the others
Had machinery all complete,
When in came the Groshes
And nipped all our feet."

When he had completed the verse, he had slowly gazed round and caught
the look of amaze which had dawned in the countenances of his drunken
associates. He had come to himself and grown sober. Suddenly an
expression of intense fear and hatred had shot into his eyes; without
saying another word, he had turned his back on the company and gone
out into the early morning, floated his canoe, and fled as one who was
pursued for his life. That verse had explained many of Beorn's
eccentricities to one of those who had heard it, and he had told the
rest. Its singing had meant that, sometime in the early sixties, Beorn
had taken part in the gold-rush to the Comstock, and had worked and
prospected in the Nevada mines.

This was his solitary glaring indiscretion in all the course of his
forty years spent in Keewatin. Though he had had many opportunities
since then to repeat the event when under the influence of liquor, he
had allowed nothing more of any importance to escape his lips. He had
never spent much time at God's Voice, only turning up at the end of
his hunt to dispose of his catch of furs, after which he would vanish
into the wilderness again. He avoided on every occasion and was
restless in the company of men. Very rarely was he encountered on his
hunting-trips by any of the Indians or trappers. When once he had set
out, he was not seen again until he returned of his own choice. The
few times that he had been met, he was far to the northward, about
the point where the Last Chance and Forbidden Rivers join, whence they
flow on together till they tumble their crowded waters into the
freedom of the Hudson Bay. Because it was always in this locality that
he had been met, a rumour got abroad that, when his body was not
dwelling among living men, it journeyed up the Forbidden River, to
reunite with his exiled soul in the habitations of the dead.

Granger had listened to all these reports from time to time, but he
had paid small heed to them; he was certain in his own mind that,
should he live solitarily in Keewatin for forty years, as Beorn had
done, a similar web of legend would be woven about himself. The man's
conduct was to him self-explanatory; in his early manhood he had
committed some passionate wrong, and had fled into the wilderness to
escape the penalty, only to find that the executioner was there before
him