across his shoulder and looking behind, as
if he feared a thing which followed him--which was out of sight.

CHAPTER II

THE UNBIDDEN GUEST

Granger, having withdrawn himself to one side of the window so that he
might not be observed from the outside, watched the stranger's
approach in anxious silence. Nearer and nearer he came, till in that
still air it was possible to hear the panting of his huskies as they
lunged forward in the traces, jerking their bodies to right and left
as they desperately strove to escape the descending lash of the
punishing whip. The man himself tottered as he ran, stubbing the toes
of his snowshoes every now and then as he took a new step. Once from
sheer weakness he nearly fell, whereupon the dogs came to a sudden
halt, sat down on their haunches, and gazed wistfully round; in a
second he had recovered himself, with an angry oath had straightened
out his team in their traces, and was once more speeding toward
Granger's shack. The impression which his mode of travelling conveyed
was that of flight; but from whom and whither can a man flee in
Keewatin? Both he and his animals were evidently exhausted; they must
have journeyed continuously through the previous day and night, and
still they were in haste. "Well, all the better for me," thought the
watcher, "for if he is so weary he cannot choose but stay; and if he
stays with me, though he be a Company man, he will have to speak."

Then fear seized hold of Granger lest Robert Pilgrim's discipline, or
the enmity of the man himself, might be such that, though he
endangered his life by the procedure, he would refuse the hospitality
of a hated private trader. "Nonsense," said the voice of hope, "to
where can he be travelling at this season of the year unless to Murder
Point? Before ever he gets to the coast and Crooked Creek the winter
will have broken up, and northwards there is nowhere else to go."

So, as is the way with men who have exhausted this world's resources
for rendering them aid, he began to pray; not decorously, with
reverent, well-chosen words, but fiercely, with repetition, and below
his breath. "My God, don't let him pass," he said; "make him stop
here. Make him stop here, and spend with me at least one night." Then,
when he had petitioned God, thinking perhaps that He would not hear
him, he commenced to call upon Lord Jesus Christ. He clenched his
hands in his excitement till the nails broke into the flesh. There was
a