It took two weeks to burn into the gravel and when the grave was finished, the girl lowered the body gently to the bottom by means of a doubled babiche line. Then she carefully filled the grave, and erected a small wooden cross, into which she laboriously burned a simple inscription, with the point of a red hot spike. Then she retired to the cabin and, throwing herself upon her bunk, gave way to an uncontrollable fit of sobbing. That night the strong cold again gave way before a howling blizzard, and in the morning when she fed her dogs the little wooden cross was buried under a pure white mantle of snow. Days passed, days hardly distinguishable from the darkness of night. A grey cloud-bank overhung the Koyukuk, lowering and sullen and heavily burdened with snow, obscuring even the dim twilight of high noon. And with the passing of the days a deep melancholy settled itself upon the girl. In vain she tried to interest herself in her books, and the twice read magazines. But it was no use. A great weight seemed pressing upon her, smothering her. Her head felt strange, and sleep came only in short, dream-troubled snatches. Mechanically she attended to her simple duties, fed her dogs, and carried wood from the wood house. Each day was exactly like the preceding day, and the nights were the same as the days. The eyes of the dogs glowed like live coals as she moved among them in the darkness. There was something sinister--evil, in the greenish glint of these eyes that were always upon her. Why had she never noticed it before? Why did they glare at her out of the unending night? Twenty-one dogs out there in the dark--forty-two eyes! Eyes in the dark! Always eyes! Staring eyes! Flashing eyes! And eyes that glowed with sullen malevolence! Like the eyes of Dalzene! That was it, the eyes of Dalzene--flashing with hate, when he had threatened her in the roadhouse at Nolan. Glowing with smouldering hate when he passed her that day upon the trail near Soloman. Vividly the words of the man flashed through her brain: “Myrtle’s played out an’ dead.” Yes, Myrtle is dead--dead and forgotten--and the boiler is dead--and her father is dead--and her mother--all--all dead--dead and gone--and forgotten, as Dalzene had said. With a shudder she recalled the leering glint of his eyes as he had begged her to throw in with him, “We’ll go where we kin have some fun--down on the Yukon, or over to Nome, that’s where the bright lights is.” The bright lights! Well, she had seen the bright lights--had basked in their brilliance. For two never-to-be-forgotten weeks she had _lived_. And she recalled the terrible gleam in his eyes as he had uttered his threat: “Time will come when you will talk to Jake Dalzene--an’ talk pretty! Time will come when you’ll learn that Jake Dalzene don’t never fergit!” And his eyes had gleamed--like the eyes of the dogs in the dark.