The three men looked at one another. Hospitality is a noble virtue, and a virtue peculiarly appropriate to the dwellers in remote and savage regions; but hospitality with these men meant a division of their few remaining days of life. And the last of those days might hold the chance of rescue. Who could tell? To share their shrunken stores with this stranger would be a kind of suicide. Yet the dictates of humanity prevailed. The stranger was not pleasant to look upon, nor especially conciliating in manner; but he was a fellow sufferer, and he must he sheltered. ‘Yes,’ says Lucius Davoren, ‘you are welcome to share what we have. It’s not much. A few days’ rations.’ The stranger takes a canvas bag from his neck, and flings it into a corner of the hut. ‘There’s more than a week’s food in that,’ he says; ‘dried reindeer, rather mouldy, but I don’t suppose you’re very particular.’ ‘Particular!’ cried Geoffrey Hossack, with a groan. ‘When I think of the dinners I have turned up my nose at, the saddles of mutton I have despised because life seemed always saddle of mutton, I blush for the iniquity of civilised man. I remember a bottle of French plums and a canister of Presburg biscuits that I left in a chiffonier at Balliol. Of course my scout consumed them. O, would I had those toothsome cates to-day!’ ‘Balliol!’ says the stranger, looking at him curiously. ‘So you’re a Balliol man, are you?’ There was something strange in the sound of this question from an unkempt savage, with half-bare feet, in ragged mooseskin shoes. The newcomer pushed aside the elf-locks that overhung his forehead, and stared at Geoffrey Hossack as he waited for the answer to his inquiry. ‘Yes,’ replied Geoffrey with his usual coolness, ‘I have had the honour to be gated occasionally by the dons of that college. Are you an Oxford man?’ ‘Do I look like it?’ asks the other, with a harsh laugh. ‘I am nothing; I come from nowhere: I have no history, no kith or kin. I fancy I know this kind of life better than you do, and I know how to talk to the natives, which I conclude you don’t. If we can hold on till this infernal season is over, and the trappers come this way, I’ll be your interpreter, your servant, anything you like.’ ‘If!’ said Lucius gravely. ‘I don’t think we shall ever see the end of this winter. But you can stay with us, if you please. At the worst, we can die together.’ The stranger gives a shivering sigh, and drops into an angular heap in a corner of the hut. ‘It isn’t a lively prospect,’ he says. ‘Death is a gentleman I mean to keep at arm’s length as long as I can. I’ve had to face him often enough, but I’ve got the best of it so far. Have you used all your tobacco?’ ‘Every shred,’ says Geoffrey Hossack dolefully. ‘I smoked my last pipe and bade farewell to the joys of existence three days ago.’ ‘Smoke another, then,’ replies the stranger, taking a leather pouch from his bosom, ‘and renew your acquaintance with pleasure.’