“No?” Thompson could not forbear an inquiring inflection on the monosyllable.

“No,” Tommy continued a bit wistfully.  “I was talking to Carr a few days after you and I had that—­that little argument of ours.”  He smiled.  “He told me then that after fifteen years up here he was inclined to try civilization again.  Mostly to give Sophie a chance to see what the world was like, I imagine.  I gathered from his talk that some sort of windfall was coming his way.  But I daresay you know more about it than I do.”

“No,” Thompson replied.  “I’ve been away—­a hundred miles north of Pachugan—­for two months.  I didn’t know anything about it till to-night.”

Tommy looked at him keenly.

“Jolted you, eh, old man?” There was a quiet sympathy in his tone.

“A little,” Thompson admitted grimly.  “But I’m getting used to jolts.  I had no claim on—­on them.”

“We both lost out,” Tommy Ashe said thoughtfully.  “Sophie Carr is one woman in ten thousand.  I think she’s the most remarkable girl I ever came across anywhere.  She knows what she wants, and neither of us quite measured up.  She liked me too—­but she wouldn’t marry me.  Before you came she tried to convince me of that.  And I wasn’t slow to see that you interested her, that as a man she gave you a good deal of thought, although your—­er—­your profession’s one she rather makes light of.  Women are queer.  I didn’t know but you might have taken her by storm.  And then again, I rather imagined she’d back off when you got serious.”

“I was a fool,” Thompson muttered.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Tommy responded gently.  “A man couldn’t resist her.  I’ve known a lot of women one way and another.  I never knew one could hold a candle to her.  She has a mind like a steel trap, that girl.  She understood things in a flash, moods and all that.  She’d make a real chum, as well as a wife.  Most women aren’t, y’know.  They’re generally just one or the other.  No, I’d never call myself a fool for liking Sophie too well.  In fact a man would be a fool if he didn’t.

“She likes men too,” Tommy went on musingly.  “She knew it.  I suppose she’ll be friendly and curious and chummy, and hurt men without meaning to until she finds the particular sort of chap she wants.  Oh, well.”

“How’s the trapping?”

Thompson changed the subject abruptly.  He could not bear to talk about that, even to Tommy Ashe who understood out of his own experience, who had exhibited a rare and kindly understanding.

“I’ve been wondering if I could make a try at that.  I’ve got to do something.  I’ve quit the ministry.”

Tommy looked at him for a second.

“Why did you get out?” he asked bluntly.