As he turned he saw that a light had appeared in one of the low log buildings which contained the two offices of the Keewatin Mines and Lands Company.  The light, and the bulky shadow of old Pearce, which appeared for a moment on one of the drawn curtains, aroused Philip to other thoughts.  Since his arrival at Churchill he had made the acquaintance of Pearce, and it struck him now that just such a man as this might be Lord Fitzhugh Lee.  The Keewatin Mines and Lands Company had no mines and few lands, and yet Pearce had told him that they were doing a hustling business down south, selling stock on mineral claims that couldn’t be worked for years.  After all, was he any better than Pearce?

The old bitterness rose in him.  He was no better than Pearce, no better than this Lord Fitzhugh himself, and it was fate—­fate and people, that had made him so.  He walked swiftly now, following close along the shore in the hard stretch kept bare by the tides, until he came to the red coals of half a dozen Indian fires on the edge of the forest beyond the company’s buildings.  A dog scented him and howled.  He heard a guttural voice break in a word of command from one of the tepees, and there was silence again.

He turned to the right, burying himself deeper and deeper into the great silence of the north, his quick steps keeping pace with the thoughts that were passing through his brain.  Fate, bad luck, circumstance—­they had been against him.  He had told himself this a hundred times, had laughed at them with the confidence of one who knew that some day he would rise above these things in triumph.  And yet what were these elements of fortune, as he had called them, but people?  A feeling of personal resentment began to oppress him.  People had downed him, and not circumstance and bad luck.  Men and women had made a failure of him, and not fate.  For the first time it occurred to him that the very men and women whom Brokaw and his associates had duped, whom Pearce was duping, would play the game in the same way if they had the opportunity.  What if he had played on the winning side, if he had enlisted his fighting energies with men like Brokaw and Pearce, fought for money and power in place of this other thing, which seemed to count so little?  Other men would have given much to have been in his favor with Eileen Brokaw.  He might have been in the front of this other fight, the winning fight, the possessor of fortune, a beautiful woman—­

He stopped suddenly.  It seemed to him that he had heard a voice.  He had climbed from out of the shadow of the forest until he stood now on a gray cliff of rock that reached out into the Bay, like the point of a great knife guarding Churchill.  A block of sandstone rose in his path, and he passed quietly around it.  In another instant he had flattened himself against it.