r his marriage these questions and answers
had been continually running through his head; but since he had learnt
the lesson that nothing was of much importance, he had almost ceased
to care. Why should he trouble to inquire? If he did, he might get no
reply; and if he was answered, the probability was that his only gain
would be something fresh to worry about. The unreturning of Eyelids
was one small detail of the total unreality, the dream which he had
once taken so seriously, which in former times he had called life; and
of that dream the arrival and flight of Spurling were the nightmare.
No one of all these happenings had ever been--they were unactual: and
the chances were that even he himself was no reality.

Beorn Ericsen, the Man with the Dead Soul as he was called, was a
fitting tutor to a pupil of this philosophy. Compared with him, his
daughter was a whirlwind of words; the lesson of silence, which she
taught by her behaviour, she had first learnt from her father on the
winter trail--in the presence of his stern taciturnity she appeared a
garrulous amateur.

Whence he had originally come, no one had ever persuaded him to tell.
On his first arrival in the district, which was reported to have taken
place nearly forty years ago, for the first two years he was said to
have conducted himself more or less like a normal man. At that time he
must have been near mid-life, for he was now well past seventy to
judge by his appearance. Even then, on his first coming, something had
happened, which he did not care to talk about, which made him glad of
the dreary seclusion of Keewatin. It had been generally supposed that
he was badly wanted by Justice, for having shot his man in a border
hold-up, or for deeds of violence in some kindred escapade.

At any rate, he had set about his living in Keewatin in earnest, as
though he had determined to stay there. Having attached himself to the
Hudson Bay Company, he soon proved himself to be an expert trapper,
and a man who, for his reckless courage, was to be valued. Promotion
seemed certain for him and, despite the fact that he had joined the
Company late in life, the likelihood of his attaining a factorship in
the end was not improbable. It was then, after he had won the
confidence of his employers, that he had taken that journey to the
North, through an unexplored country, from which he had come back
dazed and dreary-eyed, so that it seemed as though he must have met
with some d