d-dog's howl that night before
Tavish's cabin. It was like the death cry that comes from a dog's
throat; and where the forest gloom mingled with the firelight he saw a
phantom shadow--in the morning he found that it was a spruce bough,
broken and hanging down--that made him think again of Tavish swinging in
the moonlight. His thoughts bore upon him deeply and with foreboding.
And he asked himself questions--questions which were not new, but which
came to him to-night with a new and deeper significance. He believed
that Father Roland would have gasped in amazement and that he would have
held up his hands in incredulity had he known the truth of this
astonishing adventure of his. An astonishing adventure--nothing less. To
find a girl. A girl he had never seen, who might be in another part of
the world, when he had got to the end of his journey--or married. And if
he found her, what would he say? What would he do? Why did he want to
find her? "God alone knows," he said aloud, borne down under his gloom,
and went to bed.

Small things, as Father Roland had frequently said, decide great events.
The next morning came with a glorious sun; the world again was white and
wonderful, and David found swift answers to the questions he had asked
himself a few hours before. Each day thereafter the sun was warmer, and
with its increasing promise of the final "break-up" and slush snows,
Upso-Gee's taciturnity and anxiety grew apace. He was little more
talkative than the painted devil chaser on the blackened canvas of his
tepee, but he gave David to understand that he would have a hard time
getting back with his dogs and sledge from Fond du Lac if the thaw came
earlier than he had anticipated. David marvelled at the old warrior's
endurance, and especially when they crossed the forty miles of ice on
Wollaston Lake between dawn and darkness. At high noon the snow was
beginning to soften on the sunny slopes even then, and by the time they
reached the Porcupine, Snow Fox was chanting his despairing prayer
nightly before that grinning thing on his tepee. "Swas-tao (the thaw)
she kam dam' queek," he said to David, grimacing his old face to
express other things which he could not say in English. And it did. Four
days later, when they reached Fond du Lac, there was water underfoot in
places, and Upso-Gee turned back on the home trail within an hour.

This was in April, and the Post reminded David of a great hive to which
the forest people were s