shape burst out of the forest and pounced
upon the muffled figure under the shed-tent by the fire. As the dog
pawed at the blanketed shape, Marcel, drugged with sleep and bewildered
by the attack, was groping for his knife, when a familiar whine and the
licks of a warm tongue proclaimed the return of Fleur, and the man threw
his arms around his dog.

"Fleur come back to Jean?" Breaking from him, in sheer delight, the dog
repeatedly circled the fire, then rearing on her hind legs put her
fore-paws on his chest.

"Fleur bad dog to run away wid de wolf!" Marcel seized her by the jowls
and shook the massive head, peering into the slant eyes in the dim
starlight. And Fleur, as though ashamed of her desertion of the master,
pushed her nose under his arm, the rumbling in her throat voicing her
joy to be with him again. Then Marcel gave her meat from the cache which
she bolted greedily.

It had not entered his mind once he had found her tracks that Fleur
would not return to him, but during her long absence the condition of
the snow had been a source of worry. Each day's delay meant the chance
of the bottom suddenly falling out of the trail before he could freight
his load of meat and traps back to his old camp far to the west. Once
the big thaw was on, all sledding would be over. So, hurriedly eating
his breakfast, he started under the stars, for at noon he would be held
up by the softening trail. Toward mid-afternoon, when it turned colder,
he would again travel.

Back at his old camp, Marcel found that the fish-hook necklace with
which he had circled each of the peeled spruce uprights of his cache had
baffled the wolverines and lynxes lured for miles by the odor of meat.
Resetting short trap-lines, he waited for the "break-up" with tranquil
mind, for his cache groaned with meat.

CHAPTER XIX

WHEN THE ICE GOES SOFT

The snows were fading fast before the rain and sleet of the big thaw.
Often, at night, the softening winds shifted, to drive in raw from the
north, again tightening the land with frost. But each day, as May
neared, the sun swung higher and higher, slowly scattering the snow to
flood the ice of myriad lakes and rivers. Already, Marcel had thrilled
to the trumpets of the gray vanguards of the Canadas. On fair days the
sun flashed from white fleets of "wavies," bound through seas of April
skies to far Arctic ports.

With May the buds of birch and poplar began to swell, later to light
with the soft