Thompson awoke to hospitable formalities.
"Have you had supper?" he asked.
"Stopped and made tea about sundown," Tommy replied. "Thanks just the same. Gad, but it was cold this afternoon. The air fairly crackled."
"Yes," Thompson agreed. "It was very cold."
He drew a stool up to the stove and sat down. Tommy got out his pipe and began whittling shavings of tobacco off a plug.
"Did you know that Carr and his daughter have gone away?" Thompson asked abruptly.
Tommy nodded.
"Donald Lachlan—I've been trapping partners with him, y'know—Donald was home a month or so since. Told me when he came back that the Carrs were gone. I wasn't surprised."
"No?" Thompson could not forbear an inquiring inflection on the monosyllable.
"No," Tommy continued a bit wistfully. "I was talking to Carr a few days after you and I had that—that little argument of ours." He smiled. "He told me then that after fifteen years up here he was inclined to try civilization again. Mostly to give Sophie a chance to see what the world was like, I imagine. I gathered from his talk that some sort of windfall was coming his way. But I daresay you know more about it than I do."