rted and deceived! There was but one course to pursue, and
fortunately it proved the right one. "Can you give me a guide to Norway
House?" I asked the Hudson Bay Company's half-breed clerk. "Yes." "Then
tell Bear that he can go," I said, "and the quicker he goes the better.
I will start for Norway House with my single train of dogs, and though
it will add eighty miles to my journey I will get from thence to Red
River down the length of Lake Winnipeg. Tell Bear he has the whole
North-west to choose from except Red River. He had better not go there;
for if I have to wait for six months For his arrival, I'll wait, just to
put him in prison for breach of contract." What a glorious institution
is the law! The idea of the prison, that terrible punishment in the
eyes of the wild man, quelled the mutiny, and I was quickly assured that
the whole thing was a mistake, and that Bear and his dogs were still at
my service. Glad was I then, on the night of the 7th, to behold the
wooded shores of the Cedar Lake rising out of the reeds of the great
marsh, and to know that by another sunset I would have reached the
Winnipegoosis and looked my last upon the valley of the Saskatchewan.

The lodge of Chicag the sturgeon-fisher was small; one entered almost on
all-fours, and once inside matters were not much bettered. To the
question, "Was Chicag at home?" one of his ladies replied that he was
attending a medicine-feast close by, and that he would soon be in. A
loud and prolonged drumming corroborated the statement of the medicine,
and seemed to indicate that Chicag was putting on the steam with the
Manito, having got an inkling of the new arrival. Meantime I inquired of
Bear as to the ceremony which was being enacted. Chicag, or the "Skunk,"
I was told, and his friends were bound to devour as many sturgeon and to
drink as much sturgeon oil as it was possible to contain. When that point
had been attained the ceremony might be considered over, and if the
morrow's dawn did not show the sturgeon nets filled with fish, all that
could be said upon the matter was that the Manito was oblivious to the
efforts of Chicag and his comrades. The drumming now reached a point that
seemed to indicate that either Chicag or the sturgeon was having a bad
time of it. Presently the noise ceased, the low door opened, and the
"Skunk" entered, followed by some ten or a dozen of his friends and
relations. How they all found room in the little hut remains a mystery,
b