Throughout the winter months all meals were the same at Murder Point,
consisting of black tea, salt bacon, and bannocks, which are a kind of
hard biscuit, made of flour and water mixed to a thick paste and then
baked. This diet becomes pretty monotonous, but is the traveller's
universal fare in Keewatin. In those far regions men are not
particular how or what they eat; of necessity they abandon the
refinements of civilisation as needless and cumbrous. To-day, however,
partly to protract his stay and so give Spurling time, partly to
assert his waning gentility, the memory of which in its heyday
Strangeways shared, he attempted to be lavish, to set a table, and to
entertain. For cloth he spread a dress-length of gaudy muslin, such as
Indians purchase for their squaws. He opened some tins of canned goods
that he might provide his guest with more than one course. He built up
his fire, and commenced to cook. All this used up time; and the
expending of time was what he most desired.

When the meal was finished Strangeways rose up restlessly, as though
he had just remembered his errand, and went to the door to see what
progress the storm had made. The moment the door was opened the wind
swept in, driving a fall of snow before it.

"It seems to me," said Granger, "that you're going to be snow-bound
for a time. This'll make travelling dangerous, for the thaw has
already weakened the ice in places and now the snow'll cover them
over, making them appear safe. It's strange, for blizzards don't often
happen so late as this."

"Well, there's one comfort," said Strangeways, "it's the same for all
alike; if I'm delayed, so is someone else."

Granger turned his back on him, and walked over to the window where he
stood tapping on the glass, attempting to dislodge the snow which had
spread itself out like a blanket across the panes. "Poor devil," he
said, "I pity him, whoever he is. He can find no place of shelter in
all the three hundred and twenty miles which stretch between God's
Voice and Crooked Creek, unless he comes here or falls in with some
trapper's camp."

"Then you have had no one here lately?"

"No, I haven't seen an Indian for over a month. They don't visit me so
late in the winter as this; they wait for the open season, when they
can bring in their furs by water."

"But the man I'm speaking of is white. He drives a team of five grey
huskies, the leader of which has a yellow face and a patch of
brindled-brown up