face when there arose to reply a
lawyer and a doctor, each a constable in the rank and file.

Mrs. Leslie Wood of Athabasca Landing adds her quota to the Tales of a
Wayside Inn. We could have listened to her for a week and regretted
neither the rain nor the waiting scows. As a girl she remembers being
shocked at seeing men hold tin cups to the throats of newly-slaughtered
buffalo, drinking with gusto the warm blood.

"What are the two greatest things on earth?" Mrs. Wood, as a young girl,
asked the dusky disciples of her Sunday School class. "The Queen and The
Company," was the ready response. "And of these, which is the greater?"
Little Marten-Tail rubbed one moccasin over the other, and the answer
came thoughtfully in Cree, "The Company. The Queen sometimes dies, but
The Company never dies."

"The Company," of which the little girl spoke, "The Governor and Company
of Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay," deriving its charter in 1670
from the Second Charles of England, is the oldest chartered concern in
the world, with a present-day sphere of influence as large as Great
Britain, France, Spain, and Germany combined. From lone Labrador to the
Pacific littoral and from Winnipeg to the Frozen Ocean are scattered the
two hundred and fifty fur-trading forts of this concern in charge of its
two thousand strong silent servants. Last year it paid to its
stockholders a profit of forty-five per cent on the invested capital,
and for two hundred and thirty-nine consecutive years it has been
declaring dividends. The motto of the Company, _Pro Pelle Cutein_, is
prominently displayed at Athabasca Landing. Literally translated, the
phrase means "Skin for skin"; but why the promoters should have chosen
as war-cry the words which Satan used when fighting with the Lord for
the soul of Job, is not so apparent.

As we watch the trading goods being carried in the rain from warehouse
to scows, we think how, weaving its cross-Atlantic way through the
centuries and joining the periwigged days of the Stuarts to this day,
the one man-made thing that has persisted is this commerce-shuttle of
the H.B. Co.

In the days when The Company had its birth, the blind Milton was
dictating his message and the liberated Bunyan preached the spoken word,
the iniquitous Cabal Ministry was forming in England, and Panama was
sacked by Morgan the buccaneer. New York merchants of Manhattan met
every Friday at noon on the bridge over the Broad Street Canal for