ire calamity in the winter desolation, one from which few
men would have escaped alive, which had robbed him of his reason. When
they had asked him where he had journeyed, "Far, far," was all he
would reply. And when, hoping to satisfy their curiosity by a less
direct method, they had questioned him, "What did you see up there?"
"Blackness--it was dark," was the most that he would answer them.

Because of these answers there were some who supposed that, emulating
Thomas Simpson, he had penetrated into the Arctic Circle and had gazed
upon the frozen quiet of an undiscovered ocean. He had wrested from
God the secret which He was anxious to withhold, they said, and God in
vengeance had condemned him to be always silent. But the Indians
explained his condition more readily, speaking in whispers about him
around camp-fires among themselves. The last place at which he had
been seen by anyone on that journey was at the mouth of the Forbidden
River, along whose banks it was commonly believed stretched the
villages and homes of manitous, and souls of the departed. The Crees
asserted that this was not the first man who, to their knowledge, had
wandered up that river and had thus returned. Some few of their
boldest hunters had from time to time set out and, roving further
afield than their brethren, had likewise trespassed all unaware within
the confines of the spirit-land. So they said that Beorn had been to
the Land of Shadows, and that, by reason of his surpassing strength,
he had contrived to escape; but that he had left his soul behind him
there, and it was only his body which had come back.

From that day he had been known as _The Man with the Dead Soul_.
Gradually, as the years went by, the deathly vacancy had gone out of
his eyes, but he had remained a man separated from living men. He
rarely spoke, but from the first his peculiarities had made no
difference to his expertness as a trapper--he was more skilful, white
man though he was, than many of the Crees themselves. All the strength
which should have been spent upon his soul seemed to have gone to
preserving the perfection of his body. For a man of his years, he was
surprisingly vigorous and erect--no labour could tire him. This, said
the Indians, was the usual sign of bodies which lived on when their
souls were dead. He was much feared, and his influence in the district
was great; in gaining him as a partisan, Granger had achieved a
triumph over Robert Pilgrim, and ha