night with its comfortless glitter of stars.

As soon as his ankle was stronger, Pete spent all day and most of
the night on his skis, trying to outrun the growing shadow of his
misery. Hugh's work fell on his shoulders. He had not only his
accustomed chores, the Caliban duties of woodchopping and
water-carrying, the dressing of wild meat, the dish-drying and heavier
housework, the repairs about the cabin--but he had the trapping. In
Hugh's profound new absorption he seemed to have forgotten the
necessity for making a livelihood. During the first years of their
exile they had lived on his savings, ordering their supplies by the
mail, which left them at the foot of that distant trail leading into
the forest. Thence Hugh, under shelter of night, would carry
them--lonely, terrible journeys that taxed even his strength. When
Pete grew big enough to load, he was sent to the trading-station,
and Hugh became an expert trapper. The savings were not entirely
spent, but they were no longer touched; the pelts brought a
livelihood.

Pete had had his instructions concerning his behavior at the
trading-station; many years before, he had stammered a legend of a
sickly father who had died, who was buried back there by the lonely
cabin where he and his "mother" chose to live. Bella and Hugh had
even dug up a mound for which they had fashioned a rude cross. It
could be seen, in summer, from the living-room window--that mock grave
more terrible in its suggestions than a real grave ever could have
been. There was also a hiding-place under the boards of the floor.
No one had ever seen the grave or driven Hugh into hiding. It was
not an inquisitive country, and its desolation was forbidding. Pete
had learned to discourage the rare sociability of the other traders.