he floor
back of the stove. The mice gathered round it in a silent, hungry,
nibbling horde. David tried to count them. There must have been twenty.
He felt an impulse to scoop them up in something, Tavish's water pail
for instance, and pitch them out into the night. The creatures became
quieter after their gorge on bannock crumbs. Most of them disappeared.

For a long time David and the Missioner sat smoking their pipes, waiting
for Tavish. Father Roland was puzzled and yet he was assured. He was
puzzled because Tavish's snow shoes hung on their wooden peg in one of
the cross logs and his rifle was in its rack over the bunk.

"I didn't know he had another pair of snow shoes," he said. "Still, it
is quite a time since I have seen him--a number of weeks. I came down in
the early November snow. He is not far away or he would have taken his
rifle. Probably setting a few fresh poison-baits after the storm."

They heard the sweep of a low wind. It often came at night after a
storm, usually from off the Barrens to the northwest. Something thumped
gently against the outside of the cabin, a low, peculiarly heavy and
soft sort of sound, like a padded object, with only the log wall
separating it from the bunk. Their ears caught it quite distinctly.

"Tavish hangs his meat out there," the Missioner explained, observing
the sudden direction of David's eyes. "A haunch of moose, or, if he has
been lucky, of caribou. I had forgotten Tavish's cache or we might have
saved our meat."

He ran a hand through his thick, grayish hair until it stood up about
his head like a brush.

David tried not to reveal his restlessness as they waited. At each new
sound he hoped that what he heard was Tavish's footsteps. He had quite
decidedly planned his action. Tavish would enter, and of course there
would be greetings, and possibly half an hour or more of smoking and
talk before he brought up the Firepan Creek country, unless, as might
fortuitously happen, Father Roland spoke of it ahead of him. After that
he would show Tavish the picture, and he would stand well in the light
so that it would be impressed upon Tavish all at once. He noticed that
the chimney of the lamp was sooty and discoloured, and somewhat to the
Missioner's amusement he took it off and cleaned it. The light was much
more satisfactory then. He wandered about the cabin, scrutinizing, as if
out of curiosity, Tavish's belongings. There was not much to discover.
Close to the bunk th