r mother in pulling strength, at eighteen
months their wolf-blood had already given the puppies her stamina. What
a team to bring the Christmas mails up the coast from East Main! he
thought, idly whirling the whip of plaited caribou hide which had never
flecked the ears of Fleur, but which he sometimes needed when the
excitable Colin or Angus scented game and, puppy-like, started to bolt.
No dogs on the coast could take the trail from these sons of Fleur. No
dog-team he had ever seen could break-out and trot away with a thousand
pounds. That winter they had done it with a load of caribou meat on the
barrens. Yes, next year he would accept Gillies' offer and put Fleur and
her sons on the winter-mail--Fleur, and the team she had given him; his
Fleur, whom he had followed and fought for: who had in turn battled for
his life.

"Marche, Fleur!" he called, his eyes bright with his thoughts.

The lead-dog leaped from a swinging trot into a long lope, straightening
the traces, followed by the team keen for a run. Away they raced in the
good going of the hard trail. Then, in early afternoon when the sun hung
low in the dim west, the men turned into the thick timber of the shores,
where, sheltered from the wind, they shovelled out a camp ground with
their snow-shoes and built a roaring fire while the puppies, ravenous
for their supper, yelped and fretted until Jean threw them the frozen
fish which they caught in the air and bolted.

Before Jean and Michel had boiled their tea and caribou stew, four
shaggy shapes with noses in tails were asleep in the snow, indifferent
to the sting of the strengthening cold which made the spruces around
them snap, and split the river ice with the boom of cannon.

Wrapped in his fur robe before the fire, Marcel lay wondering if he
should find Julie Breton still at Whale River.

Hours later, waking with a groan, Marcel sat upright in his blankets.
Near him the tired Michel snored peacefully. Throwing a circle of light
on the surrounding spruce, huge embers of the fire still burned. The
moon was dead, a veil of haze masking the dim stars. It was bitter cold.
Half out of his covering, the startled _voyageur_ shivered, but it was
not from the bite of the air. It was the stark poignancy of the dream
from which he had escaped, that left him cold.

He had stood by the big chute of the Conjuror's Falls on the Ghost,
known as the "Chute of Death," and as he gazed into the boiling
maelstrom of white-wa