It did last year. I couldn't bring a white
wife up here."

"Well, sir, it's a problem," said Peter with a weighty shake of the
head.

This serious, sentimental kind of talk was a strain on both partners.
Ambrose made haste to drop the subject.

"I believe I'll start the new warehouse to-morrow," he said. "I like
to work with logs. First, I must measure the ground and make a working
plan."

Peter was not sorry to be diverted. "Hadn't we better get lumber from
the 'Company' mill?" he suggested. "Looks like up to date somehow."

"A board shack looks rotten in the woods?" said Ambrose.

"You're so gol-durn artistic," said Peter quizzically.

Minot & Doane's store was a long log shack with a sod roof sprouting a
fine crop of weeds. The original shack had been added to on one side,
then on the other. There was a pleasing diversity of outline in the
main building and its wings. The whole crouched low on the ground as
though for warmth.

Three crooked little windows and three doors so low that a short man
had to duck his head under the lintels, faced the lake. The middle
door gave ingress to the store proper; the door on the right was the
entrance to Peter Minot's household quarters; while that on the left
opened to a large room used variously for stores and bunks.

Farther to the left stood the little shack that housed Ambrose Doane in
bachelor solitude, and a few steps beyond, the long, low, log stable
for the use of the freighters in winter.

Seen from the lake the low, spreading buildings in the rough clearing
among gigantic pines were not unpleasing. Rough as they were, they
fulfilled the first aim of all architecture; they were suitable to the
site.

The traveler by water landed on a stony beach, climbed a low bank and
followed a crooked path to the door of the store. On either hand
potato and onion patches flourished among the stumps.

From the door-sill where the partners sat, the farther shore of the
lake could be seen merely as a delicate line of tree tops poised in the
air.

Off to the right their own shore made out in a shallow, sweeping curve,
ending half a mile away in a bold hill-point where the Company's post
of Fort Moultrie had stood for two hundred years commanding the western
end of the lake and its outlet, Great Buffalo River.

To one who should compare the outward aspects of the two
establishments, Minot & Doane's offered a ludicrous contrast to the
imposing white buildings of