In the short time since meeting them, the girl had grown to like Dextry, with his blunt chivalry and boyish, whimsical philosophy, but she avoided Glenister, feeling a shrinking, hidden terror of him, ever since her eavesdropping of the previous night.  At the memory of that scene she grew hot, then cold—­hot with anger, icy at the sinister power and sureness which had vibrated in his voice.  What kind of life was she entering where men spoke of strange women with this assurance and hinted thus of ownership?  That he was handsome and unconscious of it, she acknowledged, and had she met him in her accustomed circle of friends, garbed in the conventionalities, she would perhaps have thought of him as a striking man, vigorous and intelligent; but here he seemed naturally to take on the attributes of his surroundings, acquiring a picturesque negligee of dress and morals, and suggesting rugged, elemental, chilling potentialities.  While with him—­and he had sought her repeatedly that day—­she was uneasily aware of his strong personality tugging at her; aware of the unbridled passionate flood of a nature unbrooking of delay and heedless of denial.  This it was that antagonized her and set her every mental sinew in rigid resistance.

During Dextry’s garrulous ramblings, Glenister emerged from the darkness and silently took his place beside her, against the rail.

“What portent do you see that makes you stare into the night so anxiously?” he inquired.

“I am wishing for a sight of the midnight sun or the aurora borealis,” she replied.

“Too late for one an’ too fur south for the other,” Dextry interposed.  “We’ll see the sun further north, though.”

“Have you ever heard the real origin of the Northern Lights?” the young man inquired.

“Naturally, I never have,” she answered.

“Well, here it is.  I have it from the lips of a great hunter of the Tananas.  He told it to me when I was sick, once, in his cabin, and inasmuch as he is a wise Indian and has a reputation for truth, I have no doubt that it is scrupulously correct.

“In the very old days, before the white man or corned beef had invaded this land, the greatest tribe in all the North was the Tananas.  The bravest hunter of these was Itika, the second chief.  He could follow a moose till it fell exhausted in the snow and he had many belts made from the claws of the brown bear which is deadly wicked and, as every one knows, inhabited by the spirits of ‘Yabla-men,’ or devils.

“One winter a terrible famine settled over the Tanana Valley.  The moose departed from the gulches and the caribou melted from the hills like mist.  The dogs grew gaunt and howled all night, the babies cried, the women became hollow-eyed and peevish.

“Then it was that Itika decided to go hunting over the saw-tooth range which formed the edge of the world.  They tried to dissuade him, saying it was certain death because a pack of monstrous white wolves, taller than the moose and swifter than the eagle, was known to range these mountains, running madly in chase.  Always, on clear, cold nights, could be seen the flashing of the moonbeams from their gleaming hungry sides, and although many hunters had crossed the passes in other years, they never returned, for the pack slew them.