can't change it."

The doctor ignored the proffered consolation. "What we need is a new
mail-man," he went on bitterly. "I know Hairy Ben! I'll bet he's had the
mail at the Crossing for a week, and puts off starting every day for
fear of snow."

"Well, 'tain't a job as I'd envy any man," put in Captain Stinson of the
steamboat _Spirit River_, now hauled out on the shore. "Breaking a road
for three hundred and fifty mile, and not a stopping-house the whole way
till he gets to the Beaver Indians at Carcajou Point."

The doctor addressed himself to the policeman, who was mending a
snowshoe in the background. "Stonor, you've got the best dogs in the
post; why don't you go up after him?"

The young sergeant raised his head with a grin. He was a good-looking,
long-limbed youth with a notable blue eye, and a glance of mirthful
sobriety. "No, thanks," he drawled. The others gathered from his tone
that a joke was coming, and pricked up their ears accordingly. "No,
thanks. You forget that Sarge Lambert up at the Crossing is my senior.
When I drove up he'd say: 'What the hell are you doing up here?' And
when I told him he'd come back with his well-known embellishments of
language: 'Has the R.N.W.M.P. nothing better to do than tote Doc
Giddings' love-letters?'"

A great laugh greeted this sally: they are so grateful for the smallest
of jokes on winter afternoons up North.

Doc Giddings subsided, but the discussion went on without him.

"Well, he'll have easy going in from Carcajou; the Indians coming in and
out have beaten a good trail."

"Oh, when he gets to Carcajou he's here."

"If it don't snow. That bit over the prairie drifts badly."

"The barometer's falling."

And so on. And so on. They made the small change of conversation go far.

In the midst of it they were electrified by a shout from the land trail
and the sound of bells.

"Here he is!" they cried, jumping up to a man, and making for the door.

Ben Causton, conscious of his importance, made a dramatic entrance with
the mail-bags over his shoulder, and cast them magnificently on the
counter. Even up north, where every man cultivates his own peculiarities
unhindered, Ben was considered a "character." He was a short, thick man
of enormous physical strength, and he sported a beard like a quickset
hedge, hence his nickname. He was clad in an entire suit of fur like an
Eskimo, with a gaudy red worsted sash about his ample middle.

"Hello, Ben! Gee! but you