thin, dark, sensitive face framed in shining, jet-black hair, and a pair of eyes that were the most beautiful he had ever seen in a man.  Sometimes a look decides great friendship or bitter hatred between men.  And something, nameless, unaccountable, passed between these two.  Not until the half-breed had turned and was walking swiftly away did Howland realize that he wanted to speak to him, to grip him by the hand, to know him by name.  He watched the slender form of the Northerner, as lithe and as graceful in its movement as a wild thing of the forests, until it passed from the door out into the night.

“Who was that?” he asked, turning to the factor.

“His name is Croisset.  He comes from the Wholdaia country, beyond Lac la Ronge.”

“French?”

“Half French, half Cree.”

The factor resumed his steady gaze out into the white distance of the night, and Howland gave up his effort at conversation.  After a little his companion shoved back his chair and bade him good night.  The Crees and Chippewayan followed him, and a few minutes later the two white hunters left the engineer alone before the windows.

“Mighty funny people,” he said half aloud.  “Wonder if they ever talk!”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, his face resting in his hands, and stared to catch a sign of moving life outside.  In him there was no desire for sleep.  Often he had called himself a night-bird, but seldom had he been more wakeful than on this night.  The elation of his triumph, of his success, had not yet worn itself down to a normal and reasoning satisfaction, and his chief longing was for the day, and the day after that, and the next day, when he would take the place of Gregson and Thorne.  Every muscle in his body was vibrant in its desire for action.  He looked at his watch.  It was only ten o’clock.  Since supper he had smoked almost ceaselessly.  Now he lighted another cigar and stood up close to one of the windows.

Faintly he caught the sound of a step on the board walk outside.  It was a light, quick step, and for an instant it hesitated, just out of his vision.  Then it approached, and suddenly the figure of a woman stopped in front of the window.  How she was dressed Howland could not have told a moment later.  All that he saw was the face, white in the white night—­a face on which the shimmering starlight fell as it was lifted to his gaze, beautiful, as clear-cut as a cameo, with eyes that looked up at him half-pleadingly, half-luringly, and lips parted, as if about to speak to him.  He stared, moveless in his astonishment, and in another breath the face was gone.

With a hurried exclamation he ran across the empty room to the door and looked down the starlit street.  To go from the window to the door took him but a few seconds, yet he found the street deserted—­deserted except for a solitary figure three blocks away and a dog that growled at him as he thrust out his head and shoulders.  He heard no sound of footsteps, no opening or closing of a door.  Only there came to him that faint, hissing music of the northern skies, and once more, from the black forest beyond the Saskatchewan, the infinite sadness of the wolf-howl.