He turned for a look at the yellow windows of Sam Carr’s house.  It was a hollow, empty place now, one that he never wanted to see again, like a room in which a beloved person has died and from which the body has been carried away.  His eyes lingered on the dim bulk of the house, dusky black and white like a sketch in charcoal.

“Another bridge burned,” he said wistfully to himself.

He faced about, crossed the dividing fringe of timber, passing near the walls of his unfinished church.  A wry smile twisted his lips.  That would remain, the uncompleted monument of his good intentions, the substance of an unrealizable, impractical dream.

Beyond that, as he came out into his own clearing, he saw a light in his cabin, where he had left no light.  When he came to the door another toboggan lay beside his own.  Strange dogs shifted furtively about at his approach.  Warned by these signs he opened the door full of a curiosity as to who, in the accustomed fashion of the North, had stopped and made himself at home.

When the man sitting before the stove with his feet on the rusty front turned his head at Thompson’s entrance, he saw, with a mild turn of surprise, that his visitor was Tommy Ashe.

CHAPTER XIII

PARTNERS

“Hello, old man,” Tommy greeted cheerfully.  “How goes it?”

If it occurred to either of them that the last time they faced each other it had been in hot anger and in earnest endeavor to inflict bodily damage, they were not embarrassed by that recollection, nor did either man hold rancor.  Their hands gripped sturdily.  It seemed to Thompson, indeed, that a face had never been so welcome.  He did not want to sit alone and think.  Even apart from that he was uncommonly glad to see Tommy Ashe.

“It doesn’t go much at all,” he said.  “As a matter of fact, I just got back to Lone Moose to-night after being away for weeks.”

“Same here,” Tommy responded.  “I’ve been trapping.  Heard you’d gone to Pachugan, but thought it was only for supplies.  I got in to my own diggings to-night, and the shack was so infernally cold and dismal I mushed on down here on the off chance that you’d have a fire and wouldn’t mind chinning awhile.  Lord, but a fellow surely gets fed up with his own company, back here.  At least I do.”

Thompson awoke to hospitable formalities.

“Have you had supper?” he asked.

“Stopped and made tea about sundown,” Tommy replied.  “Thanks just the same.  Gad, but it was cold this afternoon.  The air fairly crackled.”

“Yes,” Thompson agreed.  “It was very cold.”

He drew a stool up to the stove and sat down.  Tommy got out his pipe and began whittling shavings of tobacco off a plug.

“Did you know that Carr and his daughter have gone away?” Thompson asked abruptly.

Tommy nodded.

“Donald Lachlan—­I’ve been trapping partners with him, y’know—­Donald was home a month or so since.  Told me when he came back that the Carrs were gone.  I wasn’t surprised.”