wind would
bring down a storm which would blanket the land with snow that only the
sun of the next May would banish. He was ill-prepared to face such an
iron-jawed season.

If he stayed there it would just about take his quarterly salary to
supply him with plain food and the heavier clothing he needed. But--he
drew a long breath and asked himself one day why he should stay there.
Why should he? He could not forbear a wry grimace when he tried to see
himself carrying out his appointed task faithfully to the end--preaching
vainly to uncomprehending ears month after month, year after year,
stagnating mentally and suffocating spiritually in those silent forests
where God and godly living was not a factor at all; where food,
clothing, and shelter loomed bigger than anything else, because until
these primary needs were satisfied a man could not rise above the status
of a hungry animal.

Yet he shrank from giving up the ministry. He had been bred to it, his
destiny sedulously shaped toward that end by the maiden aunts and the
theological schools. It was, in effect, his trade. He could scarcely
look equably upon a future apart from prayer meetings, from Bible
classes, from carefully thought out and eloquently delivered sermons. He
felt like a renegade when he considered quitting that chosen field. But
he felt also that it was a field in which he had no business now.

He was still in this uncertain frame of mind a few days later when he
borrowed a canoe from Lachlan and set out for the Fort. He had kept
away from Carr's for nearly five weeks. Neither Sophie nor her father
had come to his cabin again. Once or twice he had hailed Carr from a
distance. In the height of his loneliness he had traversed the half-mile
to Tommy Ashe's shack up Lone Moose, only to find it deserted. He
learned later that Lachlan's oldest son and Ashe had gone partners to
run a line of traps away to the north of the village. It occurred to
Thompson that he might do the same--if--well, he would see about that
when he got home from Pachugan.

The birch bark Lachlan let him have occasioned him many a rare tussle
before he finally beached it at the Fort. The fall winds were roughening
the lake. It was his first single-handed essay with the paddle. But he
derived a certain satisfaction from winning alone against wind and
water, and also gained food for thought in the odd circumstance of his
growing tendency to get a glow out of purely physical achievements