He had made up his mind that he would strike Fond du Lac on his way down, for Jasper's words and the hopeless picture he had made that day beside the little cross under the spruce had made them brothers in a strange sort of way.

Besides, Jasper would furnish him with a couple of Indians, and a sledge and dogs if the snows came early.
In a break between the rocks Philip saw a white strip of sand, and turned his canoe in to shore.

He had been paddling since five o'clock, and in the six hours had made eighteen miles.

Yet he felt no fatigue as he stood up and stretched himself.

He remembered how different it had been four years ago when Hill, the Hudson's Bay Company's man down at Prince Albert, had looked him over with skeptical and uneasy eyes, encouraging him with the words: "You're going to a funeral, young man, and it's your own.