; I've
avoided her as an electrician avoids charged wire. Still, if I had found
myself in Weatherbee's place; if I had made his mistake and married her,
she should have felt my streak of iron. I might have stayed in Alaska as
he did, but she would have stayed too and made a home for me, helped to
fight things through." He paused and, meeting the appeal in her eyes, his
face softened. "I've distressed you again," he added. "I'm sorry; but it
isn't safe for me to speak of that woman; the thought of her starts my
temperature rising in bounds. I want you to help me forget her. Yet, down
in the depths of your heart you know you blame her."

"Yes, I blame her." Miss Armitage began to walk on towards the edge of the
bench. "I blame her, but not as you do. I know she tried to do right; she
would have gone to Alaska--if David had wished it--at the start. And she's
been courageous, too. She's smiled--laughed in the face of defeat. Her
closest friends never knew."

"You defend her. I wonder at that." Tisdale passed her and turned to offer
his help down the first abrupt pitch. "How you, who are the one to censure
her the most, can speak for her always, as you do. But there you are like
Weatherbee. It was his way to take the losing side; champion the absent."

"And there is where your resemblance stops," she answered quickly. "He
lacked your streak of iron. Of course you know about your strange likeness
to him, Mr. Tisdale. It is so very marked; almost a dual personality. It
isn't height and breadth of shoulder alone; it's in the carriage, the turn
of the head; and it creeps into your eyes sometimes; it gets into your
voice. The first time I saw you, it was startling."

Tisdale moved on, picking up the trail they had made in ascending; the
humor began to play reminiscently at the corners of his mouth. "Yes, I
know about that resemblance. When we were on the Tanana, it was 'Tisdale's
Twin' and 'Dave's Double.' A man has to take a name that fits up there,
and we seemed to grow more alike every day. But that often happens when
two friends who are accustomed to think in the same channels are brought
into continual touch, and the first year we spent in the north together we
were alone for weeks at a stretch, with no other human intercourse, not a
prospector's camp within a hundred miles. The most incompatible partners,
under those circumstances, will pick up subconsciously tricks of speech
and gesture. Still, looking back, I see it was