months."

[Footnote A: _Froid_--cold.]

Thus he spoke, as one who says common things. He said little of
himself, but as he went on in short, curt sentences the picture grew
more distinct, and to Virginia the man became more and more prominent
in it. She saw the dying and exhausted dogs, the frost-rimed, weary
men; she heard the quick _crunch, crunch, crunch_ of the snow-shoes
hurrying ahead to break the trail; she felt the cruel torture of the
_mal de raquette_, the shrivelling bite of the frost, the pain of snow
blindness, the hunger that yet could not stomach the frozen fish nor
the hairy, black caribou meat. One thing she could not conceive--the
indomitable spirit of the men. She glanced timidly up at her
companion's face.

"The Company is a cruel master," she sighed at last, standing upright,
then leaning against the carriage of the gun. He let her go without
protest, almost without thought, it seemed.

"But not mine," said he.

She exclaimed, in astonishment, "Are you not of the Company?"

"I am no man's man but my own," he answered, simply.

"Then why do you stay in this dreadful North?" she asked.

"Because I love it. It is my life. I want to go where no man has set
foot before me; I want to stand alone under the sky; I want to show