flaming
glare that cuts my eyeballs open, and work till the sweat freezes on my
face, and then come home to find you loafing by the fire as if you were
a house cat--purring and rubbing against my legs when I come in," he
snarled. "Thanking me for a quiet nap and a saucer of milk, eh? You
loafer! What do I keep you for? You gorge the bread and meat I earn
by sweating and freezing, and you keep your sluggish mountain of bones
covered. A year or two ago I'd have urged you along with a stick. I used
to get some work out of you then. But you think you're too big for that,
now, don't you? You fancy I'm afraid of your bigness, eh? Well, do you
wan