erron suddenly laughed aloud, startling to flight the gravities of
the moment.

"If Sam here's got her figured out, I've no need to worry," he asserted.
"I'm with you."

"Very well," agreed MacDonald. "Remember, this must be kept quiet. Come
to me for what you need."

"I will say good-by to you now," said Galen Albret. "I do not wish to be
seen talking to you to-morrow."

The woodsmen stepped forward, and solemnly shook Galen Albret's hand. He
did not arise to greet these men he was sending out into the Silent
Places, for he was the Factor, and not to many is it given to rule a
country so rich and extended. They nodded in turn to the taciturn
smokers, then glided away into the darkness on silent, moccasined feet.

The night had fallen. Here and there through the gloom shone a lamp.
Across the north was a dim glow of phosphorescence, precursor of the
aurora, from which occasionally trembled for an instant a single shaft
of light. The group by the bronze field-cannon were humming softly the
sweet and tender cadences of _La Violette dandine_.

Instinctively the two woodsmen paused on the hither side of rejoining
their companions. Bolton's eyes were already clouded with the trouble of
his speculation. Dick Herron glanced at his comrade quizzically, the
strange cast flickering in the wind of his thought.

"Oh, Sam!" said he.

"What?" asked the older man, rousing.

"Strikes me that by the time we get through drawin' that double pay on
this job, we'll be rich men--and old!"

CHAPTER TWO

The men stood looking vaguely upward at the stars.

Dick Herron whipped the grasses with a switch he had broken in passing a
willow-bush. His mind was little active. Chiefly he regretted the good
time he had promised himself here at the Post after the labour of an
early spring march from distant Winnipeg. He appreciated the
difficulties of the undertaking, but idly, as something that hardly
concerned him. The details, the planning, he dismissed from his mind,
confident that his comrade would rise to that. In time Sam Bolton would
show him the point at which he was to bend his strength. Then he would
stoop his shoulders, shut his eyes, and apply the magnificent brute
force and pluck that was in him. So now he puckered his lips to the
sibilance of a canoe-song, and waited.

But the other, Sam Bolton, the veteran woodsman, stood in rapt
contemplation, his wide-seeing, gentle eyes of the old man staring with
the magnitude