“Um white, um soft, like baby.”  Winapie touched the other cheek and withdrew her hand.  “Bimeby mosquito come.  Skin get sore in spot; um swell, oh, so big; um hurt, oh, so much.  Plenty mosquito; plenty spot.  I think better you go now before mosquito come.  This way,” pointing down the stream, “you go St. Michael’s; that way,” pointing up, “you go Dyea.  Better you go Dyea.  Good-by.”

And that which Mrs. Sayther then did, caused Pierre to marvel greatly.  For she threw her arms around the Indian girl, kissed her, and burst into tears.

“Be good to him,” she cried.  “Be good to him.”

Then she slipped half down the face of the bank, called back “Good-by,” and dropped into the boat amidships.  Pierre followed her and cast off.  He shoved the steering oar into place and gave the signal.  Le Goire lifted an old French chanson; the men, like a row of ghosts in the dim starlight, bent their backs to the tow line; the steering oar cut the black current sharply, and the boat swept out into the night.

WHICH MAKE MEN REMEMBER

Fortune La Pearle crushed his way through the snow, sobbing, straining, cursing his luck, Alaska, Nome, the cards, and the man who had felt his knife.  The hot blood was freezing on his hands, and the scene yet bright in his eyes,—­the man, clutching the table and sinking slowly to the floor; the rolling counters and the scattered deck; the swift shiver throughout the room, and the pause; the game-keepers no longer calling, and the clatter of the chips dying away; the startled faces; the infinite instant of silence; and then the great blood-roar and the tide of vengeance which lapped his heels and turned the town mad behind him.

“All hell’s broke loose,” he sneered, turning aside in the darkness and heading for the beach.  Lights were flashing from open doors, and tent, cabin, and dance-hall let slip their denizens upon the chase.  The clamor of men and howling of dogs smote his ears and quickened his feet.  He ran on and on.  The sounds grew dim, and the pursuit dissipated itself in vain rage and aimless groping.  But a flitting shadow clung to him.  Head thrust over shoulder, he caught glimpses of it, now taking vague shape on an open expanse of snow, how merging into the deeper shadows of some darkened cabin or beach-listed craft.

Fortune La Pearle swore like a woman, weakly, with the hint of tears that comes of exhaustion, and plunged deeper into the maze of heaped ice, tents, and prospect holes.  He stumbled over taut hawsers and piles of dunnage, tripped on crazy guy-ropes and insanely planted pegs, and fell again and again upon frozen dumps and mounds of hoarded driftwood.  At times, when he deemed he had drawn clear, his head dizzy with the painful pounding of his heart and the suffocating intake of his breath, he slackened down; and ever the shadow leaped out of the gloom and forced him