s before he had buried his youngest child
under a big spruce back of his cabin.

Philip hastened to the stables, and, choosing one of the lighter
animals, was soon galloping over the trail toward the Little Churchill.
In his face there blew a cold wind from Hudson's Bay, and now and then
he felt the sting of fine particles in his eyes. They were the presage
of storm. A shifting of the wind a little to the east and south, and
the fine particles would thicken, and turn into snow. By morning the
world would be white. He came into the forests beyond the plain, and in
the spruce and the cedar tops the wind was half a gale, filling the
night with wailing and moaning sounds that sent strange shivers through
him as he thought of Pierre in the cabin. In such a way, he imagined,
had the north wind swept across the cold barrens on the night that
Pierre had found the woman and the babe; and now it seemed, in his
fancies, as though above and about him the great hand that had guided
the half-breed then was bringing back the old night, as if Pierre, in
dying, had wished it so. For the wind changed. The fine particles
thickened, and changed to snow. And then there was no longer the
wailing and the moaning in the tree-tops, but the soft murmur of a
white deluge that smothered him in a strange gloom and hid the trail.
There were two canoes concealed at the end of the trail on the Little
Churchill, and Philip chose the smallest. He followed swiftly after
MacDougall and Jeanne. He could no longer see either side of the
stream, and he was filled with a fear that he might pass the little
creek that led to Fort o' God. He timed himself by his watch, and when
he had paddled for two hours he ran in close to the west shore,
traveling so slowly that he did not progress a mile in half an hour.
And then suddenly, from close ahead, there rose through the snow-gloom
the dismal howl of a dog, which told him that he was near to Fort o'
God. He found the black opening that marked the entrance to the creek,
and when he ran upon the sand-bar a hundred yards beyond he saw lights
burning in the great room where he had first seen D'Arcambal. He went
now where Pierre had led him that night, and found the door unlocked.
He entered silently, and passed down the dark hall until, on the left,
he saw a glow of light that came from the big room. Something in the
silence that was ahead of him made his own approach without sound, and
softly he entered through the doo