After that, for a long time, they sat in silence, listening to the faint, all but inaudible sounds of an Arctic night and watching the world that seemed so new, so fresh, so ready for those who were good and kind and true. Can souls speak, though no words be uttered? Who knows? Joyce wondered, but did not speak.
It often happens that we go from joy to sorrow in a single hour. So it was with Joyce. Her hour with Jim had been one of transfiguration. To go from communion with a human companion to seek a four-footed friend might seem the imperfect ending of a perfect hour. But who can understand the heart of a girl?
Joyce was still wondering about the half-grown white fox. Why had he not come out to play?
She was not long in finding the answer. As they stepped into the moonlit playground of her little white friends, Jim’s keen eyes discovered a dark object. It was a steel trap. And in the trap was the baby white fox, quite dead.
“Who could have done that!” Joyce exclaimed, all but in tears.
“Some trapper.”
“But there are no trappers here; that is, I have seen only one.” She recalled the stranger she had followed by mistake.
“We’ll leave him a message,” said Jim.
Springing the jaws of the trap, he caught it by its chains, then crashed it so violently against the rocks that it flew in bits.
“No right to set it so close to our camp!” he grumbled, throwing it down.