who would sin and suffer under that same civilisation. For all that ignorance required at the hands of knowledge—and did not get.
There was silence again in the room. And then Hellier, Sergeant in charge of the post, came in, and after that the wheels of life took up their ordinary running once more. There was much to be said yet. Much that never would be said. Tempest had forgiven Dick. But he had shown very fully how much there was to forgive. And Dick, although feeling painfully that he should be grateful, set out on the winter trail with no light heart.
On the third night out they camped on the edge of the heavy timber, and the morning gave a cold world of wind and storm and a drifted trail that demanded constant breaking. Each man but Ducane took his turn at that and his turn at holding the blinded, struggling dogs into it when it was broken; and each man but Ducane laboured to put the tent up in the teeth of the wind that night, and to make a fire with the little green twigs torn off the bowed spruces. But it was Ducane who refused to turn out of his blankets on the following morning. He complained of that cramp which had caught him by Beverley Lake, and Dick, who had expected this, found a sinful delight in administering some medicine which kept Ducane passably civil for two full days.
The three men of the Outer Places were wolf-thewed and tireless. They could break trail for a half-day and feel no after pains. They would curl up in their wet furs and sleep, and wake cheerfully to another day of labour. But Ducane had never belonged to the Outer Places, and in a very little while he began to drive Dick desperate with his complaints. Dick cured his toothache by threatening to abstract the tooth, and he heard no more of Ducane's weak ankle after the night on which he urged the teams forward, leaving Ducane to limp sulkily into camp when supper was done. But through the cold and heavy fortnight of travel which landed them at Split Lake Ducane made life for those about him an infinitely more wearisome thing than it had any need to be.
It was on the trail to Norway House where the police flag flew at the head of Lake Winnipeg that Ducane asked
