Long ago, in the maddening gloom of the Arctic night, he had learned to understand.

At Fond du Lac, when Weyman had first come up into the forest country, he had said to the factor: "It's glorious! It's God's Country!" And the factor had turned his tired, empty eyes upon him with the words: "It was--before SHE went.

But no country is God's Country without a woman," and then he took Philip to the lonely grave under a huge lob-stick spruce, and told him in a few words how one woman had made life for him.

Even then Philip could not fully understand.

But he did now.
He resumed his paddling, his gray eyes alert.