wonder he gazed down upon the unblazed forests, saw plains and hills unfold themselves as his vision gained distance, followed a river until it was lost in the bewildering picture, and let his eyes rest here and there upon the glistening, snow-smothered bosoms of lakes, rimmed in by walls of black forest.  This was not the wilderness as he had expected it to be, nor as he had often read of it in books.  It was beautiful!  It was magnificent!  His heart throbbed with pleasure as he gazed down on it, the blood rose to his face in an excited flush, and he seemed hardly to breathe in his tense interest.

Mukoki had come up beside him softly, and spoke in his low guttural voice.

“Twent’ t’ousand moose down there—­twent’ t’ousand caribou-oo!  No man—­no house—­more twent’ t’ousand miles!”

Roderick, even trembling in his new emotion, looked into the old warrior’s face.  In Mukoki’s eyes there was a curious, thrilling gleam.  He stared straight out into the unending distance as though his keen vision would penetrate far beyond the last of that visible desolation—­on and on, even to the grim and uttermost fastnesses of Hudson Bay.  Wabi came up and placed his hand on Rod’s shoulder.

“Muky was born off there,” he said.  “Away beyond where we can see.  Those were his hunting-grounds when a boy.  See that mountain yonder?  You might take it for a cloud.  It’s thirty miles from here!  And that lake down there—­you might think a rifle-shot would reach it—­is five miles away!  If a moose or a caribou or a wolf should cross it how you could see him.”

For a few moments longer the three stood silent, then Wabi and the old Indian returned to the fire to finish the preparation of breakfast, leaving Rod alone in his enchantment.  What unsolved mysteries, what unwritten tragedies, what romance, what treasure of gold that vast North must hold!  For a thousand, perhaps a million centuries, it had lain thus undisturbed in the embrace of nature; few white men had broken its solitudes, and the wild things still lived there as they had lived in the winters of ages and ages ago.

The call to breakfast came almost as an unpleasant interruption to Rod.  But it did not shock his appetite as it had his romantic fancies, and he performed his part at the morning meal with considerable credit.  Wabi and Mukoki had already decided that they would not take up the trail again that day but would remain in their present camp until the following morning.  There were several reasons for this delay.

“We can’t travel without snow-shoes now,” explained Wabi to Rod, “and we’ve got to take a day off to teach you how to use them.  Then, all the wild things are lying low.  Moose, deer, caribou, and especially wolves and fur animals, won’t begin traveling much until this afternoon and to-night, and if we took up the trail now we would have no way of telling what kind of a game country we were in.  And that is the important thing just now.  If we strike a first-rate game country during the next couple days we’ll stop and build our winter camp.”