At the fall of day, a storm rises in the hills. These seem to come close together and whisper, and the sound is like the whirr of swords.
Many people who are wise talk about storm spirits, so there must be such ... poor distracted beings who wring their hands and moan in black discord. It may be they are the souls of murdered folk, and those who have been executed, and they cry curses on all who live and love and laugh. You must be afraid of them if you are like me. My windows look down on the Valley of the Bow and out upon a riot of hills. There is nothing more beautiful in the girth of the Seven Seas, but, to-night, this scene is awesome and full of strangeness. The black clouds are laced with streaks of lightning, or it may be that the spirits thrust out red tongues in derision.
Lord, how it blows! and I am afraid of this thunder and the shouting of the storm. The wind grapples with the trees as though they were living creatures and it makes no difference that they crouch and cry for mercy. It is Bendan, the Pine Wrestler, who is out there, and when angry he can pluck up a young tree with his little finger or break it with a push of his shoulder. But he does not do this often; he only wrestles to make them strong.
It is better for a woman to go down to the great stone dining-hall with its yellow floor, where there is music, and dancing, and love-making. It is a pretty play even to the onlooker. Or in the big central rotunda, which is the heart of this hostelry in the hills, she will find "there is always fine weather," and "the good fellows" are from all over the world and have strange stories to tell Canadian folk who stay in the North. In the cavernous fireplace, spruce logs burn redly, and by their light you may decipher the words on the mantelpiece: "The world is my school; travel our teacher; Nature our book, and God our friend." Overhead, in the fourth gallery, a deep-voiced singer is taking us into captivity. Listen, then, for it is only in music that critics are taken captive: literature has no such thraldom. It is about a perfect day that the singer sings, and this is what she says—
"And this is the end of a perfect day,
Near the end of a journey too;
But it leaves a thought that is big and strong,
With a wish that is kind and true.
For Memory has painted this perfect day
With colours that never fade,
And we find at the end of a perfect day
The soul of a friend we've made."
CHAPTER XXV
THE OVERLAND TRAIL OF '98
Out of the North there rang a cry of Gold!—TOM McINNES.
Only this spring, a widow near Edmonton sold her quarter-section to a real-estate syndicate for eighty thousand dollars. She was one of the women who "stayed at home with the stuff" while her husband fared forth in search of gold at the time of the Klondike stampede in 1897-8. He died on the trail, and ever since the woman has ploughed the lone furrow both literally and metaphorically.