"You're a clean thousand miles straight north of the
kind o' civilization you was born in, and I want to know how you got
here. By George--is it possible--you got mixed up in that box of stuff
SHE sent up? Did you come from HER?"
He made a sudden movement, as if he expected an answer, and in a flash
the mouse had scurried off the table and had disappeared under his bunk.
"The little cuss!" said Falkner. "He's sure got his nerve!"
He went on eating his beans, and when he had done he lighted a lamp, for
the half Arctic darkness was falling early, and began to clear away the
dishes. When he had done he put a scrap of bannock and a few beans on the
corner of the table.
"I'll bet he's hungry, the little cuss," he said. "A thousand miles--in
that box!"
He sat down close to the sheet-iron box stove, which was glowing red-hot,
and filled his pipe. Kerosene was a precious commodity, and he had turned
down the lamp wick until he was mostly in gloom. Outside a storm was
wailing down across the Barrens from the North. He could hear the swish
of the spruce-boughs overhead, and those moaning, half-shrieking sounds
that always came with storm from out of the North, and sometimes fooled
even him into thinking they were human cries. They had seemed more and
more human to him during the past three days, and he was growing afraid.
Once or twice strange thoughts had come into his head, and he had tried
to fight them down.
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