grimly. "You'd get
daylight let through you for less."

"Well, you wouldn't do it!" snarled Husky.

Shand rose. "Go on and play by yourself," he snarled disgustedly.
"Solitaire is more your style. Idiot's delight. If you catch yourself
cheating yourself, you can shoot yourself for what I care!"

"Well, I can have a peaceful game, anyhow," Husky called after him,
smiling complacently at getting the last word.

He forthwith dealt the cards for solitaire. Husky was a burly,
red-faced, red-haired ex-brakeman, of a simple and conceited
character. He was much given to childish stratagems, and was subject
to fits of childish passion. He possessed enormous physical strength
without much staying power.

Black Shand carried his box to the fire and sat scowling into the
flames. He was of a saturnine nature, in whom anger burned slow and
deep. He was a man of few words. Half a head shorter than big Jack, he
showed a greater breadth of shoulders. His arms hung down like an
ape's.

"How far did you walk up the shore to-day?" big Jack asked.

"Matter of two miles."

"How's the ice melting?"

"Slow. It'll be a week before we can move on." Jack swore under his
breath. "And this the 22nd of May!" he cried. "We ought to have been
on our land by now and ploughing. We're like to lose the whole season.

"Ill luck has dogged us from the start," Jack went on. "Our
calculations were all right. We started the right time. Any ordinary
year we could have gone right through on the ice. But from the very
day we left the landing we were in trouble. When we wasn't broke down
we was looking for lost horses. When we wasn't held up by a blizzard
we was half drowned in a thaw!

"To cap all, the ice went out two weeks ahead, and we had to change to
wheels, and sink to the hubs in the land trails. Now, by gad, before
the ice on the shore is melted, it'll be time for the lake to freeze
over again!"

"No use grousing about it," muttered Shand.

Big Jack clamped his teeth on his pipe and fell silent. For a while
there was no sound in the shack but Husky muttering over his game, the
licking of the wood fire, and faint, mournful intimations down the
chimney from the pines. The man on the bed shuddered involuntarily,
and glanced at his mates to see if they had noticed it.

This one, Joe Hagland, was considerably younger than the other three.
He was a heavy, muscular youth with curling black hair and comely
features, albeit somewhat marked by wi