Philip hastened to the stables, and, choosing one of the lighter
animals, was soon galloping over the trail toward the Little
Churchill. In his face there blew a cold wind from Hudson's Bay,
and now and then he felt the sting of fine particles in his eyes.
They were the presage of storm. A shifting of the wind a little to
the east and south, and the fine particles would thicken, and turn
into snow. By morning the world would be white. He came into the
forests beyond the plain, and in the spruce and the cedar tops the
wind was half a gale, filling the night with wailing and moaning
sounds that sent strange shivers through him as he thought of
Pierre in the cabin. In such a way, he imagined, had the north
wind swept across the cold barrens on the night that Pierre had
found the woman and the babe; and now it seemed, in his fancies,
as though above and about him the great hand that had guided the
half-breed then was bringing back the old night, as if Pierre, in
dying, had wished it so. For the wind changed. The fine particles
thickened, and changed to snow. And then there was no longer the
wailing and the moaning in the tree-tops, but the soft murmur of a
white deluge that smothered him in a strange gloom and hid the
trail.
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