ip on coal-fields. Six months I spent
among the Indians, French, and half-breeds. I lived with them, trapped
and hunted with them, and picked up a little Cree and French. The life
suited me. I became a northerner in heart and soul, if not quite yet in
full experience. Clubs and balls and cities grew to be only memories.
You know how I have always hated that hothouse sort of existence, and
you know that same world of clubs and balls and cities has gripped at
my throat, downing me again and again, as though it returned my
sentiment with interest. Up here I learned to hate it more than ever. I
was completely happy. And then--"

He had refolded the map, and drew another from the bundle of papers. It
was drawn in pencil.

"And then, Greggy," he went on, smoothing out this map where the other
had been, "I struck my chance. It fairly clubbed me into recognizing
it. It came in the middle of the night, and I sat up with a camp-fire
laughing at me through the flap in my tent, stunned by the knockout it
had given me. It seemed, at first, as though a gold-mine had walked up
and laid itself down at my feet, and I wondered how there could be so
many silly fools in this world of ours. Take a look at that map,
Greggy. What do you see?"

Gregson had listened like one under a spell. It was one of his careless
boasts that situations could not faze him, that he was immune to
outward betrayals of sensation. This seeming indifference--his
light-toned attitude in the face of most serious affairs would have
made a failure of him in many things. But his tense interest did not
hide itself now. A cigarette remained unlighted between his fingers.
His eyes never took themselves for an instant from his companion's
face. Something that Whittemore had not yet said thrilled him. He
looked at the map.

"There's not much to see," he said, "but lakes and rivers."

"You're right," exclaimed Philip, jumping suddenly from his chair and
beginning to walk back and forth across the cabin. "Lakes and
rivers--hundreds of them--thousands of them! Greggy, there are more
than three thousand lakes between here and civilization and within
forty miles of the new railroad. And nine out of ten of those lakes are
so full of fish that the bears along 'em smell fishy. Whitefish,
Gregson--whitefish and trout. There is a fresh-water area represented
on that map three times as large as the whole of the five Great Lakes,
and yet the Canadians and the government have never