He began to whistle as he turned with his pail of water in the direction of a thin fringe of balsams a hundred yards away.

Close at his heels followed Miki.

Challoner, who was a newly appointed factor of the Great Hudson’s Bay Company, had pitched his camp at tie edge of the lake dose to the mouth of the creek.  There was not much to it—­a battered tent, a still more battered canoe, and a small pile of dunnage.  But in the last glow of the sunset it would have spoken volumes to a man with an eye trained to the wear and the turmoil of the forests.  It was the outfit of a man who had gone unfearing to the rough edge of the world.  And now what was left of it was returning with him.  To Challoner there was something of human comradeship in these remnants of things that had gone through the greater part of a year’s fight with him.  The canoe was warped and battered and patched; smoke and storm had blackened his tent until it was the colour of rusty char, and his grub sacks were next to empty.

Over a small fire title contents of a pan and a pot were brewing when he returned with Miki at his heels, and close to the heat was a battered and mended reflector in which a bannock of flour and water was beginning to brown.  In one of the pots was coffee, in the other a boiling fish.

Miki sat down on his angular haunches so that the odour of the fish filled his nostrils.  This, he had discovered, was the next thing to eating.  His eyes, as they followed Challoner’s final preparatory movements, were as bright as garnets, and every third or fourth breath he licked his chops, and swallowed hungrily.  That, in fact, was why Miki had got his name.  He was always hungry, and apparently always empty, no matter how much he ate.  Therefore his name, Miki, “The drum.”

It was not until they had eaten the fish and the bannock, and Challoner had lighted his pipe, that he spoke what was in his mind.

“To-morrow I’m going after that bear,” he said.

Miki, curled up near the dying embers, gave his tail a club-like thump in evidence of the fact that he was listening.

“I’m going to pair you up with the cub, and tickle the Girl to death.”

Miki thumped his tail harder than before.

“Fine,” he seemed to say.

“Just think of it,” said Challoner, looking over Miki’s head a thousand miles away, “Fourteen months—­and at last we’re going home.  I’m going to train you and the cub for that sister of mine.  Eh, won’t you like that?  You don’t know what she’s like, you homely little devil, or you wouldn’t sit there staring at me like a totem-pole pup!  And it isn’t in your stupid head to imagine how pretty she is.  You saw that sunset to-night?  Well, she’s prettier than that if she is my sister.  Got anything to add to that, Miki?  If not, let’s say our prayers and go to bed!”

Challoner rose and stretched himself.  His muscles cracked.  He felt life surging like a giant within him.