"I'd have died first!" Madge cried.

"Things is different down here," Miller explained. "You don't have to
eat dogs. You think different just about the time you're all in. You've
never been all in, so you don't know anything about it."

"That's the very point," she argued warmly. "Dogs are not eaten in
California. Why not leave him here? He is happy. He'll never want for
food--you know that. He'll never suffer from cold and hardship. Here all
is softness and gentleness. Neither the human nor nature is savage. He
will never know a whip-lash again. And as for the weather--why, it
never snows here."

"But it's all-fired hot in summer, beggin' your pardon," Skiff Miller
laughed.

"But you do not answer," Madge continued passionately. "What have you to
offer him in that northland life?"

"Grub, when I've got it, and that's most of the time," came the answer.

"And the rest of the time?"

"No grub."

"And the work?"

"Yes, plenty of work," Miller blurted out impatiently. "Work without
end, an' famine, an' frost, an' all the rest of the miseries--that's