lady bar-keep down in Vancouver before she married Jimmy. He was a
trail-chopper in this country. I don't know what he was in the old
one."

"And," said Miss Deringham, "Mrs. Jimmy resembles me?"

She regretted it next moment when she saw Alton's face. It expressed
subdued surprise, and the girl felt irritated with herself.

"Yes," he said gravely. "Human nature's much the same at the bottom,
whether it has gold on the top of it or the dints of the hammer, and
Mrs. Jimmy was good all through."

"That," said Miss Deringham, "is distinctly pretty."

"Well," said Alton smiling, "I didn't mean it that way. Work was
scarce in the province, and I'd lost my cattle when Jimmy went up with
me into the ranges to look for silver. He brought his wife along,
because he had no dollars or anywhere to leave her, and it was a mighty
tough place for a woman where we camped under the big glacier. We
stayed right there most of the winter. There was only frost and snow,
and the wind that whirled it about the pines, and, until it froze up,
we lived a good deal on salmon from the river. They were dead when we
got them, and some of them rotten."

Miss Deringham shivered. "And when the river froze?" she said.

"Then," said Alton gravely, "there were days when we lived on nothing,
and worked until we couldn't hold the pick to keep from thinking.
Still, we got a deer now and then, and we had a very little flour. It