completely under the spell of his power.

"My name is Ned Trent," he told her, "and I am from Quebec. I am a
woods runner. I have journeyed far. I have been to the uttermost ends
of the North, even up beyond the Hills of Silence."

And then, in his gay, half-mocking, yet musical voice he touched
lightly on vast and distant things. He talked of the great
Saskatchewan, of Peace River, and the delta of the Mackenzie, of the
winter journeys beyond Great Bear Lake into the Land of the Little
Sticks, and the half-mythical lake of Yamba Tooh. He spoke of life
with the Dog Ribs and Yellow Knives, where the snow falls in
midsummer. Before her eyes slowly spread, like a panorama, the whole
extent of the great North, with its fierce, hardy men, its dreadful
journeys by canoe and sledge, its frozen barrens, its mighty forests,
its solemn charm. All at once this post of Conjuror's House, a month
in the wilderness as it was, seemed very small and tame and civilized
for the simple reason that Death did not always compass it about.

"It was very cold then," said Ned Trent, "and very hard. _Le grand
frête_[A] of winter had come. At night we had no other shelter than
our blankets, and we could not keep a fire because the spruce burned
too fast and threw too many coals. For a long time we shivered, curled
up on our snow-shoes; then fell heavily asleep, so that even the dogs
fighting over us did not awaken us. Two or three times in the night we
boiled tea. We had to thaw our moccasins each morning by thrusting
them inside our shirts. Even the Indians were shivering and saying,
'Ed-sa, yazzi ed-sa'--'it is cold, very cold.' And when we came to Rae
it was not much better. A roaring fire in the fireplace could not
prevent the ink from freezing on the pen. This went on for five