umstances.

Dan was by no means of a suspicious nature, nevertheless the glance
haunted him for many a day after that. Suspicion once aroused is a
ghost which is not easily laid. He tried to shake it off, and he
carefully, loyally, kept it confined in his own breast; but, do what he
would, he could not banish entirely from his mind that Duncan McKay--the
brother of his Elspie--had some sort of guilty knowledge of the murder
of poor Henri Perrin.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

DIFFICULTIES OF VARIOUS KINDS OVERCOME.

When the bright warm days and cool starry nights of the Indian summer
gave place to the sharp days and frosty nights of early winter--when
young ice formed on the lakes and rendered canoeing impossible, and the
ducks and geese had fled to warmer climes, and the Frost King had sent
his first messengers of snow to cover the wilderness with a
winding-sheet and herald his return to the Winter Palace--then it was
that the banished Red River settlers began to feel the pinch of poverty
and to understand the full extent of the calamity that had befallen
them.

We have not space to follow them through all the details of that winter
at Jack River. Some died, all suffered more or less; but they had to
endure it, for escape from the country to the civilised world was even
more difficult and hopeless than escape from the dreaded wilds of
Siberia. The men hunted, fished under the ice, trapped, and sustained
themselves and their families in life during the long, dreary winter;
the only gain being that they became more or less expert at the
Red-man's work and ways of life.

Only two of the Indians remained with them to help them over their
difficulties--namely, Okematan and Kateegoose, with their respective
squaws. These last were invaluable as the makers of moccasins and
duffle socks and leathern coats, without which existence in such a
climate would have been impossible. They also imparted their knowledge
in such matters to the squaws of the white men.

There was one friend, however, who did not remain with the settlers when
things began to look dismal around them. This was the amiable, musical,
story-telling La Certe. That tender-hearted man could not endure the
sight of human distress. If he could not relieve it, he felt
constrained to shut his eyes to it and to flee from it. At the first
indication of the approach of winter he had come to old McKay with that
peculiarly mild, humble, deprecatory expression o