CHAPTER XVIII
"THE EPITOME OF LIFE"
"A la claire fontaine
M'en allant promener;
J'ai trouver l' eau si belle
Que je m'y suis baigne."
The strong, soft voice died out as the passing breed swung by on his snow-shoes through the clear, frosty night. Slicker turned back from the window with the hard lines of his young face softened too. But he did not cross the room where, at one end of the table, the men of the Split Lake Detachment were gathered in a mist of tobacco-smoke and a silence broken only by the curt sentences as the cards went round. Slicker was one of the four at that table usually; but a prospector passing through to the North had taken his place to-night, and so Slicker had stood at the window and heard the breed sing and felt a wave of home-sickness for the old life with Jennifer and Dick and Tempest in it.
For three months now he had known this Split Lake life; and to him it had been a time of stagnation and of numbing ideals. He had expected so much from the call to which he had answered; knowing as he did the work at Grey Wolf, the stern self-denial and the long hours of labour on an under-manned, difficult post. Slicker had prepared himself for that. He was ardent for self-sacrifice. He was ready to die on the trail if need be for the glory of service. He was eager to serve nobly and with his whole heart. And Life had required of him another test than this. It had sent him to one for which he was ill-prepared and ill-fitted. It had sent him to a lonely post where the only give-and-take of thought was from these men at the table; where there was little work to do and less to see and less still to think about. This detachment
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