cruelty
of it, the wonderful immensity of it that should so fashion the souls
and flesh of men. For to the bearing of these loungers clung that hint
of greater things which is never lacking to those who have called the
deeps of man's nature to the conquering.

The sun dipped to the horizon, and over the landscape slipped the
beautiful north-country haze of crimson. From the distant forest sounded
a single mournful wolf-howl. At once the sledge-dogs answered in chorus.
The twilight descended. The men gradually fell silent, smoking their
pipes, savouring the sharp snow-tang, grateful to their toughened
senses, that still lingered in the air.

Suddenly out of the dimness loomed the tall form of an Indian, advancing
with long, straight strides. In a moment he was among them responding
composedly to their greetings.

"Bo' jou', bo' jou', Me-en-gen," said they.

"Bo' jou', bo' jou'," said he.

He touched two of the men lightly on the shoulder. They arose, for they
knew him as the bowsman of the Factor's canoe, and so understood that
Galen Albret desired their presence.

Me-en-gen led the way in silence, across the grass-plot, past the
flag-staff, to the foot of the steps leading to the Factory veranda.
There the Indian left them. They mounted the steps. A voice halted them
in the square of light cast through an intervening room from a lighted
inner apartment.

The veranda was wide and low; railed in; and, except for the square of
light, cast in dimness. A dozen men sat in chairs, smoking. Across the
shaft of light the smoke eddied strangely. A woman's voice accompanied
softly the tinkle of a piano inside. The sounds, like the lamplight,
were softened by the distance of the intervening room.

Of the men on the veranda Galen Albret's identity alone was evident.
Grim, four-square, inert, his very way of sitting his chair, as though
it were a seat of judgment and he the interpreter of some fierce
blood-law, betrayed him. From under the bushy white tufts of his
eyebrows the woodsmen felt the search of his inspection. Unconsciously
they squared their shoulders.

The older had some fifty-five or sixty years, though his frame was
still straight and athletic. A narrow-brimmed slouch hat shadowed quiet,
gray eyes, a hawk nose, a long sweeping white mustache. His hands were
tanned to a hard mahogany-brown carved into veins, cords, and gnarled
joints. He had kindly humour in the wrinkles of his eyes, the slowly
developed imag