s.

For five hours they paddled, then the last bend in the river and St.
Marys lay three miles ahead. Naqua, in the bow, reached up a withered
hand, caught at an overhanging branch and their old eyes took in a
scene familiar but yet strange. The sky line had changed, and up where
the big white water crossed the river like a flat bar there was cause
for wonderment.

Presently Shingwauk tapped the thwart with the haft of his paddle and
they glided on, past the lower end of the town with its new houses and
gardens, past a street car that moved like a noisy miracle with nothing
to pull it, being evidently animated by some devil enchained, past
Filmer's dock where years before Shingwauk and Naqua used to bring mink
and otter and marten for trade; past other docks newer and larger and a
town bigger than anything they had ever conceived, and opposite which
sharp-nosed devil boats darted about or swung at anchor, across the
deep bay that lay between the town and the big white water, till
finally they floated near the block-house and Shingwauk's eyes, gazing
profoundly at the massive proportions of Clark's buildings, caught the
narrow stone lined entrance to the little Hudson Bay canal.

"How," he grunted.

The canoe slid delicately forward till presently it floated in the tiny
lock. Naqua said nothing, being seized by an enormous fear that
clutched at her stringly throat and held her silent, but Shingwauk felt
something stirring in his breast. Here, surrounded by the confused
vibrations of the works, he resigned himself to ancient memories.
Putting out a brown hand he touched the rough walls, and at the touch
the year rolled back. He saw himself a young man, the bow paddle of a
great thirty-foot canoe that came down through the broken waters of the
big lake to the rapids above, with the Hudson Bay factor enthroned in
the middle, surrounded by the precious takings of the winter. He saw
Ojibway faces, now long forgotten, and smelt the smoke of vanished camp
fires. He saw the thirty-foot canoe lowered delicately into just such
a lock as this, and automatically thrust out his own paddle to protect
her tender tawny sides from the rough masonry. The hewn gates had
opened when he floated out, and here were the gates looking
non-understandably new, and with the adze marks still on the yellow
timber.

Involuntarily he cast about for the blockhouse and found it hard by.
He looked at his own hands--they were knotted and wrin