nning. Finally, laboriously, he decided that the girl should go. She
could be of assistance; there was small likelihood of the necessity for
protracted hasty travel.

The weather was getting steadily colder. Greasy-looking clouds drove
down from the north-west. Heavy winds swept by. The days turned gray.
Under the shelter of trees the ground froze into hummocks, which did not
thaw out. The crisp leaves which had made the forest so noisy
disintegrated into sodden silence. A wildness was in the air, swooping
down with the breeze, buffeting in the little whirlwinds and eddies,
rocking back and forth in the tops of the storm-beaten trees. Cold
little waves lapped against the thin fringe of shore ice that crept day
by day from the banks. The water itself turned black. Strange birds
swirling down wind like leaves uttered weird notes of migration. The
wilderness hardened to steel.

The inmates of the little camp waited. Each morning Dick was early afoot
searching the signs of the weather; examining the ice that crept
stealthily from shore, waiting to pounce upon and imprison the stream;
speculating on the chances of an early season. The frost pinched his
bare fingers severely, but he did not mind that. His leg was by now
almost as strong as ever, and he was impatient to be away, to leave
behind him this rapid that had gained over him even a temporary victory.
Always as the time approached, his spirits rose. It would have been
difficult to identify this laughing boy with the sullen and terrible man
who had sulked through the summer. He had made friends with all the
dogs. Even the fierce "huskies" had become tame, and liked to be upset
and tousled about and dragged on their backs growling fierce but mock
protest. The bitch he had named Claire; the hound with the long ears he
had called Mack, because of a fancied and mournful likeness to
MacDonald, the Chief Trader; the other "husky" he had christened Wolf,
for obvious reasons; and there remained, of course, the original Billy.
Dick took charge of the feeding. At first he needed his short, heavy
whip to preserve order, but shortly his really admirable gift with
animals gained way, and he had them sitting peacefully in a row awaiting
each his turn.

At last the skim ice made it impossible longer to use the canoe in
fishing on the river. The craft was, therefore, suspended bottom up
between two trees. A little snow fell and remained, but was speedily
swept into hollows. The temp