God in Keewatin after all, there must be, since He had sent to him
this stranger.

All the while that he was praying and exclaiming thus, he was trying
to judge of the man's errand from his dress. He was clad in the
regulation capote of the Hudson Bay Company's employee; it was of a
dark material, probably duffel, which reached to the knees. On his
head was a fur-skin cap, over which he had drawn the hood of his
capote so far down that his features could not be discerned. About his
waist went a sash of scarlet, such as is worn by the Northwest
_metis_. His legs were swathed in duffel leggings, so that they
appeared to be of enormous size. On his feet he wore moose-hide
moccasins which extended part way up his legs, and to these his
five-foot snowshoes were attached. His whip he carried in his left
hand. About this last there was something familiar. Who was it that he
had known in the past who had driven his dogs left-handed, and had had
that swinging, plunging stride? The memory refused to concentrate, so
he strove to guess at the man's identity by the process of
elimination. He could not be a Hudson Bay mail-carrier bringing him a
letter, for the factor refused to deliver all missives addressed to
Murder Point. It was not probable that he was an express messenger of
Gamier, Parwin, and Wrath, sent up post-haste from Winnipeg; they
could have nothing of such importance to say to him that it could not
wait for the open season, when travelling is less expensive. Nor was
he a trapper bound on a friendly or business visit to the store; for,
in the first place, this man was no Indian (he could tell that by the
way in which he lifted his feet in running), and, in the second, he
had no friend, nor any man in the district, save Ericsen, who would be
seen with him in the open daylight. A foolish, strangling expectancy
rose up within him. Might he not be the bearer of important and good
news from the homeland? What news? Oh, anything! That his father, the
visionary explorer of Guiana, who twenty years ago had set out on his
last mad search for El Dorado, the fabled city of the Incas, and who
for many years had been given up for dead, had returned at length with
gold, successful from his quest--or, at the least, that his mother had
relented and wanted him back. Speedily his hope turned to agonising
suspense. Perhaps he was coming to tell him that his mother in England
was dead. Then he laughed hysterically, remembering that Mr. W