He broke off helplessly.  The inevitableness of the situation was growing.

“Can I make Deep Lake to-night?” Frona asked, forgetting herself to sympathize with him, then becoming conscious of what she was doing and bursting into laughter.

“But you couldn’t ford the river in the dark.”  He frowned at her levity.  “And there are no camps between.”

“Are you afraid?” she asked with just the shadow of a sneer.

“Not for myself.”

“Well, then, I think I’ll go to bed.”

“I might sit up and keep the fire going,” he suggested after a pause.

“Fiddlesticks!” she cried.  “As though your foolish little code were saved in the least!  We are not in civilization.  This is the trail to the Pole.  Go to bed.”

He elevated his shoulders in token of surrender.  “Agreed.  What shall I do then?”

“Help me make my bed, of course.  Sacks laid crosswise!  Thank you, sir, but I have bones and muscles that rebel.  Here—­ Pull them around this way.”

Under her direction he laid the sacks lengthwise in a double row.  This left an uncomfortable hollow with lumpy sack-corners down the middle; but she smote them flat with the side of the axe, and in the same manner lessened the slope to the walls of the hollow.  Then she made a triple longitudinal fold in a blanket and spread it along the bottom of the long depression.

“Hum!” he soliloquized.  “Now I see why I sleep so badly.  Here goes!” And he speedily flung his own sacks into shape.

“It is plain you are unused to the trail,” she informed him, spreading the topmost blanket and sitting down.

“Perhaps so,” he made answer.  “But what do you know about this trail life?” he growled a little later.

“Enough to conform,” she rejoined equivocally, pulling out the dried wood from the oven and replacing it with wet.

“Listen to it!  How it storms!” he exclaimed.  “It’s growing worse, if worse be possible.”

The tent reeled under the blows of the wind, the canvas booming hollowly at every shock, while the sleet and rain rattled overhead like skirmish-fire grown into a battle.  In the lulls they could hear the water streaming off at the side-walls with the noise of small cataracts.  He reached up curiously and touched the wet roof.  A burst of water followed instantly at the point of contact and coursed down upon the grub-box.

“You mustn’t do that!” Frona cried, springing to her feet.  She put her finger on the spot, and, pressing tightly against the canvas, ran it down to the side-wall.  The leak at once stopped.  “You mustn’t do it, you know,” she reproved.

“Jove!” was his reply.  “And you came through from Dyea to-day!  Aren’t you stiff?”

“Quite a bit,” she confessed, candidly, “and sleepy.”

“Good-night,” she called to him several minutes later, stretching her body luxuriously in the warm blankets.  And a quarter of an hour after that, “Oh, I say!  Are you awake?”