In the evening, when the stove glowed hot, and a cotton wick sputtered in a pan of caribou grease on the table, Falkner’s chief diversion was to tell the mouse all about his plans, and hopes, and what had happened in the past.  He took an almost boyish pleasure in these one-sided entertainments—­and yet, after all, they were not entirely one-sided, for the mouse would keep its bright, serious-looking little eyes on Falkner’s face; it seemed to understand, if it could not talk.

Falkner loved to tell the little fellow of the wonderful days of four or five years ago away down in the sunny Ohio valley where he had courted the Girl and where they lived before they moved to the farm in Canada.  He tried to impress upon Little Jim’s mind what it meant for a great big, unhandsome fellow like himself to be loved by a tender slip of a girl whose hair was like gold and whose eyes were as blue as the wood-violets.  One evening he fumbled for a minute under his bunk and came back to the table with a worn and finger-marked manila envelope, from which he drew tenderly and with almost trembling care a long, shining tress of golden hair.

“That hers,” he said proudly, placing it on the table close to the mouse.  “An’ she’s got so much of it you can’t see her to the hips when she takes it down; an’ out in the sun it shines like—­like—­glory!”

The stove door crashed open, and a number of coals fell out upon the floor.  For a few minutes Falkner was busy, and when he returned to the table he gave a gasp of astonishment.  The curl and the mouse were gone!  Little Jim had almost reached its nest with its lovely burden when Falkner captured it.

“You little cuss!” he breathed revently.  “Now I know you come from her!  I know it!”

In the weeks that followed the storm Falkner again followed his trap-lines, and scattered poison-baits for the white foxes on the Barren.  Early in January the second great storm of that year came from out of the North.  It gave no warning, and Falkner was caught ten miles from camp.  He was making a struggle for life before he reached the shack.  He was exhausted, and half blinded.  He could hardly stand on his feet when he staggered up against his own door.  He could see nothing when he entered.  He stumbled over a stool, and fell to the floor.  Before he could rise a strange weight was upon him.  He made no resistance, for the storm had driven the last ounce of strength from his body.

“It’s been a long chase, but I’ve got you now, Falkner,” he heard a triumphant voice say.  And then came the dreaded formula, feared to the uttermost limits of the great Northern wilderness:  “I warn you!  You are my prisoner, in the name of His Majesty, the King!”