Now, smoking his pipe of stone, which several times he refilled with dry tobacco obtained from the Post so far away, his eyes rested first upon his fagged dogs, then upon the slowly spreading pall of gray, northward above the hills. The question of the tenth trap was resting heavily upon Good-ground’s mind. Might there be anything held fast in its iron jaws, or would the machine be empty before his disheartened gaze, should he gather his forces together and press on against the rising wind for another three hours? The price to pay in risk to himself and his animals for whatever might be caught there, would be, indeed, the highest. With depleted provisions through another afternoon of struggle against the blizzard which was surely coming, a question arose in his experienced mind as to the actual possibility of its accomplishment. Should he turn about now and go down with the wind to the little shelter camp where he could spend the night, back on Round Lake, he would then be within a short day’s voyage of his home camp. There his sick family, brothers, sisters and mother, were comfortably and snugly housed in their warm tent, roofed tightly with birch-bark and lined with caribou skins, making it warm as the inside of his fur-lined mitten. But what if trap number ten should contain an animal, perhaps a sable or even a black fox, whose pelt would bring the profit he so badly needed?