McCLELLAND AND STEWART PUBLISHERS : : TORONTO
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
CHAPTER PAGE PROLOGUE 11 I ACEY SMITH 16 II A STRANGE PACT ON A TRAIN 23 III “HONOUR SINKS WHERE COMMERCE LONG PREVAILS” 33 IV “A STOIC OF THE WOODS—A MAN WITHOUT A TEAR” 44 V THE WAY OF A WOMAN 56 VI A MILLIONAIRE VANISHES 65 VII THE HILL OF LURKING DEATH 76 VIII A MASTER MIND 87 IX THE WONDER GIRL 99 X THE WHITE MONSTER OF NANNABIJOU 109 XI CAPTAIN CARLSTONE, V.C. 119 XII “WHEN ALL THE WORLD IS YOUNG, LAD!” 131 XIII “THEM WAS ROARING DAYS!” 143 XIV “A BEAUTIFUL, PALE DEVIL” 161 XV THE FIAT OF J.C.X. 168 XVI A HOAX THAT PROVED A BOOMERANG 180 XVII OGIMA BUSH 193 XVIII IN THE CUP! 204 XIX “DEVIL HE MAY BE—BUT A MAN!” 212 XX PREPARING TO BEARD THE LION 223 XXI A VIPER BITES AT A FILE 234 XXII THE NIGHT OF THE TEMPEST 246 XXIII J.C.X! 258 XXIV IN WHICH A FOOL EXPERIMENTS 268 XXV “THE MAN THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN” 278 XXVI “THE MAN THAT WAS” 289 XXVII AT THE MEETING OF THE TRAILS 303 XXVIII THE JUDGMENT OF THE LOWLY 315
NIGHT’S sable curtain was soon to fall on the short-lived drama of a Winter day in the Laurentians. The departing sub-arctic sun, in its last pale glory, sent up from the omnipresent whiteness myriads of glistening beams that stabbed the eyes like leaping darts of fire. Of sounds there was oppressive absence. Not even a vagrant breeze sighed in the tree-tops; but at irregular intervals the intense stillness was smitten by the lugubrious “Spon-n-n-n-g!” of some aged tree splitting open to the heart where freezing moisture expanded in its crevices. All life and warmth seemed utterly exterminated in the pre-twilight calm save for the distant Monarch of Day slowly receding from his stark white world of desolation.
Yet even in these desolate wastes Man moved and had his being; for on the trail that wound down from the heights to the northwest there was the ribbonlike tracing of a dog sled and beside it the oval imprints of snowshoes. At a small cleared area in the scrub timber, just above where the trail dipped into a mighty, spruce-bearded ravine, the sled marks and the snowshoe patterns ceased.
On this spot, by a camp fire in the snow, hunched an elderly white man wrapped to his throat in blankets, beard and eyebrows thickly frosted from the vapour of his breath. His face, the wasted face of one who had endured intense physical suffering, was bereft of tangible expression; his eyes fixed dully on the slow-leaping, soundless flames from which there ascended into the zero-freighted air a wispy, hairlike strand of smoke. Roundabout him were scattered canvas packsacks, rolls of bright coloured woollen blankets, fire-blackened pots and pans, two light chopping axes and a short-barrelled repeating rifle. Nearby, on the trail, a spent and footsore string of sled dogs lay flattened in the snow. Noses stretched to the fire, eyes closed and limbs inert, they might be mistaken for dead and frozen things but for the occasional faint heave of their flanks as their trained lungs drew sparingly of the biting ozone.