their haunches, and gazed wistfully round; in a second he had recovered himself, with an angry oath had straightened out his team in their traces, and was once more speeding toward Granger's shack. The impression which his mode of travelling conveyed was that of flight; but from whom and whither can a man flee in Keewatin? Both he and his animals were evidently exhausted; they must have journeyed continuously through the previous day and night, and still they were in haste. "Well, all the better for me," thought the watcher, "for if he is so weary he cannot choose but stay; and if he stays with me, though he be a Company man, he will have to speak."[14] [14] Then fear seized hold of Granger lest Robert Pilgrim's discipline, or the enmity of the man himself, might be such that, though he endangered his life by the procedure, he would refuse the hospitality of a hated private trader. "Nonsense," said the voice of hope, "to where can he be travelling at this season of the year unless to Murder Point? Before ever he gets to the coast and Crooked Creek the winter will have broken up, and northwards there is nowhere else to go." So, as is the way with men who have exhausted this world's resources for rendering them aid, he began to pray; not decorously, with reverent, well-chosen words, but fiercely, with repetition, and below his breath. "My God, don't let him pass," he said; "make him stop here. Make him stop here, and spend with me at least one night." Then, when he had petitioned God, thinking perhaps that He would not hear him, he commenced to call upon Lord Jesus Christ. He clenched his hands in his excitement till the nails broke into the flesh. There was a God in Keewatin after all, there must be, since He had sent to him this stranger. All the while that he was praying and exclaiming thus, he was trying to judge of the man's errand from his dress. He was clad in the regulation capote of the Hudson Bay Company's employee; it was of a dark material, probably duffel, which reached to the knees. On his head was a fur-skin cap, over which he had drawn the hood of his capote so far down that his features could not be discerned. About his waist went a sash of scarlet, such as is worn by the Northwest métis. His legs were swathed in duffel leggings, so that they appeared to be of enormous size. On his feet he wore moose-hide moccasins which extended part way up his[15] legs, and to these his five-foot snowshoes were attached. His whip he carried in his left hand. About this last there was something familiar. Who was it that he had known in the past who had
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