iving thing seemed to be the river,
hurrying headlong, noisily, perpetually, in an eternal flight from this
high desolation.

For nearly four weeks indeed they were occupied very closely in fixing
their cabin and making their other preparations, and crept into their
bunks at night as tired as wholesome animals who drop to sleep. At any
time the weather might break; already there had been two overcast days
and a frowning conference of clouds in the north. When at last storms
began, they knew there would be nothing for it but to keep in the hut
until the world froze up.

The weather broke at last. One might say it smashed itself over their
heads. There came an afternoon darkness swift and sudden, a wild gale,
and an icy sleet that gave place in the night to snow, so that Trafford
looked out next morning to see a maddening chaos of small white flakes,
incredibly swift, against something that was neither darkness nor light.
Even with the door but partly ajar, a cruelty of cold put its claw
within, set everything that was movable swaying and clattering, and made
Marjorie hasten shuddering to heap fresh logs upon the fire. Once or
twice Trafford went out to inspect tent and roof and store-shed; several
times, wrapped to the nose, he battled his way for fresh wood, and for
the rest of the blizzard they kept to the hut. It was slumberously
stuffy, but comfortingly full of flavors of tobacco and food. There
were two days of intermission and a day of gusts and icy sleet again,
turning with one extraordinary clap of thunder to a wild downpour of
dancing lumps of ice, and then a night when it seemed all Labrador,
earth and sky together, was in hysterical protest against inconceivable
wrongs.

And then the break was over; the annual freezing-up accomplished; winter
had established itself; the snowfall moderated and ceased, and an
ice-bound world shone white and sunlit under a cloudless sky.

One morning Trafford found the footmarks of some catlike creature in the
snow near the bushes where he was accustomed to get firewood; they led
away very plainly up the hill, and after breakfast he took his knife and
rifle and snowshoes and went after the lynx--for that he decided the
animal must be. There was no urgent reason why he should want to kill a
lynx, unless perhaps that killing it made the store-shed a trifle safer;
but it was the first trail of any living thing for many days; it
promised excitement; some [v]primitive instinct per