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Frona shivered, and St. Vincent passed his arm about her waist. The woman in her was aware of the touch of man, and of a slight tingling thrill of vague delight; but she made no resistance. And as the wolf-dogs mourned at her feet and the aurora wantoned overhead, she felt herself drawn against him closely. "Need I tell my story?" he whispered.
"Does it seem real to you, Vance?" He shook his head. "Nor to me. I know that I, Frona, in the flesh, am here, in a Peterborough, paddling for dear life with two men; year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, Alaska, Yukon River; this is water, that is ice; my arms are tired, my heart up a few beats, and I am sweating, and yet it seems all a dream. Just think! A year ago I was in Paris!"
Frona tapped her foot impatiently, and studied him. "She is beautiful, very beautiful," she suggested. "Do you not think so?" "As beautiful as hell." "But still beautiful," she insisted. "Yes, if you will have it so. And she is as cruel, and hard, and hopeless as she is beautiful." "Yet I came upon her, alone, by the trail, her face softened, and tears in her eyes.
But Corliss, after several perfunctory visits, forgot the way which led to Jacob Welse's home, and applied himself savagely to his work. He even had the hypocrisy, at times, to felicitate himself upon his escape, and to draw bleak fireside pictures of the dismal future which would have been had he and Frona incompatibly mated. But this was only at times.
He stopped rowing long enough to fish about in the water around his feet for an old cornbeef can. "You'd better do some bailin'," he ordered, tossing her the can. "She's leakin' worse since that squeeze." Frona smiled mentally, tucked up her skirts, and bent to the work. At every dip, like great billows heaving along the sky-line, the glacier-fretted mountains rose and fell.
The Northland gives a keenness and zest to the blood which cannot be obtained in warmer climes. Naturally so, then, the friendship which sprang up between Corliss and Frona was anything but languid. They met often under her father's roof-tree, and went many places together.
"How should I know what you have been hearing?" she countered. "Whin the talk goes round iv a maid an' a man, the one pretty an' the other not unhandsome, both young an' neither married, does it 'token aught but the one thing?" "Yes?" "An' the one thing the greatest thing in all the world." "Well?" Frona was the least bit angry, and did not feel inclined to help him.
"Yes; let us start, by all means," Frona said in a dim voice, which seemed to come to him from a far distance. Tommy lifted his head and gazed about. "A doot we'll juist hae to gie it oop." "Bend to it!" "Ye'll no try it anither?" "Bend to it!" Corliss repeated. "Till your heart bursts, Tommy," Frona added.
Corliss's voice was sharp and relentless. "I'll do naething o' the kind." He turned a rebellious face on his tormentor, and ground his teeth in anger and disappointment. The canoe was drifting down with the current, and Frona merely held it in place. Corliss crawled forward on his knees.
"Say, Bill, if that there lower jam holds, we're goners;" the man with the canister called to his partner. "Ay, that it will," came the answer. "Below Nulato I saw Bixbie Island swept clean as my old mother's kitchen floor." The men came hastily together about Frona. "This won't do. We've got to carry them over to your shack, Corliss."
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