an alongside a ramshackle pier, up the slippery
poles of which Bennie was instructed to clamber. Then, dodging rotten
boards and treacherous places, he gained the sand of the beach and stood
at last on Labrador. A group of Montagnais picked up the professor's
luggage and, headed by Holliday, they started for the latter's house. It
was a strange and amusing landing of an expedition the results of which
have revolutionized the life of the inhabitants of the entire globe. No
such inconspicuous event has ever had so momentous a conclusion. And now
when Malcolm Holliday makes his yearly trip home to Quebec, to report to
the firm of Holliday Brothers, who own all the nets far east of
Anticosti, he spends hours at the Club des Voyageurs, recounting in
detail all the circumstances surrounding the arrival of Professor Hooker
and how he took him for a gold hunter.

"Anyhow," he finishes, "I knew he wasn't a salmon fisherman in spite of
his rods and cases, for he didn't know a Black Dose from a Thunder and
Lightning or a Jock Scott, and he thought you could catch salmon with a
worm!"

It was true wholly. Bennie did suppose one killed the king of game fish
as he had caught minnows in his childhood, and his geologic researches
in the Harvard Library had not taught him otherwise. Neither had his
tailor.

"My dear fellow," said Holliday as they smoked their pipes on the narrow
board piazza at the Post, "of course I'll help you all I can, but you've
come at a bad season of the year all round. In the first place, you'll
be eaten alive by black flies, gnats, and mosquitoes." He slapped
vigorously as he spoke. "And you'll have the devil of a job getting
canoe men. You see all the Montagnais are down here at the settlement
'making their mass.' Once a year they leave the hunting grounds up by
the Divide and beyond and come down river to '_faire la messe_'--it's a
sacred duty with 'em. They're very religious, as you probably know--a
fine lot, too, take 'em altogether, gentle, obedient, industrious,
polite, cheerful, and fair to middling honest. They have a good deal of
French blood--a bit diluted, but it's there."

"Can't I get a few to go along with me?" asked Bennie anxiously.

"That's a question," answered the factor meditatively. "You know how the
birds--how caribou--migrate every year. Well, these Montagnais are just
like them. They have a regular routine. Each man has a line of traps of
his own, all the way up to the Height of Lan