A sleigh came up with a load of girls and young men in blanket-coats and furs.

They seemed to be talking and laughing, but Agatha no longer envied them; the depression she had felt had gone.

Then as the sleigh went past with a chime of bells she tried to follow her letter on its journey to the North.
After it left the railroad it would lie in a pack on a half-breed's shoulders, or perhaps in a skin bag on a hand-sledge, in front of which men with snowshoes marched.

It would travel up winding rivers between dark walls of ragged pines, across frozen lakes, and among the rocks on high divides.

Then the tired men would stop at a cluster of shacks beside a shaft and an ore-dump in the wilds, and she wondered what Thirlwell would think when he opened the envelope; whether he would be pleased or not.
But this was indulging idle sentiment that she had meant to avoid, and she went back to the table and opened her books.