y with the _Empress's_ last trip of
the season from Quebec. I most generally make it for that reason. Your
first trip?"

"No."

"It's my nineteenth. You see," the stranger went on, "I can't spare
summer time. I'm too full gettin' orders out. I'm in the lumber
business. It's only with the freeze up I can quit my mills. Have a
cigar?"

Bull had no alternative. The man was there to talk, and his desire to do
so was frankly displayed.

"I won't smoke, thanks," Bull replied without offense. "It's too near
dinner."

"Dinner? There's a ha'f hour to the dressing bugle." The stranger
returned the elaborate case stuffed full of large, expensive cigars to
his pocket, and drew out a gold cigarette case instead. "Still I don't
blame you a thing. Cigars? Me for a cigarette all the time. I don't
guess any feller ever heard tell of tobacco, till he'd inhaled a good,
plain Virginia Cigarette."

Bull looked on while the man wasted half-a-dozen matches lighting his
beloved cigarette. He was not without interest. There was a slightly
Jewish caste about his face which was frankly smiling, and lit with
shrewd, twinkling dark eyes. He conveyed, too, somewhat blatantly, an
atmosphere of abounding prosperity.

Bull laughed as the cigarette was finally lighted.

"That's better," he said. "Now--you can inhale."

"Sure I can." The man's smile was full of amiability. "Inhale anything.
Say, up in the camps I've inhaled tea-leaves rolled in cracker paper
before now. Ever hit a lumber camp?"

"Yes."

"But not out West? British Columbia?"

"No. Only Quebec."

The stranger shook his head disparagingly.

"Quebec! Psha! Quebec ain't a thing. It ain't a circumstance," he said
complacently. "No, sir. The West. That's the place for lumbering. B.C.
West of the Rockies. Man, it's the world's greatest proposition. The
place you can spend a lifetime cutting ninety foot baulks, and lose
track of where you cut. Quebec's mostly small stuff," he went on
contemptuously, "pulp-wood an' that." He shook his head. "It's no place
for capital. And, anyway, the Frenchies have got the whole darn place
taped out. Oh, they're wise--the Frenchies. If a feller's lookin' to get
ahead of 'em he needs to stake out the Arctic, where you'd freeze the
ears of a brass image. The Frenchies got it all. The only big stuff lies
on Labrador, anyway. I know. I prospected. No, it's me for the big
hills, West. The big hills and the big waterways that 'ud leave Quebec
river