"What was that?"

"I heard the dogs-- and the wind," she replied.

"It's something cracking in my head, I guess," said MacVeigh. "It
sounded like--" He passed a hand over his forehead and looked at the
dogs huddled in deep sleep beside the sledge. The woman did not see
the shiver that passed through him. He laughed cheerfully, and seized
his ax.

"Now for the camp," he announced. "We're going to get the storm within
an hour."

On the box the woman carried a small tent, and he pitched it close to
the fire, filling the interior two feet deep with cedar and balsam
boughs. His own silk service tent he put back in the deeper shadows of
the spruce. When he had finished he looked questioningly at the woman
and then at the box.

"If there is room-- I would like it in there-- with me," she said, and
while she stood with her face to the fire he dragged the box into the
tent. Then he piled fresh fuel upon the fire and came to bid her good
night. Her face was pale and haggard now, but she smiled at him, and
to MacVeigh she was the most beautiful thing in the world. Within
himself he felt that he had known her for years and years, and he took
her hands and looked down into her blue eyes and said, almost in a
whisper:

"Will you forgive me if I'm doing wrong? You don't know how lonesome
I've been, and how lonesome I am, and what it means to me to look once