He found oil, and a tin lamp, and candles, and as darkness of the first night gathered outside a roaring fire sent sparks up the chimney, and the little cabin's one window glowed with light, and the battered old coffee pot bubbled and steamed again, as if rejoicing at his return.
With the breaking of another day he immediately began preparations for the season's trapping.

In two days' hunting he killed three caribou, his winter meat.

Then he cut wood, and made his strychnine poison baits, and marked out his trap-lines.
The first of November brought the chill whisperings of an early winter through the Northland.

Farther south autumn was dying, or dead.

The last of the red ash berries hung shriveled and frost-bitten on naked twigs, freezing nights were nipping the face of the earth, the voices of the wilderness were filled with a new note and the winds held warning for every man and beast between Hudson's Bay and the Great Slave and from the Height of Land to the Arctic Sea.