"You can't stop here," said the fellow, gruffly. "Why not?" "I've got no room." "Is there a road-house near by?" "I don't know." "You'd better find out mighty quick," retorted the young man, with rising temper at the other's discourtesy. "Try the next place below," said the watchman, hurriedly, slamming the door in their faces and bolting it. Once secure behind his barricade, he added: "If he won't let you in, maybe the priest can take care of you at the Mission." "This here town of Kalvik is certainly overjoyed at our arrival," said Fraser, "ain't it?" But his irate companion made no comment, whereat, sensing the anger behind his silence, the speaker, for once, failed to extemporize an answer to his own remark. At the next stop they encountered the same gruff show of inhospitality, and all they could elicit from the shock-headed proprietor was another direction, in broken English, to try the Russian priest. "I'll make one more try," said Emerson, between his teeth, gratingly, as they swung out into the darkness a second time. "If that doesn't succeed, then I'll take possession again. I won't be passed on all night this way." "The 'buck' will certainly show us to the straw," said "Fingerless" Fraser. "The what?" "The 'buck'--the sky-dog--oh, the priest!" But when, a mile farther on, they drew up before a white pile surmounted by a dimly discerned Greek cross, no sign of life was to be seen, and their signals awakened no response. "Gone!--and they knew it." The vicious manner in which Emerson handled his whip as he said the words betrayed his state of mind. Three weeks of unvarying hardship and toilsome travel had worn out both men, and rendered them well-nigh desperate. Hence they wasted no words when, for the fourth time, their eyes caught the welcome sight of a shining radiance in the gloom of the gathering night. The trail-weary team stopped of its own accord. "Unhitch!" ordered Emerson, doggedly, as he began to untie the ropes of the sled. He shouldered the sleeping-bags, and made toward the light that filtered through the crusted windows, followed by Fraser similarly burdened. But as they approached they saw at once that this was no cannery; it looked more like a road-house or trading-post, for the structure was low and it was built of logs. Behind and connected with it by a covered hall or passageway crouched another squat building of the same character, its roof piled thick with a mass of snow, its windows glowing. Those warm squares of light, set into the black walls and overhung by white-burdened eaves, gave the place the appearance of a Christmas-card, it was so snug and cozy. Even the glitter was there, caused by the rays refracted from the facets of the myriad frost-crystals.