ute, which the government had lately opened, and the mails were
carried that way; he could take passage with the mail-carriers.

This fact determined Northwick. He shrank from trusting himself in
government keeping, though he knew he would be safe in it. He said he
would go by Tadoussac; and the landlord found a carriole driver, with a
tough little Canadian horse, who agreed to go the whole way to
Chicoutimi with him.

After an early lunch the man came, with the low-bodied sledge, set on
runners of solid wood, and deeply bedded with bearskins for the lap and
back. The day was still and sunny, like the day before, and the air
which drove keenly against his face, with the rush of the carriole,
sparkled with particles of frost that sometimes filled it like a light
shower of snow. The drive was so short that he reached St. Joachim at
noon, and he decided to push on part of the way to Baie St. Paul after
dinner. His host at St. Joachim approved of that. "You goin' have snow
to-night and big drift to-morrow," he said, and he gave his driver the
name of an habitant whom they could stop the night with. The driver was
silent, and he looked sinister; Northwick thought how easily the man
might murder him on that lonely road and make off with the money in his
belt; how probably he would do it if he dreamed such wealth was within
his grasp. But the man did not notice him after their journey began,
except once to turn round and say, "Look out you' nose. You' goin'
freeze him." For the rest he talked to his horse, which was lazy, and
which he kept urging forward with "Marche donc! Marche donc!" finally
shortened to "'Ch' donc! 'Ch' donc!" and repeated and repeated at
regular intervals like the tolling of a bell. It made Northwick think of
a bell-buoy off a ledge of rocks, which he had spent a summer near. He
wished to ask the man to stop, but he reflected that the waves would not
let him stop; he had to keep tolling.

Northwick started. He must be going out of his mind, or else he was
drowsing. Perhaps he was freezing, and this was the beginning of the
death drowse. But he felt himself warm under his furs, where he touched
himself, and he knew he had merely been dreaming. He let himself go
again, and arrived at his own door in Hatboro'. He saw the electric
lights through the long piazza windows, and he was going to warn
Elbridge again about that colt's shoes. Then he heard a sharp fox-like
barking, and found that his carriole had st