s in that churlish fashion.
What about blast furnaces, Riggs? We haven't heard a whisper yet.
Wonder what Clark is thinking of?"

"Oh Lord!" murmured the little man, "if we only had iron!"

Fisette, who was dipping his dishes in a pot of hot water, turned his
head ever so slightly. The others had either forgotten about him or
concluded that their conversation was beyond a half-breed. But not a
word had escaped the sharp ears of the man who moved so silently beside
the fire. 'Iron!' They had iron, but apparently did not know it.
Fisette felt in his pocket for the small angular fragment he always
carried, and was about to hand it to Wimperley, when again he
remembered Clark's command. He was to say nothing to any one. So the
half-breed, with wonder in his soul, laid more wood on the fire and,
squatting in the shadow of a rock, stared at the stream now shrouded in
the gloom, and waited for what might come.

"But there's none in this damned country," blurted Stoughton, "so get
back to Birch's picture of the shareholders on the moss."

"Trouble is I can't get away from it." Riggs' small voice was so
plaintive that the others laughed, then dropped into a reverie while
there came the murmur of the hidden stream and the small unceasing
voices of the dusk that blend into the note which men call silence.
Very softly and out of the south drifted a melodious sound.

"Six o'clock at the works," drawled Birch, snapping his watch. "Does
that suggest anything?"

An hour later two buckboards drew up in front of the hotel and the four
stepped down, a little stiff, but utterly content. As Riggs took his
basket from Fisette, he coughed a little awkwardly.

"Look here, you fellows, I'm going to send my fish to R.F.C. with our
compliments. It's only decent."

"Well," remarked Birch reflectively, "you might as well. It's the only
compliment we're paying this trip."

A profound sleep strengthened their resolution, and when next morning
Clark announced that he had arranged a trip up the lake, they acceded
at once. In half an hour the company's big tug steamed out into Lake
Superior, and the four, wrapped in big coats, for the water was like
ice and the air chill, waited for the hour when Clark should run dry.

"You're going back this evening?" he said as the vessel rounded the
long pine covered point that screened the rapids from the open lake.

Birch nodded.

"We'll get through by this afternoon. There isn't any mor