getting away with the money. Jean was at his post in the inner room.

It was an unbeautiful time of the year. The passing of winter in snow
regions is like the moulting season of fowls, or the season when the
furred world sheds its coat. The dazzling whiteness of the earth is
superseded by a dirty drab-grey. The snow lasts long, but its hue is
utterly changed. And now Victor was looking out upon a scene that was
wholly dispiriting to the mind used to the brilliancy of the northern
winter.

The trader's thoughts were moving along out over the stretch of country
before him, for in that southeastern direction lay the town of Edmonton,
which was his goal. It would be less than a fortnight before the melting
snow would practically inundate the land, therefore what he had to do
must be done at once. And still no feasible scheme presented itself.

He moved impatiently and a muttered curse escaped him. He asked himself
the question again and again while his keen, restless eyes moved eagerly
over the scene before him. He took a chew of tobacco and rolled it about
in his mouth with the nervous movement of a man beset. He could hear
Jean moving heavily about the room behind him, and he wondered what he
was doing. But he did not turn to see.

Once let him get upon the trail with the "stuff," and Jean and his
sister could go hang. They would never get him, he told himself. He had
not lived in these latitudes for five and twenty years for nothing. But
he ever came back to the pitiful admission that he was not yet on the
trail, nor had he got the treasure. And time was passing.

Suddenly his eyes settled themselves upon a distant spot beyond the
creek. Something had caught his attention, and that something was
moving. The sounds of Jean's lumbering movements continued. Victor no
longer heeded them. His attention was fixed upon that movement on the
distant slope.

And gradually his brow lightened and something akin to a smile spread
over his features. Then he moved back to his counter, and, procuring a
small calendar, glanced hastily at the date. His look of satisfaction
deepened, and his smile became one of triumph. Surely the devil was with
him. Here, in the blackest moment of his despair, was the means he had
sought. Yonder moving object was the laden dog-train coming up from
Edmonton, with his half-yearly supplies. Now he would see whose wits
were the sharpest, his or those of the pig-headed Jean, the man who had
dared to dic