t' get he t' our mouths without ere a light."

The meal was a simple one--boiled fresh trout with pork grease to pour
over it for sauce, bread, tea, and molasses for "sweetening." Butter
and sugar were luxuries to be used only upon rare festal occasions.

After the men had eaten they sat on the floor with their backs against
the rough board wall and their knees drawn up, and smoked and chatted
about the fishing season just closed and the furring season soon to
open, while Margaret Black, wife of Tom Black, the post servant, their
daughter Bessie and a couple of young girl visitors of Bessie's from
down the bay, ate and afterwards cleared the table. Then some one
proposed a dance, as it was their last gathering before going to their
winter trails, which would hold them prisoners for months to come in
the interior wilderness. A fiddle was brought out, and Dick Blake
tuned up its squeaky strings, and, keeping time with one foot, struck
up the Virginia reel.

The men discarded their jackets, displaying their rough flannel shirts
and belts, in which were carried sheath knives, chose their partners
and went at it with a will, to Dick's music, while he fiddled and
shouted such directions as "Sashay down th' middle,--swing yer
pardners,--promenade."

Bob led out Bessie, for whom he had always shown a decided preference,
and danced like any man of them. Douglas did not dance--not because he
was too old, for no man is too old to dance in Labrador, nor because
it was beneath his dignity--but because, as he said: "There's not
enough maids for all th' lads, an' I's had my turn a many a time. I'll
smoke an' look on."

Neither did Micmac John dance, for he seemed in ill humour, and was
silent and morose, nursing his discontent that a mere boy should have
been given the Big Hill trail in preference to him, and he sat moody
and silent, taking no apparent interest in the fun. The dance was
nearly finished when Bob, wheeling around the end, warm with the
excitement and pleasure of it all, inadvertently stepped on one of the
half-breed's feet. Micmac John rose like a flash and struck Bob a
stinging blow on the face. Bob turned upon him full of the quick anger
of the moment, then, remembering his surroundings, restrained the hand
that was about to return the blow, simply saying:

"'Twas an accident, John, an' you has no right to strike me."

The half-breed, vicious, sinister and alert, stood glowering for a
moment, then deliberately