’I sat silent, and marveled at the strangeness of woman.  I went back to the night when he dragged her from me and she screamed and tore at his hair—­at his hair which now she played with and would not leave.  Then I remembered the price and the long years of waiting; and I gripped her close, and dragged her away as he had done.  And she held back, even as on that night, and fought like a she-cat for its whelp.  And when the fire was between us and the man.  I loosed her, and she sat and listened.  And I told her of all that lay between, of all that had happened to me on strange seas, of all that I had done in strange lands; of my weary quest, and the hungry years, and the promise which had been mine from the first.  Aye, I told all, even to what had passed that day between the man and me, and in the days yet young.  And as I spoke I saw the promise grow in her eyes, full and large like the break of dawn.  And I read pity there, the tenderness of woman, the love, the heart and the soul of Unga.  And I was a stripling again, for the look was the look of Unga as she ran up the beach, laughing, to the home of her mother.  The stern unrest was gone, and the hunger, and the weary waiting.

’The time was met.  I felt the call of her breast, and it seemed there I must pillow my head and forget.  She opened her arms to me, and I came against her.  Then, sudden, the hate flamed in her eye, her hand was at my hip.  And once, twice, she passed the knife.

’"Dog!” she sneered, as she flung me into the snow.  “Swine!” And then she laughed till the silence cracked, and went back to her dead.

’As I say, once she passed the knife, and twice; but she was weak with hunger, and it was not meant that I should die.  Yet was I minded to stay in that place, and to close my eyes in the last long sleep with those whose lives had crossed with mine and led my feet on unknown trails.  But there lay a debt upon me which would not let me rest.

’And the way was long, the cold bitter, and there was little grub.  The Pellys had found no moose, and had robbed my cache.  And so had the three white men, but they lay thin and dead in their cabins as I passed.  After that I do not remember, till I came here, and found food and fire—­much fire.’  As he finished, he crouched closely, even jealously, over the stove.  For a long while the slush-lamp shadows played tragedies upon the wall.

‘But Unga!’ cried Prince, the vision still strong upon him.

’Unga?  She would not eat of the ptarmigan.  She lay with her arms about his neck, her face deep in his yellow hair.  I drew the fire close, that she might not feel the frost, but she crept to the other side.  And I built a fire there; yet it was little good, for she would not eat.  And in this manner they still lie up there in the snow.’

‘And you?’ asked Malemute Kid.