that went to make the life of a Company's man possible was there;
and there, too, were those with whom I had tented and travelled for
three long months,--eaten with them, cared for them, used for them all
the woodcraft that I knew. I could not think that it would be a young
man's lifetime before I set eyes on that scene again. Never from that
day to this have I seen the broad, sweet river where I spent the three
happiest years of my life. I can see now the tall shining heights of
Quebec, the pretty wooded Island of Orleans, the winding channel, so
deep, so strong. The sun was three-fourths of its way down in the west,
and already the sky was taking on the deep red and purple of autumn.
Somehow, the thing that struck me most in the scene was a bunch of
pines, solemn and quiet, their tops burnished by the afternoon light.
Tears would have been easy then. But my pride drove them back from my
eyes to my angry heart. Besides, there were my Indians waiting, and the
long journey lay before us. Then, perhaps because there was none nearer
to make farewell to, or I know not why, I waved my hand towards the
distant village of Lachine, and, with the sweet maid in my mind who had
so gently parted from me yesterday, I cried, 'Good-bye, and God bless
you.'"

He paused. Pierre handed him a wooden cup, from which he drank, and then
continued:

"The journey went forward. You have seen the country. You know what it
is: those bare ice-plains and rocky unfenced fields stretching to all
points, the heaving wastes of treeless country, the harsh frozen lakes.
God knows what insupportable horror would have settled on me in
that pilgrimage had it not been for occasional glimpses of a gentler
life--for the deer and caribou which crossed our path. Upon my soul, I
was so full of gratitude and love at the sight that I could have thrown
my arms round their necks and kissed them. I could not raise a gun at
them. My Indians did that, and so inconstant is the human heart that I
ate heartily of the meat. My Indians were almost less companionable to
me than any animal would have been. Try as I would, I could not bring
myself to like them, and I feared only too truly that they did not like
me. Indeed, I soon saw that they meant to desert me,--kill me, perhaps,
if they could, although I trusted in the wholesome and restraining fear
which the Indian has of the great Company. I was not sure that they were
guiding me aright, and I had to threaten death in cas