rmeate the
whole North--rule it.

"The wolf and savage _carcajo_ drag down the hunger-weakened caribou and
the deer, and rip the warm, red flesh from their bones before their eyes
have glazed. And, in turn, the wolf and the _carcajo_, the unoffending
beaver and musquash, the mink, the fisher, the fox, and the otter are
trapped by savage man and the pelts ripped from their twitching bodies
while life and sensibility remain. They are harder to skin when cold.
And with the thermometer at forty or sixty below zero, the little bodies
chill almost instantly if mercifully killed--therefore, they are not
killed, but flayed alive and their bleeding bodies tossed upon the snow.
They die quickly--then. But--they have lived through the skinning! And
that is the North!"

Chloe Elliston shuddered and drew away in horror. "Is--is this
possible?" she faltered. "Do they----"

"They do. The fur business is not a pretty business, Miss Elliston. But
neither is the North pretty--nor are its inhabitants. But the traffic in
fur is inherently the business of the North--and its history is written
in blood--the blood and the suffering of thousands of men and millions of
animals. But the profits are great. Fashion has decreed that My Lady
shall be swathed in fur--therefore, men go mad and die in the barrens,
and the quivering red bodies of small animals bleed, and curl up, and
stiffen upon the hard crust of the snow! No, the North is not gentle,
Miss Elliston----"

"Don't! Don't!" faltered the girl. "It is all too--too horrible--too
sickeningly brutal--too--too unbelievable!" She covered her eyes with
her hand.

Lapierre answered, dryly. "Yes. The North is that way. It has always
been so--and it always will----"

Chloe's hand dropped from her eyes and, she faced him in a sudden burst
of passion. Her sensitive lips quivered and her eyes narrowed to the
rapier-blade eyes that were the eyes of Tiger Elliston. She tore the
roll of blue-prints to bits and ground them into the mould with the heel
of her boot.

"_It will not!_" Her voice cut sharply, and hard. "What do you know of
what the North _will_ be? You know it only as it has been--as it is,
perhaps. But, of its future you know nothing. I tell you the North will
change! It is a hard land--cruel--elemental--raw! But it is _big_!
And, when it awakens, its very bigness, the virile force and strength of
it, will turn against its savagery, its cruelty, its brutishne