THE DESERTED CABIN


In the factor's comfortable quarters Mr. Thompson sat down to the first
meal he had thoroughly relished in two weeks. A corner of the verandah
was screened off with wire netting. Outside that barrier mosquitoes and
sandflies buzzed and swarmed in futile activity. Within stood an easy
chair or two and a small table which was presently spread with a linen
cloth, set with porcelain dishes, and garnished with silverware. All the
way down the Athabasca Thompson had found every meal beset with
exasperating difficulties, fruitful of things that offended both his
stomach and his sense of fitness. He had not been able to accommodate
himself to the necessity of juggling a tin plate beside a campfire, of
eating with one hand and fending off flies with the other. Also he
objected to grains of sand and particles of ash and charred wood being
incorporated with bread and meat. Neither Breyette nor MacDonald seemed
to mind. But Thompson had never learned to adapt himself to conditions
that were unavoidable. Pitchforked into a comparatively primitive mode
of existence and transportation his first reaction to it took the form
of offended resentment. There were times when he forgot why he was
there, enduring these things. After such a lapse he prayed for guidance
and a patient heart.

These creature comforts now at hand were in a measure what he had been
accustomed to, what he had, with no thought on the matter, taken as the
accepted and usual order of things, save that his needs had been
administered by two prim and elderly spinster aunts instead of a
black-browed Scotchman and a half-breed servant girl.