"That's one hundred and six below freezing point - too cold for
travelling, eh?"

"Practically suicide," was the doctor's verdict. "One exerts
himself. He breathes heavily, taking into his lungs the frost
itself. It chills his lungs, freezes the edges of the tissues. He
gets a dry, hacking cough as the dead tissue sloughs away, and dies
the following summer of pneumonia, wondering what it's all about.
I'll stay in this cabin for a week, unless the thermometer rises at
least to fifty below."

"I say, Tess," he said, the next moment, "don't you think that
coffee's boiled long enough!"

At the sound of the woman's name, John Messner became suddenly
alert. He looked at her quickly, while across his face shot a
haunting expression, the ghost of some buried misery achieving
swift resurrection. But the next moment, and by an effort of will,
the ghost was laid again. His face was as placid as before, though
he was still alert, dissatisfied with what the feeble light had
shown him of the woman's face.

Automatically, her first act had been to set the coffee-pot back.
It was not until she had done this that she glanced at Messner.
But already he had composed himself. She saw only a man sitting on
the edge of the bunk and incuriously studying the toes of his
moccasins. But, as she turned casually to go about her cooking, he
shot another swift look at her, and she, glancing as swiftly back,
caught his look. He shifted on past her to the doctor, though the
slightest smile curled his lip in appreciation of the way she had