144
XII. He Reviews His Marriage, and is Put to the Test 162
XIII. The Dead Soul Speaks Out 186
XIV. Spurling Makes a Request 210
XV. Manitous and Shades of the Departed 225
XVI. In Hiding on Huskies' Island 240
XVII. The Forbidden River 257
XVIII. The Betrayal 272
XIX. The Hand in the Doorway 283
XX. Spurling Takes Fright 297
XXI. The Murder in the Sky 305
XXII. The Blizzard 318
XXIII. The Last Chance 334

MURDER POINT

CHAPTER I

JOHN GRANGER OF MURDER POINT

John Granger, agent on the Last Chance River in the interests of
Garnier, Parwin, and Wrath, independent traders in the territory of
Keewatin, sat alone in his store at Murder Point. He sat upon an
upturned box, with an empty pipe between his lips. In the middle of
the room stood an iron stove which blazed red hot; through the single
window, toward which he faced, the gold sun shone, made doubly
resplendent in its shining by the reflected light cast up by the
leagues of all-surrounding snow and ice.

Speaking to himself, as is the habit of men who have lived many months
alone in the aboriginal silence of the North, "Well, and what next?"
he asked.

He had been reviewing the uses to which he had put his thirty years of
life, and was feeling far from satisfied. That a man of breeding, who
had been given the advantages of a classical and university education,
and was in addition an English barrister, should at the age of thirty
be conducting an independent trader's store in a distant part of
northern Canada did not seem right; Granger was conscious of the
incongruity. During the past two years and a half he had obstinately
refused to examine his career, had fought against introspection, and
had striven to forget.

In this he had been wise, for Keewatin is not a good place wherein to
_remember_ and to balance the ledger of the soul; it is too remote
from human habitation, too near to God--its vastness has robbed it of
all standards, so that small misdemeanours may seem huge and
disastrous as the sin of Cain. Madness lurks in its swampy creeks and
wanders along the edges of its woodlan