A few days rest and they were on the trail again, or on the "go" rather;
and you might know that disciple of Smith the Silent six months or six
years before he would, unless you worked him, refer to that ten days'
fast. They think no more of that than a Jap does of dying. It's all in
the day's work.

Suddenly, Smith said, the sun swung north, the days grew longer. The sun
grew hot and the snow melted on the south hills; the hushed rivers,
rending their icy bonds, went roaring down to the Lakes and out towards
the Arctic Ocean. And lo, suddenly, like the falling of an Arctic night,
the momentary spring passed and it was summer time.

Then it was that Smith came into Edmonton to make his first report, and
here we met for the first time for many snows.

Joyously, as a boy kicks the cover off on circus morning, this Northland
flings aside her winter wraps and stands forth in her glorious garb of
summer. The brooklets murmur, the rivers sing, and by their banks and
along the lakes waterfowl frolic, and overhead glad birds, that seem to
have dropped from the sky, sing joyfully the almost endless song of
summer. At the end of the long day, when the sun, as if to make up for
its absence, lingers, loath to leave us in the twilight, beneath their
wings the song-birds hide their heads, then wake and sing, for the sun
is swinging up over the horizon where the pink sky, for an hour, has
shown the narrow door through which the day is dawning.

The dogs and sleds have been left behind and now, with Jaquis the
half-breed "boy" leading, followed closely by Smith the Silent, we go
deeper and deeper each day into the pathless wilderness.