“He has lived in the wild country.  He knows the wild country.  And civilization, with its rapid advance, has left him five years behind the times.  Our ex-man of the Mounted is fit for only the commonest labour.  And, because there are almost no employers in the North, he cannot turn his knowledge of the wilds to profitable account, unless he turns smuggler, whiskey-runner, or fur-poisoner.  The men know this.  Therefore, when an officer whose patrol takes him into the far ’back blocks’ is approached by a man like MacNair, with his pockets bulging with gold, what report goes down to Regina, and on to Ottawa?

“Yes, Miss Elliston, in the Northland there is law.  But the law is a fundamental law—­the primitive law of savage might.  The strong devour the weak.  Only the fit survive—­survive to be ruled, to be trampled, to be owned by the strongest.  And the law is the measure of might!  Primal instincts—­pristine passions—­primordial brutishness permeate the whole North—­rule it.

“The wolf and savage carcajo drag down the hunger-weakened caribou and the deer, and rip the warm, red flesh from their bones before their eyes have glazed.  And, in turn, the wolf and the carcajo, the unoffending beaver and musquash, the mink, the fisher, the fox, and the otter are trapped by savage man and the pelts ripped from their twitching bodies while life and sensibility remain.  They are harder to skin when cold.  And with the thermometer at forty or sixty below zero, the little bodies chill almost instantly if mercifully killed—­therefore, they are not killed, but flayed alive and their bleeding bodies tossed upon the snow.  They die quickly—­then.  But—­they have lived through the skinning!  And that is the North!”

Chloe Elliston shuddered and drew away in horror.  “Is—­is this possible?” she faltered.  “Do they——­”

“They do.  The fur business is not a pretty business, Miss Elliston.  But neither is the North pretty—­nor are its inhabitants.  But the traffic in fur is inherently the business of the North—­and its history is written in blood—­the blood and the suffering of thousands of men and millions of animals.  But the profits are great.  Fashion has decreed that My Lady shall be swathed in fur—­therefore, men go mad and die in the barrens, and the quivering red bodies of small animals bleed, and curl up, and stiffen upon the hard crust of the snow!  No, the North is not gentle, Miss Elliston——­”

“Don’t!  Don’t!” faltered the girl.  “It is all too—­too horrible—­too sickeningly brutal—­too—­too unbelievable!” She covered her eyes with her hand.

Lapierre answered, dryly.  “Yes.  The North is that way.  It has always been so—­and it always will——­”

Chloe’s hand dropped from her eyes and, she faced him in a sudden burst of passion.  Her sensitive lips quivered and her eyes narrowed to the rapier-blade eyes that were the eyes of Tiger Elliston.  She tore the roll of blue-prints to bits and ground them into the mould with the heel of her boot.