and at Fort McPherson, close to the polar sea, from
twenty-two to twenty-three. And in December there are also these hours
of darkness. With light and darkness men change, women change, and life
changes. And Pierre and Henri and Jacques meet them all, but always
THEY are the same, chanting the old songs, enshrining the old loves,
dreaming the same dreams, and worshiping always the same gods. They
meet a thousand perils with eyes that glisten with the love of
adventure.

The thunder of rapids and the howlings of storm do not frighten them.
Death has no fear for them. They grapple with it, wrestle joyously with
it, and are glorious when they win. Their blood is red and strong.
Their hearts are big. Their souls chant themselves up to the skies. Yet
they are simple as children, and when they are afraid, it is of things
which children fear. For in those hearts of theirs is superstition--and
also, perhaps, royal blood. For princes and the sons of princes and the
noblest aristocracy of France were the first of the gentlemen
adventurers who came with ruffles on their sleeves and rapiers at their
sides to seek furs worth many times their weight in gold two hundred
and fifty years ago, and of these ancient forebears Pierre and Henri
and Jacques, with their Maries and Jeannes and Jacquelines, are the
living voices of today.

And these voices tell many stories. Sometimes they whisper them, as the
wind would whisper, for there are stories weird and strange that must
be spoken softly. They darken no printed pages. The trees listen to
them beside red camp-fires at night. Lovers tell them in the glad
sunshine of day. Some of them are chanted in song. Some of them come
down through the generations, epics of the wilderness, remembered from
father to son. And each year there are the new things to pass from
mouth to mouth, from cabin to cabin, from the lower reaches of the
Mackenzie to the far end of the world at Athabasca Landing. For the
three rivers are always makers of romance, of tragedy, of adventure.
The story will never be forgotten of how Follette and Ladouceur swam
their mad race through the Death Chute for love of the girl who waited
at the other end, or of how Campbell O'Doone, the red-headed giant at
Fort Resolution, fought the whole of a great brigade in his effort to
run away with a scow captain's daughter.

And the brigade loved O'Doone, though it beat him, for these men of the
strong north love courage and daring. The e