u must already have discovered. You have studied wild animals--for
twenty years?"

"Twenty and four, day and night; it has been my hobby."

"And you have written about them?"

"A score of volumes, if they were in print."

Philip drew a deep breath.

"The world would give a great deal for what you know," he said. "It
would give a great deal for those books, more than I dare to estimate,
undoubtedly it would be a vast sum in dollars."

Adare laughed softly in his beard.

"And what would I do with dollars?" he asked. "I have sufficient with
which to live this life here. What more could money bring me? I am the
happiest man in the world!"

For a moment a cloud overshadowed his face.

"And yet of late I have had a worry," he added thoughtfully. "It is
because of Miriam, my wife. She is not well. I had hoped that the
doctors in Montreal would help her. But they have failed. They say she
possesses no malady, no sickness that they can discover. And yet she is
not the old Miriam. God knows I hope the tonic of the snows will bring
her back to health this winter!"

"It will," declared Philip. "The signs point to a glorious winter,
crisp and dry--the sledge and dog kind, when you can hear the crack of
a whiplash half a mile away."

"You will hear that frequently enough if you follow Josephine,"
chuckled Adare. "Not a trail in these forests for a hundred miles she
does not know. She trains all of the dogs, and they are wonderful."

It was on the point of Philip's tongue to ask a reason for the silence
of the fierce pack he had seen the night before, when he caught
himself. At the same moment the Indian woman appeared through the door
with a laden tray. Adare helped her arrange their breakfast on a small
table near the fire.

"I thought we would be more congenial here than alone in the
dining-room, Philip," he explained. "Unless I am mistaken the ladies
won't be up until dinner time. Did you ever see a steak done to a finer
turn than this? Marie, you are a treasure." He motioned Philip to a
seat, and began serving. "Nothing in the world is better than a caribou
porterhouse cut well back," he went on. "Don't fry or roast it, but
broil it. An inch and a half is the proper thickness, just enough to
hold the heart of it ripe with juice. See it ooze from that cut! Can
you beat it?"

"Not with anything I have had along the Arctic," confessed Philip. "A
steak from the cheek of a cow walrus is about the best thing you find