lds. Throwing precaution to the winds, the two
young men pushed on regardless of signs and omens.

Sally just knew it. Nothing would ever convince him that they did not
deserve to get into trouble for not respecting "signs." Even Uncle
John had often talked about "t' foolishness o' signs," and many a time
Ky, once a humble member of Chief's followers, had laughed at what he
called "old women's stuff." But what Sally thought of signs would not
have been of any interest in itself. The interesting thing was that
though he was in the country hunting, having moved long ago to his
winter trapping-grounds, he saw signs enough to make him anxious about
the three fathers of families tramping over the bleak hills that day.
When snow began to fall with a westerly wind, that was sign number
one. Something uncanny was about to happen. Then there was sign
number two of bad weather coming, namely, the tingling in his fingers
and sometimes "a scattered pain in t' joints." So Sally left his
fur-path for the day, hurried back to his tiny home among the trees,
and, calling his dogs together, harnessed them quickly and started at
once for the winter houses at the bottom of Grey Wolf Bay.

A tenderfoot could have told now that they were "in for weather." The
snow by midday was not falling, it was being shovelled down in loads.
The temperature had dropped so rapidly that the flakes, as large as
goose feathers, were dry and light, a fact that with the increasing
wind made the going like travelling through a seething cauldron.
Unfortunately the men were already over the crest of the White Hills
when they realized that the storm which had swept down on them had
come to stay. There was no stemming the gale on the wind-swept ice of
those hillsides, even could they have faced the fiercely driving snow.
All they could do was to hurry along before it, knowing there would be
no shelter for them till they reached Frying-Pan Tickle. For the
forest had retired there beyond the hills before the onslaught of man
and the carelessness that had caused forest fires.

No one who has not been through it has any conception of the
innumerable little accidents which in circumstances like these eat up
the stock of chances for coming through. It did seem foolish that
Patsy got his mittens wet in salt water coming through the broken
ballicater ice as they tried to make the short cut across the Maiden's
Arm; and that they froze while he was trying to warm his hands,