“They’ll trade with me,” John Wull would say to himself, and be comforted, “or they’ll starve.” It was literally true. * * * * * In that winter certain gigantic forces, with which old John Wull had nothing whatever to do, were inscrutably passionate. They went their way, in some vast, appalling quarrel, indifferent to the consequences. John Wull’s soul, money, philosophy, the hopes of Satan’s Trap, the various agonies of the young, were insignificant. Currents and winds and frost had no knowledge of them. It was a late season: the days were gray and bitter, the air was frosty, the snow lay crisp and deep in the valleys, the harbor water was frozen. Long after the time for blue winds and yellow hills the world was still sullen and white. Easterly gales, blowing long and strong, swept the far outer sea of drift-ice—drove it in upon the land, pans and bergs, and heaped it against the cliffs. There was no safe exit from Satan’s Trap. The folk were shut in by ice and an impassable wilderness. This was not by the power or contriving of John Wull: the old man had nothing to do with it; but he compelled the season, impiously, it may be, into conspiracy with him. By-and-by, in the cottages, the store of food, which had seemed sufficient when the first snow flew, was exhausted. The flour-barrels of Satan’s Trap were empty. Full barrels were in the storehouse of John Wull, but in no other place. So it chanced that one day, in a swirling fall of snow, Jehoshaphat Rudd came across the harbor with a dog and a sled. John Wull, from the little office at the back of the shop, where it was warm and still, watched the fisherman breast the white wind. “Mister Wull,” said Jehoshaphat, when he stood in the office, “I ’low I’ll be havin’ another barrel o’ flour.” Wull frowned. “Ay,” Jehoshaphat repeated, perplexed; “another barrel.” Wull pursed his lips. “O’ flour,” said Jehoshaphat, staring. The trader drummed on the desk and gazed out of the window. He seemed to forget that Jehoshaphat Rudd stood waiting. Jehoshaphat felt awkward and out of place; he smoothed his tawny beard, cracked his fingers, scratched his head, shifted from one foot to the other. Some wonder troubled him, then some strange alarm. He had never before realized that the lives of his young were in the keeping of this man. “Flour,” he ventured, weakly—“one barrel.” Wull turned. “It’s gone up,” said he. “Have it, now!” Jehoshaphat exclaimed. “I ’lowed last fall, when I paid eight,” he proceeded, “that she’d clumb as high as she could get ’ithout fallin’. But she’ve gone up, says you? Dear man!” “Sky high,” said the trader. “Dear man!”