The tang of the northern air bit into the girl’s blood.  She spent much time in the open and became proficient and tireless in the use of snowshoes and skis.  Daily her excursions into the surrounding timber grew longer, and she was never so happy as when swinging with strong, wide strides on her fat thong-strung rackets, or sliding with the speed of the wind down some steep slope of the river-bank, on her smoothly polished skis.

It was upon one of these solitary excursions, when her steps had carried her many miles along the winding course of a small tributary of the Yellow Knife, that the girl became so fascinated in her exploration she failed utterly to note the passage of time until a sharp bend of the little river brought her face to face with the low-hung winter sun, which was just on the point of disappearing behind the shrub pines of a long, low ridge.

With a start she brought up short and glanced fearfully about her.  Darkness was very near, and she had travelled straight into the wilderness almost since early dawn.  Without a moment’s delay she turned and retraced her steps.  But even as her hurrying feet carried her over the back-trail she realized that night would overtake her before she could hope to reach the larger river.

The thought of a night spent alone in the timber at first terrified her.  She sought to increase her pace, but her muscles were tired, her footsteps dragged, and the rackets clung to her feet like inexorable weights which sought to drag her down, down into the soft whiteness of the snow.

Darkness gathered, and the back-trail dimmed.  Twice she fell and regained her feet with an effort.  Suddenly rounding a sharp bend, she crashed heavily among the dead branches of a fallen tree.  When at length she regained her feet, the last vestige of daylight had vanished.  Her own snowshoe tracks were indiscernible upon the white snow.  She was off the trail!

Something warm and wet trickled along her cheek.  She jerked off her mittens and with fingers tingling in the cold, keen air, picked bits of bark from the edges of the ragged wound where the end of a broken branch had snagged the soft flesh of her face.  The wound stung, and she held a handful of snow against it until the pain dulled under the numbing chill.

Stories of the night-prowling wolf-pack, and the sinister, man-eating loup cervier, crowded her brain.  She must build a fire.  She felt through her pocket for the glass bottle of matches, only to find that her fingers were too numb to remove the cork.  She replaced the vial and, drawing on her mittens, beat her hands together until the blood tingled to her finger-tips.  How she wished now that she had heeded the advice of LeFroy, who had cautioned against venturing into the woods without a light camp ax slung to her belt.

Laboriously she set about gathering bark and light twigs which she piled in the shelter of a cut-bank, and when at last a feeble flame flickered weakly among the thin twigs she added larger branches which she broke and twisted from the limbs of the dead trees.  Her camp-fire assumed a healthy proportion, and the flare of it upon the snow was encouraging.