* * *
The story behind it all! That was the thing that thrilled me. Behind this roomful of strange, intent men in a London auction-room I seemed to see other men, the wild, uncouth men of youthful romance, out in the savage places of the earth and in the great loneliness of forests and ice. Hunters, trappers! Though we grow old and hard and inaccessible to all soft thoughts we will never lose our love for these. It is in our blood. We have all longed to be trappers, we have all longed to blaze the trail through the Canadian wilderness, to crack the ice on Great Whale River before we could catch our breakfast, to win home at last in a flurry of snow to the log cabin....
"Any advance on three hundred and fifty pounds?"
The baying of dogs in a white-sheeted world, the pine trees in shrouds; and then—silence...
"Four hundred. Any advance?"
The green glitter of ice and the drama of a man fighting the elements, fighting solitude, primitive, uncouth, his mind following the minds of beasts as a fox-hunter anticipates the mind of a fox.
"Five hundred! Any advance?"
Blood over the snow and a limp body, the cracking of whips, the dog team with its laden sledge, and—all in order that you, my dear, may wrap your tall, elegant self in a lovely fur coat!
"Going, going, gone!"
Crack!