“Dem tamn togs!” he roared. “I hope you ain’t hurted none, leddy?”
With his assistance she rose quickly from the snow. It is possible that she had scarcely had time enough to become afraid. At any rate this new life that had come to her asserted itself, irresistibly, for there was something in its essence that would not be denied. In the heart that had been overburdened something broke, like a flood bursting its bonds. She threw up her head and uplifted her hands as laughter, pealing and rippling unrestrained, shook her slender frame from head to foot until tears ran down the now reddened cheeks 95 and turned to tiny globes of ice. She was making up for weeks and months of sombre thoughts, of despair, of shrewd suffering.
“Tank gootness!” roared Stefan. “First I tink dem togs yoost kill you dead. If so I take de pelts off ’em all alife, de scoundrels!”
“Oh! Please don’t punish them,” she cried. “It––it was so funny! Oh, dear! I––I must stop laughing! It––it hurts my sides!”
She ran off among the dogs and threw herself down on the crusted snow, passing one arm over a shaggy back. The animal looked at her, uncertainly, but suddenly he passed a big moist tongue over her face. Could he have realized that her saving grace might avert condign punishment? The girl petted him as Stefan turned the toboggan and its load right side up.
“You ain’t feared of dem togs,” he called to her. “And you vasn’t afraid vhen dey dump you out. You’s a blucky gal all right, leddy!”
A moment later she was again wrapped up in the bearskin and the dogs, loudly threatened but unpunished, owing to her intercession, resumed their journey. They had gone but a few hundred yards further when Madge smelled wood-smoke. A few minutes later 96 they came in sight of a low-built shack of heavy planks evidently turned out in a sawpit and resting on walls of peeled spruce logs. The dogs trotted toward it and a woman came out as Stefan stopped his team.
“I got a letter for you, Mis’ Carew,” he announced. “I got it dis morning at de post-office and bring it as I come along dis vay.”
He searched a pocket of his coat while the woman looked at Madge curiously.
“Won’t you come in and warm yourself a while?” she asked, civilly. “I can make you a hot cup of tea in a minute.”