his degenerate life tolerable.

* * * * *

Winter was howling about the old fort. Drifts were piled feet deep
against every obstruction that stood in the way of the driving snow. The
fort was closed up. Every habitation was made fast against the onslaught
of the elements Life was unstirring.

Far out in the woods bayed the fierce, famished timber wolf. The lighter
but more doleful howl of coyote seemed to reply from every point of the
compass. And amidst the rack of savage chorus came the harsh human voice
that had little the better of the animal world in the pleasing quality
of its note.

A train of three dogs hauling a light sled broke from the shadows of the
forest. A single human figure on snow-shoes laboured along beside it. It
was a figure entirely unrecognizable, except that it was human.

There was no pause, no uncertainty. The train came on and halted at a
word of command at the doorway of the fort. In a moment the human figure
was beating with its fur-mitted fists upon the door that had weathered
the ages of storm.

The door was flung wide from within, and the blear eyes of Nicol peered
out into the night-light. In a moment an exclamation of recognition
broke from him.

"Alroy!" he cried. "'Tough' Alroy!" Then something of gladness at the
prospect of companionship lit his eyes with a happier light. "Say, come
right in," he invited, almost boisterously. "I'll send along some neches
to see to your darn train."

Tough needed no second invitation. He smelt warmth, rest, and there was
the promise in his mind of a good "souse." For the time he had had
enough of Unaga. He had had enough of his employer, Lorson Harris. He
had had enough of snow and ice, and the merciless cold of the twilit
trail. God! but he was glad to leave it all behind him for the warmth of
Nicol's store, and the raw spirit he knew was to be found there in
generous quantities.

Half an hour later, divested of his furs, clad only in rough buckskin
and pea-jacket, with feet encased in thick reindeer moccasins, Tough sat
over the trader's stove with a pannikin of evil smelling rye whisky in
his hand.

"Guess I've driven through hell an' damnation to git your darn report,"
he said, his wicked eyes beaming across the stove at his host on the far
side of it.

"Lorson's blasted orders?"

"You mean blasted Lorson's orders!"

"Amen--or any other old chorus--to that," returned Nicol, with a gleam
of brooding