ss a sack of flour in his teeth or juggle a
cask of salt-horse."

"Sure t'ing," grinned Pierre. "That's right. Look at me. Mebbe you
hear 'bout Pierre 'Feroce' sometime, eh?"

"Oh, yes; everybody knows you; knows you're a big bully. I've seen you
drink a quart of this wood alcohol they call whisky up here, and then
jump the bar from a stand, but you're all animal--you haven't the
refinement and the culture that makes real strength. It's the mind
that makes us stand punishment."

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the Canadian. "Wat a fonny talk. She'll take
the heducate man for stan' the col', eh? Mon Dieu!" He roared again
till the sled dogs turned fearful glances backward and bushy tails
drooped under the weight of their fright. Great noise came oftenest
with great rage from Pierre, and they had too frequently felt the both
to forget.

"Yes, you haven't the mentality. Sometime you'll use up your physical
resources and go to pieces like a burned wick."

Pierre was greatly amused. His yellow teeth shone, and he gave vent to
violent mirth as, following the thought, he pictured a naked mind
wandering over the hills with the quicksilver at sixty degrees.

"Did you ever see a six-day race? Of course not; you barbarians
haven't sunk to the level of our dissolute East, where we joy in Roman
spectacles, but if you had you'd see it's will that wins; it's the man
that eats his soul by inches. The educated soldier stands the campaign
best. You run too much to muscle--you're not balanced."

"I t'ink mebbe you'll 'ave chance for show 'im, thees stout will of
yours. She's goin' be long 'mush' troo the mountains, plentee snow,
plentee cold."

Although Pierre's ridicule was galling, Willard felt the charm of the
morning too strongly to admit of anger or to argue his pet theory.

The sun, brilliant and cold, lent a paradoxical cheerfulness to the
desolation, and, though never a sign of life broke the stillness around
them, the beauty of the scintillant, gleaming mountains, distinct as
cameos, that guarded the bay, appealed to him with the strange
attraction of the Arctics; that attraction that calls and calls
insistently, till men forsake God's country for its mystery.

He breathed the biting air cleaned by leagues of lifeless barrens and
voids of crackling frost till he ached with the exhilaration of a
perfect morning on the Circle.

Also before him undulated the grandest string of dogs the Coast had
known. Seven the