another mind, saying, "Now that thou
hast seen what thou art like, go out, that I may be left alone _and
Spurling_." So Granger had agreed with God that day that he would
cease from his dreams of human vengeance, and leave Him alone with
Spurling. He did not dare to tell God all his thoughts, but he felt
certain that, had Spurling's opinions been consulted, he would have
preferred to be left alone with John Granger. It was terrible enough
to have to dwell between God's footsteps, as all men must who live in
Keewatin, when His eyes were averted, and He Himself walked by
seemingly unconscious of your presence; but to have to live there when
He had noticed your presence, and His face was lifted up, while His
gaze was bent upon you, with no hope of escape, a fugitive from human
justice, alone in an empty land with your own conscience and Him as
your accuser, that was to protract the shamefaced confusion of the
Last Judgment through every day of your life. Granger felt that in
making that compact he had done his worst by Druce Spurling.

In the middle hours of the night which followed this agreement, which
he chose to think of as his compromise with Deity, he was awakened by
a thunderous sound, and jumping from his bunk saw that the river had
broken up and the ice was going out, as though God, having finished
His argument which He had written there, were rubbing out His words.
Flinging wide the door, he ran down the mound to the bank, shouting
like a boy. As he went he had a panoramic vision of all the other men,
both white and red, along the six hundred miles of river which
stretched from the great lake to the Hudson Bay, who had been awakened
as he had been, and now, or sometime that night, would be doing what
he was doing, rushing half-clad beneath the stars down to the
river-bank calling on the loneliness to rejoice--the loneliness, which
throughout the frozen months had listened so faithfully to all that
they had had to say, blasphemous or otherwise, and had made no reply.
But this night both silence and loneliness were violated, and cried
aloud with rage protestingly; whereat the river only clapped its hands
and squeezed its passage, and huddled between its ruined
winter-barriers ever northward to the freedom of the Bay.

This was the one night in all the year when revolt was permitted, and
the Bastile of Keewatin fell. Fell! Yes, soon the summer would raise
it up again in a newer form, only a little less intolerable