child, a trader's life is a
very hard and not often a very satisfactory one--"

"Ay," broke in the father, desirous, if possible, to help the argument,
"and you'll find it a desperately wild, unsettled, roving sort of life,
too, let me tell you! full of dangers both from wild beasts and wild
men--"

"Hush!" interrupted Mr Grant, observing that the boy's eye kindled when
his father spoke of a wild, roving life and wild beasts.--"Your father
does not mean that life at an outpost is wild and _interesting_ or
_exciting_. He merely means that--a--it--"

Mr Grant could not very well explain what it was that Mr Kennedy meant
if he did not mean that, so he turned to him for help.

"Exactly so," said that gentleman, taking a strong pull at the pipe for
inspiration. "It's no ways interesting or exciting at all. It's slow,
dull, and flat; a miserable sort of Robinson Crusoe life, with red
Indians and starvation constantly staring you in the face--"

"Besides," said Mr Grant, again interrupting the somewhat unfortunate
efforts of his friend, who seemed to have a happy facility in sending a
brilliant dash of romantic allusion across the dark side of his
picture--"besides, you'll not have opportunity to amuse yourself, or to
read, as you'll have no books, and you'll have to work hard with your
hands oftentimes, like your men--"

"In fact," broke in the impatient father, resolved, apparently, to carry
the point with a grand _coup_--"in fact, you'll have to _rough it_, as I
did, when I went up the Mackenzie River district, where I was sent to
establish a new post, and had to travel for weeks and weeks through a
wild country, where none of us had ever been before; where we shot our
own meat, caught our own fish, and built our own house--and were very
near being murdered by the Indians; though, to be sure, afterwards they
became the most civil fellows in the country, and brought us plenty of
skins. Ay, lad, you'll repent of your obstinacy when you come to have
to hunt your own dinner, as I've done many a day up the Saskatchewan,
where I've had to fight with red-skins and grizzly bears, and to chase
the buffaloes over miles and miles of prairie on rough-going nags till
my bones ached and I scarce knew whether I sat on--"

"Oh" exclaimed Charley, starting to his feet, while his eyes flashed and
his chest heaved with emotion, "that's the place for me, father!--Do,
please, Mr Grant, send me there, and I'll work for you with all my