ousers and
carried babies in large hoods hanging on their backs, did not dress
like any Eskimos that Bob had ever seen before. Nor had he ever before
seen the snow houses, though he had heard of them and knew what they
were. The dogs, too, were large, and more like wolves in appearance
than those the Bay folk used, and the komatik was narrower but much
longer and heavier than those he was accustomed to. He was surely in a
new and strange land.

More igloos were seen during the afternoon, but they were passed as
the first had been, and at night the party bivouacked in the open as
they had done the night before.

On the morning of the third day they passed into a stretch of barren,
treeless, rolling country, and before midday turned upon a well-beaten
komatik trail, which they followed for a couple of miles, when it
swung sharply to the left towards the river, and as they turned
around a ledge of rocks at the top of a low ridge a view met Bob that
made him shout with joy, and hasten his pace.

At his feet, in the field of snow, lay a post of the Hudson's Bay
Company.

XVIII

A MISSION OF TRUST

As Bob looked down upon the whitewashed buildings of the Post, his
sensation was very much like that of a shipwrecked sailor who has for
a long time been drifting hopelessly about upon a trackless sea in a
rudderless boat, and suddenly finds himself safe in harbour. The lad
had never seen anything in his whole life that looked so comfortable
as that little cluster of log buildings with the smoke curling from
the chimney tops, and the general air of civilization that surrounded
them. He did not know where he was, nor how far from home; but he did
know that this was the habitation of white men, and the cloud of utter
helplessness that had hung over him for so long was suddenly swept
away and his sky was clear and bright again.

A man clad in a white adikey and white moleskin trousers emerged from
one of the buildings, paused for a moment to gaze at Bob and his
companions as they approached, and then reentered the building.

As they descended the hill the Indians turned to an isolated cabin
which stood somewhat apart from the main group of buildings and to the
eastward of them, but Bob ran down to the one into which the man had
disappeared. His heart was all aflutter with excitement and
expectancy. As he approached the door, it suddenly opened, and there
appeared before him a tall, middle-aged man with full, sandy b