Then everything seemed to leave me and I fell to the floor unconscious. Hours afterward--they said it was 9 o’clock at night, and the messenger had been there at 4 in the afternoon--I came to. The baby was crying and hungry. It seemed to me I had been in a long sickness and I could not for a while quite realize where I was or what ill shape of a hostile fate had befallen me. And, when I think of it now, it seems to me any other woman in my place would have gone crazy. For two months I stayed in that cabin, trying my best to find a way out of Dawson and unable to move a rod because of the fact that I had no money. Swiftwater, as I learned afterwards, took a lay on a claim on Dexter Creek and cleaned up in a short time $4,000. When I heard this, I wrote to him for money for the baby, but none came. A month passed and then another and no word from Swiftwater. I felt as long as I had a roof over my head, I could make a living for myself and the baby by working at anything--manicuring, hairdressing or sewing. Then, one evening, just after I had finished dinner, came a rap at the door. It was Phil Wilson. “Swiftwater has given me a deed to this house and power of attorney over his other matters,” said he. “I shall move my things over here and occupy one of these three rooms.” I knew better than to make any objection then, but the next day I told Wilson: “You will have to take your things down town--you cannot stay here.” “I guess I’ll stay all right, Mrs. Beebe,” said he. “And it will be all winter, too. And, I think it would be better for you, Mrs. Beebe, if you stayed here with me.” I knew just what that meant. I said: “Mr. Wilson, I understand you, but you will go and take your things now.” Wilson left in another minute and I did not see him for two days. On the second afternoon I locked the door with a padlock and went down town to do some shopping for the baby, who I had left with a neighbor. I also wanted to send a fourth letter to Swiftwater, begging him to send me some money to keep me and his baby from starving. When I got back at dusk that evening, the door to the cabin was broken open, and the chain and padlock lay on the ground shattered into fragments. I went inside. All my clothes, the baby’s and even the little personal belongings of the child were piled together in a disordered heap in the center room. CHAPTER IX. IT WAS pitch dark when I left the cabin and made my way directly, as best I could, to the town with its dimly lighted streets. It seemed to me that I had never had a friend in all this world. Friend? Yes, FRIEND. That is to say--a human being who could be depended upon in any emergency and who was right--right all the time in fair as well as in foul weather.