"They're fools," replied Katrine, angrily, while the hot tears fell thickly into her lap.
Stephen came in at the moment, and though Katrine made no attempt to conceal the fact that she was crying, he took no notice of her, but began talking to Talbot about the wood.
"We shall have to take the sleigh to-morrow and go up the gulch and get some more wood somehow, if we can. There's only a few bundles left," he said, blowing out the candle and dragging some heavy logs over to the fire.
"Can I come with you?" asked Katrine, looking at him with her soft pathetic eyes, still brimming with tears.
"Why—yes—I suppose so," returned Stephen, slowly opening the stove and looking in.
"I shall enjoy it so much," answered Katrine, her face beginning to sparkle with its accustomed smiles. "We have not had a sleigh ride together once, have we? I'd like to go with you better than anything. You'll like it too, won't you?"
"I don't know; it's a confounded nuisance having to leave the claims a whole afternoon, I think."
Katrine got up suddenly from where she was sitting and walked into the next room without a word. Her tears were dried, her smiles killed.
The following day was clear and bright, and a cold, pinky-looking winter sunlight filled the air. Katrine and Stephen started early, and Talbot did not expect them back till dark. He was out on the claims all the morning, and came in to his lunch late and did not go out again immediately. It was a day for a half-holiday, and all his men left early; the claims were deserted, and Talbot found himself in solitary possession of the gulch. He felt restless and unsettled, and walked about his little bare room in an aimless way quite unusual to him, and the early part of the afternoon had passed away before he realised it.
In one of his walks he went up to the window and stood looking out. The gulch always impressed him; it had a solemn melancholy majesty and desolate grandeur that is not easy to define in words: an icy splendour by moonlight, and a horrible gloomy beauty towards the fall of the day. It was at this time that Talbot stood looking out at its rugged edges and the snow-drifts turning grey as the sunlight left them, and listening with a sort of mechanical tension to the unbroken and oppressive stillness round him, when his eye caught sight of a man's figure, moving slowly towards the house. It had appeared so suddenly where for hours there had reigned unbroken silence and loneliness, that Talbot started a little with sheer surprise; and then another appeared, and another. They were coming, one behind the other, singly, round the corner of the house, and as they emerged into view on the level platform in front of it Talbot looked them over and saw at a glance to what order they belonged.