McKay still had his mind on a certain stretch of timber that reached out into the Barren Lands, hundreds of miles farther north.

In this hiding place, three years before, he had built himself a cabin, and had caught foxes during half the long winter.

Not only the cabin, but the foxes, were drawing him.

Necessity was close upon his heels.

What little money he possessed after leaving Cragg's Ridge was exhausted, his supplies were gone, and his boots and clothes were patched with deer hide.
In the Snowbird Lake country, a week after he left Cassidy in his paradise at Wollaston, he fell in with good fortune.