e wilds, worked
with mechanical regularity and guarded him. He could not hear much
through his fur cap and often for some moments could not see, but he
stopped when a tossing branch broke off and struck the snow in front,
and sprang forward when a fir plunged down a few yards behind. He
could not have stated that he knew the danger, but he avoided it where
a stranger to the woods would have been crushed.

Perhaps the going was the worst. Plowing through the loose snow, he
struck his feet against outcropping rocks and sometimes stubbed them
hard on a fallen log. In places he sank deep; the labor was heavy and
wind and cold made it awkward to breathe. His lungs seemed cramped;
the blood could not properly reach his hands and feet. It was a
comfort that they hurt, because when he no longer felt the painful
tingling the real trouble would begin. One cannot feel when one's
flesh is frozen. He could not have seen his watch had he taken it out,
and doubted if there was warmth enough in his body to keep it going,
because watches and gun-locks often freeze in the North. For all that,
he knew how long he had left the shack and how much ground he had
covered.

Men like Dearham learn such things, and by the half-instinctive
faculties they develop Canadian traffic is carried on in winter storms.
Telegraph linesmen in the bush and railroad hands on mountain sections
use powers beyond the imagining of sheltered city men. They make good,
giving all that can be demanded of flesh and blood; the wires work and
Montreal-Vancouver expresses keep time in the snow.

One thing made Jim's task a little easier. The wire was overhead and
when he reached the break he would see the trailing end. The trees had
been chopped back; there was nothing to help the current's leap to
earth, and he would not be forced to cut and call up the next shack
with his battery. He wanted to find a fallen post, but as he struggled
forward the half-seen poles came back out of the icy mist in an
unending row. He had been out two hours and had not reached the worst
spot. The line had no doubt broken at Silver's Gulch.

Some time afterwards he stopped and leaned against a post. The woods
broke off behind him and in front a gap, filled with waves of snow,
opened up. He could not see across; indeed, for a few moments, he
could hardly see at all, but the turmoil that came out of the dark
hollow hinted at its depth. He heard the roar of tossing trees far