The big room, through the windows of which he could look out on the street and across the frozen Saskatchewan, was almost empty.

The clerk had locked his cigar-case and had gone to bed.

In one corner, partly shrouded in gloom, sat a half-breed trapper who had come in that day from the Lac la Ronge country, and at his feet crouched one of his wolfish sledge-dogs.

Both were wide-awake and stared curiously at Howland as he came in.

In front of the two large windows sat half a dozen men, as silent as the half-breed, clad in moccasins and thick caribou skin coats.