"Do you know where the break is?" the younger man asked.
"I don't know," said Jim, putting on his fur cap and old skin coat. "It mayn't be far off and it may be some distance. All I know is it's between here and the next shack."
"We found it hard to face the wind and there's more now."
Jim smiled. "One gets used to storms up here and the line must be mended. Some important messages from Ottawa are coming along."
He picked up some tools and when he opened the door the others heard the scream of the gale. The flames blew out from the snapping logs and an icy draught swept the room and roared in the chimney. Then the door shut, the fire burned steadily, and all was quiet in the shack.
"Our host excites one's curiosity," said the younger man.
"You mean he excited yours. You're an imaginative fellow, Dick."
Richard Halliday had remarked that since they reached the shack Mordaunt had not called him Dick and vaguely wondered why. Lance Mordaunt generally had an object. Dick doubted if he had been as sleepy as he pretended when he asked for his tobacco pouch.
"Oh, well," he said, "if we were in England, you wouldn't expect to find a fellow like this using his leisure to study old-fashioned French."
"We are not in England," Mordaunt rejoined. "When you judge Canadians by English standards you're likely to get misled. The country's, so to speak, in a transition stage; they haven't developed schools of specialists yet, and an intelligent man can often make good at an unaccustomed job. This fellow, for example, was a waiter."