A glance at the clock showed her, however, that it was not so very late yet, and still a long way from midnight.  Then, remembering that Katherine and Miles were out, she guessed it was they who were making such a clamour at the door of the store, and hurried to let them in.

“I hope we haven’t frightened Father with all the noise we have had to make, but you seemed so dead asleep that we had to make a great riot in order to get in,” Katherine said, as she and Miles towed the sledge inside the store to be unloaded at leisure when morning came.

“I will go and see to Father, but Phil is with him now.  Where have you been, Katherine?  And oh, I do hope you have not frosted your face!” Mrs. Burton said, with sisterly concern.

Katherine laughed, but even Mrs. Burton noticed that the sound was strained and unmirthful.  “My complexion has not suffered, I can assure you.  But Nellie, dear, could you get a cup of hot coffee quickly for two men?  They have been having a rather terrible time of it, and are a good bit shaken.”

“Bring them into the kitchen and I will have the coffee ready directly,” Mrs. Burton said promptly.  But first of all she just looked into her father’s room to tell him there was nothing to worry about.  Then she hurried into the kitchen to rouse up the fire and put the coffee pot on to boil.

Oily Dave and Stee Jenkin accepted Katherine’s invitation to walk in, following her through the dark store and into the lighted room beyond with a sheepish expression on their faces, which certainly no one had ever seen there before.  Stee Jenkin had his outer garments nearly torn off him, there was blood on his face, and he sank on to the nearest bench as if his trembling limbs refused to support him any longer.

“Why, your face is bleeding!  What have you been doing—­not fighting, I hope?” T here was a touch of severity in Mrs. Burton’s tone; for she knew the man did not bear a very good character, and she was not disposed to give herself much trouble on account of anyone who had brought his misfortunes upon his own head.

“Yes, ma’am, I have been fighting, and for my life too, which is a very different thing from a round of fisticuffs with your neighbour,” growled Stee Jenkin in a shaken tone, and the hand with which he tried to lift the steaming coffee to his lips shook so violently that he spilled the hot liquid on his clothes.

Katherine and Miles had gone back to the store again, so it was Oily Dave who explained the nature of the fight in which both men had been involved.

“We’d a perticular bit of business on hand to-night,” he said, in response to the enquiring look which Mrs. Burton turned upon him, for Stee was plainly too much upset to be coherent.  “I’d got a revolver certainly, but Stee had nothing but a knife, for we didn’t expect any trouble with wolves so early in the season, though it is a fact we might have done, for everyone knows the place is just about swarming with them this winter.”