before and after, he sifted the business thoroughly. For
he had a philosophical turn, and this may be said of him, that he never
lied except to save another from danger. In this matter he was cool and
impartial from first to last, and evil as his reputation was in many
ways there were those who believed and trusted him. Himself, as he
travelled here and there through the North, had heard of the Tall
Master. Yet he had never met anyone who had seen him; for the Master
had dwelt, it was said, chiefly among the strange tribes of the Far-Off
Metal River whose faces were almost white, and who held themselves aloof
from the southern races. The tales lost nothing by being retold, even
when the historians were the men of the H. B. C.;---Pierre knew what
accomplished liars may be found among that Company of Adventurers
trading in Hudson's Bay, and how their art had been none too delicately
engrafted by his own people. But he was, as became him, open to
conviction, especially when, journeying to Fort Luke, he heard what John
Hybar, the Chief Factor--a man of uncommon quality--had to say. Hybar
had once lived long among those Indians of the Bright Stone, and had
seen many rare things among them. He knew their legends of the White
Valley and the Hills of the Mighty Men, and how their distinctive
character had imposed itself on the whole Indian race of the North, so
that there was none but believed, even though vaguely, in a pleasant
land not south but Arcticwards; and Pierre himself, with Shon McGann and
Just Trafford, had once had a strange experience in the Kimash Hills. He
did not share the opinion of Lazenby, the Company's clerk at Fort Luke,
who said, when the matter was talked of before him, that it was all
hanky-panky,--which was evidence that he had lived in London town,
before his anxious relatives, sending him forth under the delusive flag
of adventure and wild life, imprisoned him in the Arctic regions with
the H. B. C.

Lazenby admired Pierre; said he was good stuff, and voted him amusing,
with an ingenious emphasis of heathen oaths; but advised him, as only
an insolent young scoundrel can, to forswear securing, by the seductive
game of poker or euchre, larger interest on his capital than the H. B.
C.; whose record, he insisted, should never be rivalled by any single
man in any single lifetime. Then he incidentally remarked that he would
like to empty the Company's cash-box once--only once;--thus reconciling
the preach