There is no pleasanter hour for the camper or voyageur than the evening hour by a blazing camp fire.  There is no sweeter odour than that of the damp forest mingled with the smell of burning wood.  Beyond the narrow circle of light a black wall rises, and behind the wall lies the wilderness with its unfathomed mysteries.  Out in the darkness wild creatures move, silent, stealthy and unseen, behind a veil that human eyes cannot penetrate.  But we know they are there going about the strange business of their life, and our imagination is awakened and our sensibilities quickened.

The camp fire is a shrine of comradeship and friendship.  Here it was that the primordial ancestors of every living man and woman and child gathered at night with their families, in those far-off dark ages before history was written.  The fire was their home.  Here they found rest and comfort and protection from the savage wild beasts that roamed the forests.  It was a place of veneration.  The primitive instinct, perchance inherited from those far-off ancestors of ours, slumbering in our souls, is sometimes awakened, and then we are called to the woods and the wild places that God made beautiful for us, and at night we gather around our camp fire as our ancient ancestors gathered around theirs, and we love it just as they loved it.

And so it was with the little camp fire on Flat Point and with Doctor Joe and the boys.  With darkness the uncanny light of the Aurora Borealis flashed up in the north, its long, weird fingers of changing colours moving restlessly across the heavens.  The forest and the wide, dark waters of Eskimo Bay sank behind a black wall.

There was absolute silence, save for the ripple of waves upon the shore, each busy with his own thoughts, until presently Jamie asked: 

“Did you ever see a ghost, Doctor?”

“A ghost?  No, lad, and I fancy no one else ever saw one except in imagination.  What made you think of ghosts?”

“’Tis so—­still—­and dark out there,” said Jamie, pointing toward the darkness beyond the fire-glow.  “And—­I were thinkin’ I heard something.”

“But there is ghosts, sir, plenty of un,” broke in Andy.  “Pop’s seen ghosts and so has Zeke Hodge and Uncle Billy and plenty of folks.  They says the ghost of Long John, the old Injun that used to be at the Post and was drowned, goes paddlin’ and paddlin’ about in a canoe o’ nights.”

“Yes,” said David, “I’m thinkin’ I saw Long John’s ghost myself one evenin’.  I weren’t certain of un, but it must have been he.”

“Nonsense!” Doctor Joe had no patience with the belief popular among Labradormen that ghosts of men who have been drowned or killed return to haunt the scene of their death.  “There’s no such thing as a ghost.”

“What’s that now?” Jamie held up his hand for silence, and spoke in a subdued voice.

Out of the darkness came the rhythmic dipping of a paddle.  They all heard it now.  Doctor Joe arose, and closely followed by the boys, stepped down beyond the fire glow.  In dim outline they could see the silhouette of a canoe containing the lone figure of a man paddling with the short, quick stroke of the Indian.