edge. The stranger thrust a physician's small travelling case
under his blankets at one end to serve for a pillow.

"Doctor?" Messner asked.

"Yes," came the answer, "but I assure you I didn't come into the
Klondike to practise."

The woman busied herself with cooking, while the man sliced bacon
and fired the stove. The light in the cabin was dim, filtering
through in a small window made of onion-skin writing paper and
oiled with bacon grease, so that John Messner could not make out
very well what the woman looked like. Not that he tried. He
seemed to have no interest in her. But she glanced curiously from
time to time into the dark corner where he sat.

"Oh, it's a great life," the doctor proclaimed enthusiastically,
pausing from sharpening his knife on the stovepipe. "What I like
about it is the struggle, the endeavor with one's own hands, the
primitiveness of it, the realness."

"The temperature is real enough," Messner laughed.

"Do you know how cold it actually is?" the doctor demanded.

The other shook his head.

"Well, I'll tell you. Seventy-four below zero by spirit
thermometer on the sled."