ill's" little white cottage at Ruddy Cove. His two
trunks--two new trunks, now--were there established with him, of
course; and they contained a new outfit of caps, shoes, boots,
sweaters, coats, gloves, and what not, suited to every circumstance
and all sorts of weather. Then began for Archie, Jimmie and
Billy--with Bagg, of the London gutters, sometimes included--hearty
times ashore and afloat. It was Bagg, indeed, who proposed the cruise
to Birds' Nest Islands.

"I said I wouldn't go t' Birds' Nest Islands," said Billy Topsail,
"an' I won't."

"Ah, come on, Billy," Archie pleaded.

"I said I wouldn't," Billy repeated, obstinately, "an' I won't."

"That ain't nothink," Bagg argued.

"Anyhow," said Billy, "I won't, for I got my reasons."[3]

David Grey, a bent old fellow, who was now long "past his labour," as
they say in Newfoundland, sat within hearing. Boy and man he had been
in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, as hunter, clerk, trader,
explorer, factor; and here, on the coast where he had been born, he
had settled down to spend the rest of his days. He was not an ignorant
man, but, on the contrary, an intelligent one, educated by service,
wide evening study of books, and hard experience in the great
wildernesses of the Canadian Northwest, begun, long ago, when he was a
lad.

"You make me think of Donald McLeod," said he.

The boys drew near.

* * * * *

"It was long ago," David went on. "Long, long ago," the old man
repeated. "It was 'way back in the first half of the last century, for
I was little more than a boy then. McLeod was factor at Fort Refuge, a
remote post, situated three hundred miles or more to the northeast of
Lake Superior, but now abandoned. And a successful, fair-dealing
trader he was, but so stern and taciturn as to keep both his helpers
and his half-civilized customers in awe of him. It was deep in the
wilderness--not the wilderness as you boys know it, where a man might
wander night and day without fear of wild beast or savage, but a vast,
unexplored place, with dangers lurking everywhere.

"'Grey,' he said to me when I reported for duty, fresh from
headquarters, 'if you do your duty by me, I'll do mine by you.'

"'I'll try to,' said I.

"'When you know me better,' said McLeod, with quiet emphasis, 'you'll
know that I stand by my word.'

"We dealt, of course, with the Indians, who, spring and fall, brought
their furs to the fort,