Though not of a particularly sentimental temperament, the calm, peaceful, unearthly beauty of the scene moved George to murmur—­half to himself: 

  “Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
  That dost not bite so nigh
    As benefits forgot, alas! 
    As benefits forgot.”

To his surprise came Slavin’s soft brogue echoing the last lines of the old Shakespearian sonnet, with a sort of dreamy, gentle bitterness:  “As binifits forghot—­forghot!—­as binifits forghot! . . . .  Luk tu that now! eyah! ‘tis th’ trute, lad! . . . . for here—­unless I am mistuk, comes me bould Yorkey—­an’ dhrunk as ‘a fiddler’s ——­ again.  Tchkk! an’ me on’y just afther warnin’ um. . . .”

And, a far-away black spot as yet, down the moonlit, snow-banked trail, indistinctly they beheld an unsteady figure slowly weaving its way towards the detachment.  At intervals the night-wind wafted to them snatches of song.

“Singin’, singin’,” muttered Slavin, “from break av morrn ’till jewy eve! . . .  Misther B——­ Yorke! luks ‘tis goin’ large y’are th’ night.”

Nearer and nearer approached the stumbling black figure, weaving an eccentric course in and out along the line of telephone poles; and, to their ears came the voice of one crying in the wilderness:—­

  “O, the Midnight Son! the Midnight Son! (hic)
  You needn’t go trottin’ to Norway—­
  You’ll find him in ev’ry doorway—­”

A sudden cessation of the music, coupled with certain slightly indistinct, weird contortions of the vocalist’s figure, apprised the watchers that a snow-bank had momentarily claimed him.  Then, suddenly and saucily, as if without a break, the throbbing, high-pitched tenor piped up again—­

“You’ll behold him in his glory If you on’y take a run (hic) Down the Strand—­that’s the Land Of the Midnight Son.”

Dewy eve indeed!—­a far cry to the Strand! . . .  How freakish sounded that old London variety stage ditty ridiculing the nightly silence of the great snow-bound Nor’ West.  Redmond could not refrain an explosive, snorting chuckle as he remarked the erratic gait of the slowly approaching pedestrian.  As Slavin had opined, he was “going large.”  His vocal efforts had ceased temporarily, and now it was the junior constable’s merriment that broke the frosty stillness of the night.

But Slavin did not laugh.  Watchfully he waited there—­curiously still, his head jutting forward loweringly from between his huge shoulders.

“Tchkk!” he clucked in gentle distaste—­“In uniform . . . an’ just afther comin’ off the thrain! . . . th’ like av that now ’tis—­’tis scandh’lus! . . .”

Suddenly Redmond shivered, and his mirth died within him.  The air seemed to have become charged with a tense, ominous something that filled him with a great dread—­of what? he knew not.  He felt an inexplicable impulse to cry out a warning to that ludicrous figure, whose crunching moccasins were now the only sounds that broke the uncanny stillness of the night.  To him, the whole scene, bathed in the cold brilliance of its moonlit setting, seemed ghostly and unreal—­a disturbing dream of comedy and tragedy, intermingled.