driven his dogs left-handed, and had had that swinging, plunging stride? The memory refused to concentrate, so he strove to guess at the man's identity by the process of elimination. He could not be a Hudson Bay mail-carrier bringing him a letter, for the factor refused to deliver all missives addressed to Murder Point. It was not probable that he was an express messenger of Gamier, Parwin, and Wrath, sent up post-haste from Winnipeg; they could have nothing of such importance to say to him that it could not wait for the open season, when travelling is less expensive. Nor was he a trapper bound on a friendly or business visit to the store; for, in the first place, this man was no Indian (he could tell that by the way in which he lifted his feet in running), and, in the second, he had no friend, nor any man in the district, save Ericsen, who would be seen with him in the open daylight. A foolish, strangling expectancy rose up within him. Might he not be the bearer of important and good news from the homeland? What news? Oh, anything! That his father, the visionary explorer of Guiana, who twenty years ago had set out on his last mad search for El Dorado, the fabled city of the Incas, and who for many years had been given up for dead, had returned at length with gold, successful from his quest—or, at the least, that his mother had relented and wanted him back. Speedily his hope turned to agonising suspense. Perhaps he was coming to tell him that his mother in England was dead. Then he laughed hysterically, remembering that Mr. Wrath was not the[16] sort of man to regard any death as serious, unless it were his own.

[15]

[16]

By this time the stranger had covered the intervening two miles of river and was within thirty yards of the Point. He was slowing down. He had halted. His exhausted dogs were already curling themselves up beneath a snow-bank, wisely snatching a moment's rest as soon as it was offered them. Careless of their welfare, leaving them as they were to tangle up their traces, he was commencing to ascend the mound towards the store. Despite the clamour of welcome which raged within him, Granger did not stir; the influence of the North Land was upon him, compelling him to self-repression, making him stern and forbidding in his manner as was the appearance of the world without. From his hiding by the window he watched the man; as he did so a vague sense of fear and loathing took the place of gladness.

His approach was slow and hesitating; continually he paused to gaze back along the river as if in search of a pursuer, then suddenly forward toward the 

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