could contemplate
failure and face the winter trail in the barren desolation of the lofty
interior of Labrador's untracked wild.

The austerity of the country was well-nigh overwhelming. The nakedness
of it all suggested a skeleton world robbed of everything that could
make existence possible. It suggested a world that was sick, and aged,
and too unfruitful to harbour aught but the fierce elemental storms of
the northern winter. And the cold of it ate into the bones of the lonely
figure passing through the great silence like a ghost.

* * * * *

The night was deathly still. A thermometer would have registered
something colder than sixty degrees below zero. Not a breath of wind
stirred. The only sound that came was the doleful note of a prowling
wolf in the forest belt near by, and the booming protest of the trees
against the bitterness of winter.

The sky was ablaze with a myriad jewels in a velvet setting. And a cold
wealth of aurora lit the northern heavens. Camp had been pitched well
wide of the nearby forests, and three men sat crouching over the fire.
There was little enough to differentiate between them. They were white
men, and all were clad, from their heads to the soles of their seal hide
moccasins, in heavy furs. The dark outlines of two sleds showed up a few
yards away, but the dogs, themselves, were not visible. Weary with their
day's run they had betaken themselves to their nightly snow burrows to
dream over past battles, past labours.

The men were talking earnestly in the low, slow tones which the silence
of the forests seems to inspire. Three pairs of bare hands were outheld
to the welcome blaze of the fire. Three pairs of clear gazing eyes
searched the heart of it. None were smoking. It would have been a burden
to keep the pipe stem from freezing even in the vicinity of the fire,
and none of them were in any mood to accept any added burden.

A blue-eyed, beardless youth shifted his gaze to the dark face directly
opposite him beyond the fire.

"Oh, we got that guy--good," he said. There was laughter in his eyes but
not in his tone. "We got him plumb at the game. He was chock full of
kerosene and tinder, and he'd fired the patch in several places. We were
on it quick. We beat the fire in seconds. As for him, why, I guess his
Ma's going to forget him right away. Leastways I hope so. He went out
like the snuff of a lucifer, and his body's likely handed plenty feed to