at the
bear and the quiet man on the anvil of ice and snow. Tell me, can you
think of anything like it?--the strange light, the white bear of the
Pole, that has no friends at all except the shooting stars, the great
ice plains, the quick night hurrying on, the silence--such silence as no
man can think! I have seen trouble flying at me in a hundred ways, but
this was different--yes. We come to the foot of the little hill. Still
the bear not stir. As I went up, feeling for my knives and my gun, the
dogs began to snarl with anger, and for one little step I shivered, for
the thing seem not natural. I was about two hundred feet away from the
bear when it turned slow round at me, lifting its foot from the body.
The dogs all at once come huddling about me, and I dropped on my knee to
take aim, but the bear stole away from the man and come moving down past
us at an angle, making for the plain. I could see his deep shining eyes,
and the steam roll from his nose in long puffs. Very slow and heavy,
like as if he see no one and care for no one, he shambled down, and in a
minute was gone behind a boulder. I ran on to the man--"

The governor was leaning forward, looking intently, and said now: "It's
like a wild dream--but the north--the north is near to the Strangest of
All!"

"I knelt down and lifted him up in my arms, all a great bundle of furs
and wool, and I got my hand at last to his wrist. He was alive. It was
Little Babiche! Part of his face was frozen stiff. I rubbed out the
frost with snow, and then I forced some brandy into his mouth, good old
H.B.C. brandy,--and began to call to him: 'Babiche! Babiche! Come back,
Babiche! The wolf's at the pot, Babiche!' That's the way to call a
hunter to his share of meat. I was afraid, for the sleep of cold is the
sleep of death, and it is hard to call the soul back to this world. But
I called, and kept calling, and got him on his feet, with my arm round
him. I gave him more brandy; and at last I almost shrieked in his ear.
Little by little I saw his face take on the look of waking life. It was
like the dawn creeping over white hills and spreading into day. I said
to myself: What a thing it will be if I can fetch him back! For I never
knew one to come back after the sleep had settled on them. It is too
comfortable--all pain gone, all trouble, the world forgot, just a kind
weight in all the body, as you go sinking down, down to the valley,
where the long hands of old comrades beckon to