er eyes slowly spread, like a panorama, the whole
extent of the great North, with its fierce, hardy men, its dreadful
journeys by canoe and sledge, its frozen barrens, its mighty forests,
its solemn charm. All at once this post of Conjuror's House, a month
in the wilderness as it was, seemed very small and tame and civilized
for the simple reason that Death did not always compass it about.

"It was very cold then," said Ned Trent, "and very hard. _Le grand
frete_[A] of winter had come. At night we had no other shelter than
our blankets, and we could not keep a fire because the spruce burned
too fast and threw too many coals. For a long time we shivered, curled
up on our snow-shoes; then fell heavily asleep, so that even the dogs
fighting over us did not awaken us. Two or three times in the night we
boiled tea. We had to thaw our moccasins each morning by thrusting
them inside our shirts. Even the Indians were shivering and saying,
'Ed-sa, yazzi ed-sa'--'it is cold, very cold.' And when we came to Rae
it was not much better. A roaring fire in the fireplace could not
prevent the ink from freezing on the pen. This went on for five
months."

[Footnote A: _Froid_--cold.]

Thus he spoke, as one who says common things. He said little of
himself, but as he went on in short, curt sentences the picture grew
more distinct, and to Virginia the man became more and more prominent
in it. She saw the dying and exhausted dogs, the frost-rimed, weary
men; she heard the quick _crunch, crunch, crunch_ of the snow-shoes
hurrying ahead to break the trail; she felt the cruel torture of the
_mal de raquette_, the shrivelling bite of the frost, the pain of snow
blindness, the hunger that yet could not stomach the frozen fish nor
the hairy, black caribou meat. One thing she could not conceive--the
indomitable spirit of the men. She glanced timidly up at her
companion's face.

"The Company is a cruel master," she sighed at last, standing upright,
then leaning against the carriage of the gun. He let her go without
protest, almost without thought, it seemed.

"But not mine," said he.

She exclaimed, in astonishment, "Are you not of the Company?"

"I am no man's man but my own," he answered, simply.

"Then why do you stay in this dreadful North?" she asked.

"Because I love it. It is my life. I want to go where no man has set
foot before me; I want to stand alone under the sky; I want to show
myself that nothing is too big for me--no diff