The sun was hidden, and the sky looked to be heavily burdened with snow.  The earth was frozen solid, and the wide flung forests were white with the hoar frosts of Spring.

Father Adam was standing beside the crouching team of dogs.  There were five of them; great huskies, shaggy of coat and fiercely wolfish.  They were fat and soft from idleness.  But they would serve, for the sled was light, and a few days’ run would swiftly harden them.

The outfit was waiting just beyond the kitchen door of the house on the hill, and the view of the busy Cove below was completely shut out.  The position for the waiting sled had not been calculated by the man who owned it, but by the shrewd, troubled mind of Bat Harker.

He was standing beside the tall figure of the missionary now, squat and sturdy, looking on with half-angry, wholly anxious eyes.  His expression was characteristic of the man when he was disturbed.  Father Adam’s dark eyes were surveying his outfit.  There was no emotion in them.  They were calm, and simply searching, in the fashion of the practised trail man.

“Say, Les, this is just the craziest thing of all your crazy life,” Bat said at last, in a tone kept low for all the feeling that lay behind it.  “I tell you they’re waiting on you.  They’ve got you set.  Just as sure as God this’ll be your last trip.  It’s kind of useless talkin’ it again out here, I know.  We’ve talked an’ talked it in that darn sick room of yours till I’m sick to death trying to git sense into you.  We know the game from A to the hindmost letter of the darn alphabet.  We haven’t shouted it, you an’ me, because there wasn’t need.  But Idepski’s been right here since ever he got his nose on your trail.  It was his gun that took you weeks back, an’ sent you sick.  If I know a thing he meant just to wing you, and leave you kind of helpless, so he could get hands on you when he fancied.  He wants you alive, and he’s goin’ to git you.  Ther’s word got round you’re pulling out.  It’s clear to me.  A bunch of boys hit the trail out of here three nights gone, and I’ve a notion Idepski went with ’em.  Are they wise you’re pulling out?  Sure they are.  Why, in God’s name, don’t you quit it?”

The man whom the forest world knew as Father Adam, but whom Bat knew as Leslie Standing, shrugged his shoulders.

“Why should I?” he said, his dark eyes mildly enquiring, “you can’t tell me a thing I don’t know about Idepski.  I knew it was he who dropped me.  I saw him that night down there and knew him right away.  Maybe he can fool you with his disguises.  He can’t fool me.  I’d been watching him days before that.”

“Why didn’t you show yourself?  Why didn’t you say?”

Bat spoke fiercely in his exasperation.

The missionary smiled.