out like so many flashing gems,
became fewer and fewer, until they were gone altogether. The poplar
buds swelled more and more in their joy, until they split like
over-fat peas, and the partridges feasted upon them.

And Mother Bear came out of her winter den, accompanied by her little
ones born two months before, and taught them how to pull down the
slender saplings for these same buds; and the moose came down from the
blizzardy tops of the great ridges, which are called mountains in the
North, and where for good reasons they had passed the winter, followed
by the wolves, who fed upon their weak and sick. Everywhere there were
the rushing torrents of melting snows, the crackle of crumbling ice,
the dying frost-cries of rock and earth and tree, and each night the
cold, pale glow of the Aurora Borealis crept farther and farther
toward the Pole in fading glory.

It was spring, and at Wabinosh House it brought more joy than
elsewhere, for there Roderick Drew joined his mother. We have not time
here to dwell on the things that happened at the old Hudson Bay Post
during the ten days after their first happy reunion--of the love that
sprang up between Rod's mother and Minnetaki, and the princess wife
of George Newsome, the factor; of the departure of the soldiers whose
task of running down Woonga ended with Rod's desperate fight in the
cabin, or of the preparations of the gold hunters themselves.

On a certain evening in April, Wabi, Mukoki and Rod had assembled in
the latter's room. The next morning they were to start on their long
and thrilling adventure into the far North, and on this last night
they went carefully over their equipment and plans to see that nothing
had been forgotten. That night Rod slept little. For the second time
in his life the fever of adventure was running wild in his blood.
After the others had gone he studied the precious old map until his
eyes grew dim; in the half slumber that came to him afterward his
brain worked ceaselessly, and he saw visions of the romantic old cabin
again, and the rotting buckskin bag filled with nuggets of gold on the
table.

He was up before the stars began fading in the dawn, and in the big
dining-room of the Post, in which had gathered the factors and their
families for two hundred years, the boys ate their last breakfast with
those whom they were about to leave for many weeks, perhaps months.
The factor himself was boisterously cheerful in his efforts to keep
up th