true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot
supper would be ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the
protruding bundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped
up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the only
way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself
as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon
grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.

He plunged in among the big spruce trees. The trail was faint. A foot
of snow had fallen since the last sled had passed over, and he was glad
he was without a sled, travelling light. In fact, he carried nothing but
the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief. He was surprised, however, at the
cold. It certainly was cold, he concluded, as he rubbed his numbed nose
and cheek-bones with his mittened hand. He was a warm-whiskered man, but
the hair on his face did not protect the high cheek-bones and the eager
nose that thrust itself aggressively into the frosty air.

At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf-
dog, grey-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from
its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by the tremendous
cold. It knew that it was no time for travelling. Its instinct told it
a truer tale than was told to the man by the man's judgment. In reality,
it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty
below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero. Since the
freezing-point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and
seven degrees of frost obtained. The dog did not know anything about
thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no sharp consciousness of
a condition of very cold such as was in the man's brain. But the brute
had its instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that
subdued it and made it slink along at the man's heels, and that made it