“But I must,” she insisted.  “My feet are freezing.”

With a gesture of resignation he stepped aside and closed the door after her.  Coming suddenly in from the darkness, she hesitated a moment, but in that moment recovered her sight and took in the scene.  The air was thick with tobacco smoke, and the odor of it, in the close room, was sickening to one fresh from the pure outside.  On the table a column of steam was ascending from the big mixing-pan.  The Virgin, fleeing before Cornell, was defending herself with a long mustard spoon.  Evading him and watching her chance, she continually daubed his nose and cheeks with the yellow smear.  Blanche had twisted about from the stove to see the fun, and Del Bishop, with a mug at rest half-way to his lips, was applauding the successive strokes.  The faces of all were flushed.

Vance leaned nervelessly against the door.  The whole situation seemed so unthinkably impossible.  An insane desire to laugh came over him, which resolved itself into a coughing fit.  But Frona, realizing her own pressing need by the growing absence of sensation in her feet, stepped forward.

“Hello, Del!” she called.

The mirth froze on his face at the familiar sound and he slowly and unwilling turned his head to meet her.  She had slipped the hood of her parka back, and her face, outlined against the dark fur, rosy with the cold and bright, was like a shaft of the sun shot into the murk of a boozing-ken.  They all knew her, for who did not know Jacob Welse’s daughter?  The Virgin dropped the mustard-spoon with a startled shriek, while Cornell, passing a dazed hand across his yellow markings and consummating the general smear, collapsed on the nearest stool.  Cariboo Blanche alone retained her self-possession, and laughed softly.

Bishop managed to articulate “Hello!” but was unable to stave off the silence which settled down.

Frona waited a second, and then said, “Good-evening, all.”

“This way.”  Vance had recovered himself, and seated her by the stove opposite Blanche.  “Better get your things off quickly, and be careful of the heat.  I’ll see what I can find for you.”

“Some cold water, please,” she asked.  “It will take the frost out.  Del will get it.”

“I hope it is not serious?”

“No.”  She shook her head and smiled up to him, at the same time working away at her ice-coated moccasins.  “There hasn’t been time for more than surface-freezing.  At the worst the skin will peel off.”

An unearthly silence brooded in the cabin, broken only by Bishop filling a basin from the water-bucket, and by Corliss seeking out his smallest and daintiest house-moccasins and his warmest socks.

Frona, rubbing her feet vigorously, paused and looked up.  “Don’t let me chill the festivities just because I’m cold,” she laughed.  “Please go on.”

Jake Cornell straightened up and cleared his throat inanely, and the Virgin looked over-dignified; but Blanche came over and took the towel out of Frona’s hands.