hing like being prepared."

"Get a few more splits, then, boy," she replied, "and I'll be cutting
t' pork t' while." For she knew that Malcolm's estimate of the supply
necessary for a possible delay was not the preparedness which would
satisfy her ideas.

Days are short in November in the North, and the moon was still up to
see Malcolm picking his way along the unmade trail which led to the
spot where the sea ice joined the "ballicaters" or heaped-up shore
ice. In the late fall this is the happy hunting-ground of foxes, for a
much-needed dinner is often to be picked up in the shape of some
enfeebled auk or other sea-bird, while even a dead shark or smaller
fish may be discovered.

This was only a brief fall hunt. Malcolm had some fifty traps over ten
miles of country, all of which he would take up the following month
when the sea ice froze on permanently to the shore, re-tailing them
along his real fur-path up the Grand River along the bank of which he
had no less than three small shacks some thirty miles apart. Here he
made his long winter hunt for sables, otters, and lynxes, using nearly
three hundred traps.

It was with keen expectation and brisk step that he now strode along
over the open; only the unwritten law of silence for a trapper on his
path prevented his whistling as he went. When passing through the long
belt of woods which marks the edge of the river delta, he found
numerous windfalls blocking his narrow trail; but, keyed up as he was,
he managed to get by them without so much as rustling a twig. "I'm
fending for two now," he said to himself, and the very thought was
sweet, lending zest to the matching of his capacities against those of
the wild.

There was nothing in his first two traps. He hadn't expected anything.
They were only a sort of outliers in case something went wrong with
those in the sure places. But now he was nearing the Narrows, and
already his fence running from the steep bluff to the river edge was
visible. But there was no fox in number three. The trap had not been
sprung. The bait was as he had left it. "Maybe there'll be more to t'
eastward," he thought, "though there were signs on this side of t'
river." And, resetting the trap, he plodded along farther on his
round.

Midday came. He had passed no less than fifteen of his best traps, and
not only had no fox been found, but not one trap was sprung or one
bait taken.

Malcolm stood meditatively scratching his head by trap twen