isoner, while he added to his supply
of geese, which he salted down.

After the storm he toiled on day after day, praying that the stinging
northers bringing the "freeze-up" would hold off until he sighted Whale
River. At night, seated beneath the sombre cliffs by his drift-wood fire
with Fleur at his side, he often watched the wonder of the Northern
Lights, marvelling at their mystery, as they pulsed and waned and flared
again over the sullen Bay, then streamed up across the heavens, and
diffusing, veiled the stars, which twinkled through with a mystic blue
light. The "Spirits of the Dead at Play," the Esquimos called those
dancing phantoms of the skies; and he thought of his own dead and
wondered if their spirits were at peace.

And then, as he lay, a blanketed shape beside his sleeping puppy, came
dreams to mock him--dreams of Julie Breton, always happy, and beside
her, smiling into her face, the handsome Inspector of the East Coast
posts. Night after night he dreamed of the girl who was slipping away
from him--who had forgotten Jean Marcel in his mad race south for his
dog.

On and on he fought his way north through the head-seas, defying
cross-winds; landing to empty his canoe, and then on to the lee of the
next island. While his boat would live he travelled, for September was
drawing to a close and over him hung the menace of the first stinging
northers which for days would anchor his frail craft to the beach. Hard
on their heels would follow the nipping nights of the "freeze-up," which
would shackle the waterways, locking the land in a grip of ice.

Past the beetling shoulders of the Black Whale, past the Earthquake
Islands and Fort George he journeyed, for the brant and blue geese were
on the coast and he needed no supplies; leaving Caribou Point astern, at
last the dreaded Cape of the Four Winds loomed through the mist which
blanketed the flat sea.

It was to this gray headland that he had raced the northers which would
have held him wind-bound. And he had won.

Rounding the Cape, in five days he stood, a drawn-faced tattered figure
with Fleur at his side, at the door of the Mission House.

"Jean Marcel! Thank God!" and Julie Breton impulsively kissed the lean
cheek of the _voyageur_. A whine of protest followed by a smothered
rumble at such familiarity with her master drew her glance to the great
puppy. "Fleur! You brought Fleur with you, Jean, as you said you would.
Oh, we have had much worry about yo