of the paddle, he brought his own craft round, and
continued towards the sunset. Two miles up-river, in the
middle-stream, stood a rocky island; as yet it was only a dull grey
speck in a pathway of red.

They pushed on in silence up the straight, dark grove of mysterious
forest. Water-birds were calling in the rushes; at one point, as they
passed, a great bull caribou lifted up his head from drinking, and
regarded them with a look of curiosity, totally void of fear; a heron
drifted slowly over the tree-tops, and disappeared. To Granger, with
even this short distance placed between himself and his customary
associates, there came a sense of release, and with it an instinct for
kindness. As they neared the shore of the island, the huskies
commenced to howl; soon they could see them bunched together on the
shore awaiting their arrival. A dog in the north, even though he has
been imported, is never heard to bark. To hear them at first, a
stranger might suppose that a woman was wearily weeping herself to
death in the forest, because of a grief which was inconsolable. The
wail of the huskies, reaching him at intervals across the expanse of
water, seemed the voice of his own desolation, coming out to meet him.

The whole world was empty, and he began to feel the need of
friendship. He let his eyes linger on the head and shoulders of the
man in front of him, and remembered with what eagerness long ago, when
awaiting his arrival at some appointed rendezvous, he had striven to
catch sight of him approaching, towering above the littler people of
the London crowd. And now, instead of brief and chance-snatched
moments, they were allowed to pass whole days together; yet, because
of what had happened, they could find no pleasure in one another.
Pleasure! The only sensation which he derived from Spurling's company
was one of intense annoyance. And there had been a time when, if
anyone had dared to tell him that that could ever happen, he would
have denied it with an oath.

Could it be that the fault was his own, and that he had misjudged this
man? He recalled how, when he had discovered Strangeways' body at the
bend, and had thought it Spurling's, he had bitterly accused himself
of all manner of unkindness. He smiled grimly at the remembrance--it
was human nature to do that. He could quite well imagine that at some
future time, when Spurling was truly dead, he might blame himself
afresh, with an equal bitterness and an equal sinceri