Toppy, at that fated moment, was out on the observation platform alone. There had been a row and Toppy had rushed out in a black rage. Within, the car reeked with the mingled odours of cigarette-smoke and spilled champagne. Out of doors the first snowfall of the season, faintly tinted by a newly risen moon, lay unmarked, undefiled. A girl—small, young, brisk and business-like—alighted from the car ahead and walked swiftly across the station platform to the narrow-gauge train that stood waiting. The anger and champagne raging in him had moved Toppy to one of those wild pranks which had made his name among his fellows synonymous with irresponsibility. He would get away from it all, away from Harvey Duncombe and his champagne, and all that sort of thing. He would show them! Toppy had stepped off. The Limited suddenly glided away. Toppy lurched over to the narrow gauge, and that was the last thing he had remembered of that memorable night. As the sun now revealed him, Mr. Robert Lovejoy Treplin, in spite of his deplorable condition, was a figure to win attention of a not entirely unfavourable sort. Still clad in mackinaw and hunting-clothes, his two hundred pounds of bone and muscle and just a little too much fat were sprawled picturesquely over the chair and table, the six-foot gracefulness of him being obvious despite his rough apparel and awkward position. His cap had fallen off and the sun glinted on a head of boyish brown curls. It was only in the lazy, good-natured face, puffy and loose-lipped, that one might read how recklessly Toppy Treplin had lived since achieving his football honours four years before. The sun crept up and found his eyes, and Toppy stirred. Slowly, even painfully, he raised his head from the table and looked around him. The crudeness of his surroundings made him sit up with a start. He looked first out of the window at the snow-covered “street.” Across the way he saw a small, unpainted building bearing a scraggly sign, “Hotel.” Beyond this the jack-pines loomed in a solid wall. Toppy shuddered. He turned his face toward the man behind the bar, who had been regarding him for some time with a look of mingled surprise and amusement. Toppy shuddered again. The man was a half-breed, and he wore a red woollen shirt. Worse, there was not a sign of a mirror behind the bar. It was distressing. “Good morning, brother,” said Toppy, concealing his repugnance. “Might I ask you for a little information this pleasant morning?” The half-breed grinned appreciatively but sceptically. “Little drink, I guess you mean, don’t you?” said he. “Go ’head.” Toppy bowed courteously. “Thank you, brother, thank you. I am sorely puzzled about two little matters—where am I anyway, and if so, how did I get here?” The grin on the half-breed’s face broadened. He pointed at the table in front of Toppy. “You been sleeping there since ‘bout midnight las’ night,” he exclaimed.