At the edge of every frozen marsh and lake Ungava Bob paused to reconnoitre for caribou, but always to be disappointed, and when he and Shad halted at sundown to pitch their night camp, no living thing had they seen.

Shad's small wedge tent was stretched between two trees, snow was banked around it on the outside, and a thick bed of boughs spread upon the snow within. Two short butts of logs were placed at proper distance apart near the entrance and inside the tent, the tent stove set upon them, and with an ample supply of wood cut and split, their night shelter, with a roaring fire in the stove, was warm and cosy.

The days that followed were equally as disappointing. The smooth white surface of the snow was unmarred by track of beast or bird. No living creature stirred. No sound broke the silence. The frozen world was dead, and the silence was the silence of the sepulchre.

"It's so quiet you can hear it," Shad remarked once when they halted to make tea.

"Aye," said Bob, "'tis that, and they's no footin' of even rabbits. I can't make un out."

On the afternoon of the third day after leaving the river tilt, they came upon the southern shore of the Great Lake of the Indians, and turning westward presently discovered Sishetakushin's wigwam.

The travellers received a warm welcome from the Indians. Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn were indeed noisy and effusive in their greeting. Manikawan radiated pleasure, but she and her mother, a large, fat woman, as became their status as women, remained in the background.

The Indians had killed some caribou early in the season, and jerked the meat. They had just killed a bear whose winter den they had discovered, and over the fire was a kettle of stewing beaver meat, upon which they feasted their visitors.

At the proper time Bob presented them with tea, Shad gave them each some tobacco, and then Bob told them of his proposed trading project.

"My people will be glad," said Sishetakushin, "and you will have much trade."

It developed in the course of conversation that the Indians were preparing to move at once to the Lake of Willows (Petitsikapau), to the northwest, in the hope of meeting caribou, for none had been seen by them since those they had killed in early fall.

They were to cache some of their provisions near the Great Lake; and when they had made a sufficient kill in the North to supply them with food, were to return to their cache near the Great Lake to trap martens, for in the more northerly country, where wide barrens take the place of forests, martens are rarely to be found.

"Bob, here's a chance I've been hoping for," said Shad, when Bob interpreted to him the Indians' plan. "Do you think they would be willing to let me go with them until their return here, if I gave them some tobacco?"

"They's no tellin', Shad, how long they'll be away," suggested Bob.

"But I want to go if they'll let me go. Please ask them," insisted Shad.

"But they may not be findin' deer, an' if they don't find un they won't be comin' back here till th' end o' winter. You don't want t' be with un th' rest o' th' winter, Shad; 'twill be rougher cruisin' than with us," Bob warned.

"Ask them. I'm going if they'll have me along;" a............