Young Wingate faced the East once more. There was but one thing
to do with his life--work, _work_, WORK; and the harder, the more
difficult, that work, the better. It was this very difficulty that
made the engineering on the Crow's Nest Pass so attractive to him.
So here he was building grades, blasting tunnels, with Catharine's
mournful eyes following him daily, as if she divined something of
that long-ago sorrow that had shadowed his almost boyish life.

He liked the woman, and his liking quickened his eye to her
hardships, his ear to the hint of lagging weariness in her footsteps;
so he was the first to notice it the morning she stumped into the
cook-house, her feet bound up in furs, her face drawn in agony.

"Catharine," he exclaimed, "your feet have been frozen!"

She looked like a culprit, but answered: "Not much; I get lose in
storm las' night."

"I thought this would happen," he said, indignantly. "After this
you sleep here."

"I sleep home." she said, doggedly.

"I won't have it," he declared. "I'll cook for the men myself
first."

"Allight," she replied. "You cookee; I go home--me."

That night there was a terrible storm. The wind howled down the