ompany. An' now your losin' all your money, th'
bad furrin' comes hard on you--wonderful hard. I'm fearin' th' new
debt we'll all have t' start off next season with'll be a big un."

"What money did you lose, Bob? I hadn't heard of it," asked Shad, as
Ed passed out of the tilt to join Dick and Bill, who were cleaning the
snow from the roof of the tilt in anticipation of an early thaw.

"Th' money I has in th' bank t' St. Johns," explained Bob. "When Ed
comes back from th' Bay he brings me a letter from Mother sayin' th'
bank broke an' th' money's gone."

"That's bad!" Shad sympathised. "How much was there?"

"About twelve thousand dollars. But 'tain't so bad. We has th' traps,
an' th' new trails laid."

"But that was the capital you were to begin trading on?"

"Aye, but we'll have t' give th' tradin' up now. I'm thinkin' th' Lard
weren't wantin' us t' go tradin' or t' have th' money, an' I'm not
complainin', though I were wonderful disappointed when I hears of un
first."

Shad asked many questions, in the course of which he drew from Bob a
description of the air castles which Bob had been building, and which
had been so unceremoniously knocked down about his ears by his
mother's letter; of the poverty-stricken condition of the Bay folk,
which Bob in his big-hearted and youthful enthusiasm had hoped to
relieve; and of many other things which he had planned to do with his
fortune.

Though all this was of the past, and of little importance now, he had
intended to keep it a secret. But he and Shad had grown very close
together, and somehow Shad had a way of drawing from him even his most
sacred thoughts--and before Bob realised it he had bared his heart to
his friend.

"An' I were thinkin'," said Bob, after the sum-total of his shattered
plans had been disclosed, "when we was up on th' Great Lake, what a
rare fine thing 'twould ha' been for th' Injuns, if I hadn't ha' lost
th' money, t' make a tradin' station an' a cache o' grub up th' other
end o' th' Great Lake--seventy or eighty miles in from where Manikawan
dies--so when another bad year comes th' Injuns down that way could
get grub t' carry un out t' th' Ungava post. If they'd been a cache
there this winter, Manikawan wouldn't ha' died, an' a lot o' th' other
poor Injuns as must ha' died would ha' got out."

"That's so," agreed Shad. "What an amount of suffering it would have
saved! And the poor little Indian girl wouldn't have been sacrificed."

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