t and money to spend. He had backed himself,
single-handed, against the wilderness, and he had won. Again he
unrolled from a strip of caribou skin the fragment of ore Clark had
given him--the fragment he was to match--and laid it amongst the fresh
chippings at his feet. Only by size and shape could he distinguish it.

Now it may be assumed that Fisette forthwith threw his tattered hat
into the air and gave way to noisy manifestations of joy. He did
nothing of the kind, for in his hairy breast were combined the
practical side of his French father and the noiseless secrecy of an
Indian mother. There was much to be done, and he went about it with
voiceless determination. First of all he blazed a jack pine whose
knotted roots grasped nakedly at the ridge, and marked it boldly with
his name and the number of his prospecting license and the date, which
latter, he remembered contentedly, was the birthday of his youngest
child.

This accomplished, he disappeared in the bush and two hours later
reappeared bending forward under a pack strap whose broad center
strained against his swarthy forehead. And in the pack were a small
shed tent and his camping outfit. Making a tiny, smokeless fire of dry
wood, he cooked and ate, stopping now and again to listen intently.
But all he heard was the chuckle of a hidden spring and the insolent
familiarity of a blue jay, which, perched in a branch immediately
above, eyed the prospector's frying pan with a bright inquiring gaze.

By noon of the second day Fisette had blazed the enclosing boundaries
of three claims, along the middle of which for three quarters of a mile
he had traced the ridge of ore, and when corner posts were in, he
shouldered his pack and, stepping quietly to the river where his canoe
was hidden three miles away, began his homeward journey. He paddled
easily, squatting in the middle like his ancestors, and feeling a new
pleasure in the steady pressure of his noiseless blade. He did not
experience any particular sense of triumph, but when, six hours
afterward, he saw the glint of Lake Superior around a bend in the river
he laughed softly to himself.

IX.--CONCERNING THE APPREHENSION OF CLARK'S DIRECTORS

Move now to Philadelphia, long since linked with St. Marys by a private
wire, at either end of which sat the confidential operators of the
Company. The seed sown by Clark a few years ago had flourished
amazingly. Instead of the austerity of Wimperley's of