o trade one day out of seven."

"Is this Sunday?"

I suddenly recollected as far as we were concerned the past month had
been entirely composed of week-days.

"Out of your reckoning already?" asked the clerk with surprise. "Wonder
how you'll feel when you've had ten years of it."

Situated on the river bank, near the site of an old French post, Fort
William was a typical traders' stronghold. Wooden palisades twenty feet
high ran round the whole fort and the inner court enclosed at least two
hundred square yards. Heavily built block-houses with guns poking
through window slits gave a military air to the trading post. The
block-houses were apparently to repel attack from the rear and the face
of the fort commanded the river. Stores, halls, warehouses and living
apartments for an army of clerks, were banked against the walls, and the
main building with its spacious assembly-room stood conspicuous in the
centre of the enclosure. As we entered the courtyard, one of the chief
traders was perched on a mortar in the gate. The little magnate
condescended never a smile of welcome till the _Bourgeois_ came up. Then
he fawned loudly over the chiefs and conducted them with noisy
ostentation to the main hall. Indians and half-breed _voyageurs_ quickly
dispersed among the wigwams outside the pickets, while clerks and
traders hurried to the broad-raftered dining-hall. Fatigued from the
trip, I took little notice of the vociferous interchange of news in
passage-way and over door-steps. I remember, after supper I was
strolling about the courtyard, surveying the buildings, when at the
door of a sort of barracks where residents of the fort lived, I caught
sight of the most grateful object my eye had lighted upon since leaving
Quebec. It was a tin basin with a large bar of soap--actual soap. There
must still have been some vestige of civilization in my nature, for
after a delightful half-hour's intimate acquaintance with that soap, I
came round to the groups of men rehabilitated in self-respect.

"Athabasca, Rocky Mountain and Saskatchewan brigades here to-morrow,"
remarked a boyish looking Nor'-Wester, with a mannish beard on his face.
Involuntarily I put my hand to my chin and found a bristling growth
there. That was a land where young men could become suddenly very old;
and many a trader has discovered other signs of age than a beard on his
face when he first looked at a mirror after life in the _Pays d'En
Haut_.

"I say," blurted