f, "This is my land," but there was no answering thrill.
Life was poisoned at its source.

He had walked for three days borne up by his anger. His sole idea was
to put as much distance as possible between him and his fellow-men. He
chose to trail to Spirit River, because that was the farthest place he
knew of.

Each day he walked until his legs refused to bear him any longer, then
lay down where he was in his blankets and slept. The day-long, dogged
exercise of his body and the utter weariness it induced drugged his
pain.

His gun kept him supplied with grouse and prairie chicken, and he
found wild strawberries in the open places and mooseberries in the
bush.

Bread he went without until he had the luck to bring down a moose.
Returning to an Indian encampment he had passed through, he traded the
carcass for a little bag of flour and a tin of baking-powder.

His sufferings were chiefly from thirst, for he was crossing a
plateau, and he did not know the location of the springs.

Excepting this party of Indians, he met no soul upon the way. For the
most part the rough wagon trail led him through a forest of lofty,
slender aspen-trees, with snowy shafts and twinkling, green crowns.

There were glades and meadows, carpeted with rich grass patterned with
flowers, and sometimes the road bordered a spongy, dry muskeg.

All the country was flat, and Sam received the impression that he was
journeying on the floor of the world. Consequently, when he came
without warning to the edge of a gigantic trough, and saw the river
flowing a thousand feet below, the effect was stunning.

At any other time Sam would have lingered and marvelled; now, seeing
some huts below, he frowned and thought: "I'll have to submit to be
questioned there."

This was Spirit River Crossing. The buildings consisted of a little
company store, a tiny branch of the French outfit, kept by a native,
and the police "barracks," which housed a solitary corporal.

The coming of a white man was an event here, and when Sam got down the
hill the company man and the policeman made him heartily welcome,
glancing curiously at the slenderness of his outfit. They wanted to
hear the latest news of the settlement, and Sam gave it, suppressing
only the principal bit. He left that to be told by the next traveller.

In the meantime he hoped to bury himself farther in the wilderness. As
soon as he told his name Sam saw by their eyes that they were
acquainted with his