Late in the fall Mrs. Gordon succumbed to an acute attack of appendicitis, and was buried by the grief-stricken husband and daughter upon a wooded knoll just behind the cabin. After the death of his wife, Gordon drew more and more within himself, and more and more he became obsessed with his one idea--his “b’iler.” And so for three years he washed the bars in summer, and burned into the gravel in winter, the while his “b’iler” fund grew slowly. In the meantime, quite without the old man’s notice, Lou had developed from awkward girlhood into full rounded womanhood. And a very beautiful woman she was, the soft curves of her figure giving no hint of the splendid muscles that rippled and played beneath the velvet softness of her skin--muscles that rendered her absolutely tireless on the trail, and allowed her to swing an ax like a man. Perfect health steeled her nerves to an almost uncanny accuracy with the rifle. She did all the hunting, now, and no ptarmigan was brought into the Gordon cabin that had not been shot clean through the head with the twenty-two, or was any caribou hoisted to the meat cache that had not been instantly killed by a well-placed shot from the thirty-forty. Left to her own resources, the girl divided the time not occupied with her simple household duties between hunting, and reading, and the breeding of dogs. In the magazines which she devoured from cover to cover, she had occasionally run across an article upon the selective breeding of animals. One such article dealt with race horses, another with dairy cattle, and the information contained therein she eagerly digested, and proceeded to apply to the breeding of dogs. Gordon took scant interest in her “putterin’ wi’ the dogs” and gladly turned over their entire management to her, allowing her to keep the profits of the venture for her own. By the end of the third year these profits had mounted to a tidy sum, notwithstanding the fact that she used of it largely in the purchase of books and magazines whenever and wherever she found opportunity, and also in the purchase of materials for the underclothing which she fashioned by her own handiwork into garments that copied those in the fashion plates of the magazines to the utmost nicety. Her outer garments, of fur in the winter and squaw cloth in summer, were the strictly utilitarian garments of the land of the strong cold.