And yet never in all his life had he enjoyed a day so much as this one.

Twenty times he had joined Jackpine in running beside the sledge.

In their intervals of rest he had even learned to snap the thirty-foot caribou-gut lash of the dog-whip.

He had asked a hundred questions, had insisted on Jackpine's smoking a cigar at every stop, and had been so happy and so altogether companionable that half of the Cree's hereditary reticence had been swept away before his unbounded enthusiasm.

He helped to build their balsam shelter for the night, ate a huge supper of moose meat, hot-stone biscuits, beans and coffee, and then, just as he had stretched himself out in his furs for the night, he remembered Gregson's warning.