of his life, ten good dollars every month.  As for himself, he would sail away to some big city “up-along”—­to Boston, New York or London—­dispose of the necklace stone by stone, buy a great house and live in idle luxury.  He would dress like a merchant, eat hearty every day, drink deep and sleep warm.  He had heard of such things—­of men who never set their hands to a stroke of work from year’s end to year’s end.  He would live like a king and drink like a lord and, like the good father and husband that he firmly believed himself to be, he would send ten dollars to his wife every month.

With such exalted dreams as these did Foxey Jack Quinn occupy his mind as he hurried northward along the edge of the snowy barrens.  He had travelled about two miles when he suddenly became aware of the increased force and coldness of the wind.  Snow as dry as desert-sand and as sharp as splintered ice blew against his face, stinging his eyes (one of which was still half closed), and smarting the battered flesh of brow and cheek.  Then, for the first time, he realized that one of those dreaded storms out of the northwest was approaching.  But for the treasure in his pocket he would have faced about and returned to Chance Along; but as it was he drew his fur cap lower about his ears, wound a woollen scarf around the lower part of his face and held doggedly on his way.  The wind lulled for a little while, quieting his apprehensions.  His rackets were on his feet now and he pushed along briskly over the pallid snow, through the whispering dark.  He had covered another mile before the skirmishers of the storm rushed over him again out of the black northwest.  That bitter wind soaked through his heavy garments like water and chilled him to the heart.  Its breath of dry snow, embittered and intensified by its rushing journey across frozen seas and a thousand miles of frozen wilderness, blinded him, cut him and snatched at his lips as if it would pluck life itself from his lungs.  He turned his back to it and crouched low, gasping curses and half-choked prayers to the saints.  Then the full fury of the storm reached him, the dark grew pallid with flying snow-dust, and the frozen earth seemed to quake beneath his hands and knees.  For a minute he lay flat, fighting for breath with his arms encircling his face.  He knew that he must find shelter of some description immediately or else die terribly of suffocation and cold.  Surely he could find a thicket of spruce-tuck near at hand?  He staggered to his feet, stood hunched for a second to get the points of the compass clear in his mind, then plunged forward, fighting through the storm like a desperate swimmer breasting the surf.  He thought he was moving straight inland where he would be sure to stumble soon against a sheltering thicket.  But the onslaught of the storm had bewildered him.  He struggled onward; but not toward the twisted clumps of spruces.  His eyes were shut against the lashing of the snow and he held his arms locked