Every winter when the heavens had been clear enough to permit it, Lou Gordon had taken her leave of the sun from this same bare ridge, and always the grand symphony of color tones had stirred her to the uttermost fibre of her being, stirred her to the very soul, heartened her for the long, long night. But, on this day there was no answering response in her heart. The sun, giver of light, and life, and warmth, had blazed his farewell from the rim of the world, and was gone. The North lay dead, as her heart was dead. Except that for the North, there would be an awakening. She, too, had had her little day of glory. Two short weeks of wonderful pulsing life. Love had stirred her heart with the wonderful symphony of his song. Then the sun of love had set, and the world was black, and white, and toneless. With a dull pain gnawing at her heart, the girl turned her back upon the southern horizon, spoke to her dogs, and wearily descended the ridge into the narrow valley of Myrtle. The strong cold descended upon the land. Myrtle creek froze to the bottom, burst its ice bond, and froze again. The breath snapped and crackled as it left the lips, and men forsook the trails. Then it was that Old Man Gordon’s “b’iler” froze to its very vitals. For four weeks he had managed, by firing night and day, to keep steam in her, but as the strong cold gripped the land, it gripped the boiler, too. Unprotected by any building it froze with the fire roaring in the fire-box, and stood out under the glittering stars, a black and useless thing of iron. With the failure of his boiler Old Man Gordon lost his grip on life. In vain Lou tried to arouse him to return to his wood-thawing. But, the old man merely shook his head and sat staring through the hours of unchanging dark, into the little squares of light that showed at the draught holes of the stove. December passed into January of the worst winter the Koyukuk had ever experienced. Furious blizzards followed upon the heels of the strong cold, and the strong cold upon the heels of the blizzards. Snow piled to unprecedented depths, and all trails were hopelessly buried. Not until the second week in January did Lou Gordon become really alarmed about her father. The hours when she was not busy with her dogs she spent in reading, and in trying to awaken the old man from the apathy into which he had fallen. His appetite had dwindled until he was eating almost nothing. He rarely spoke, merely answering the girl’s questions with a nod, or a shake of the head.