leave, whacked half the tobacco of my pouch into his. Yes, the stuff was
fairly good. He sighed with the contentment of the just, and literally
absorbed the smoke from the crisping yellow flakes, and it did my
smoker's heart good to behold him.

Hunter? Trapper? Prospector? He shrugged his shoulders No; just sort
of knocking round a bit. Had come up from the Great Slave some time
since, and was thinking of trapsing over into the Yukon country. The
factor of Koshim had spoken about the discoveries on the Klondike, and he
was of a mind to run over for a peep. I noticed that he spoke of the
Klondike in the archaic vernacular, calling it the Reindeer River--a
conceited custom that the Old Timers employ against the _che-chaquas_
and all tenderfeet in general. But he did it so naively and as such a
matter of course, that there was no sting, and I forgave him. He also
had it in view, he said, before he crossed the divide into the Yukon, to
make a little run up Fort o' Good Hope way.

Now Fort o' Good Hope is a far journey to the north, over and beyond the
Circle, in a place where the feet of few men have trod; and when a
nondescript ragamuffin comes in out of the night, from nowhere in
particular, to sit by one's fire and discourse on such in terms of
"trapsing" and "a little run," it is fair time to rouse up and shake off
the dream. Wherefore I looked about me; saw the fly and, underneath, the
pine boughs spread for the sleeping furs; saw the grub sacks, the camera,
the frosty breaths of the dogs circling on the edge of the light; and,
above, a great streamer of the aurora, bridging the zenith from south-
east to north-west. I shivered. There is a magic in the Northland
night, that steals in on one like fevers from malarial marshes. You are
clutched and downed before you are aware. Then I looked to the
snowshoes, lying prone and crossed where he had flung them. Also I had