to stand alone, to face a small hostile
world, to have a surfeit of fighting. The station of Seven Islands
was the hardest in all the district of the ancient POSTES DU ROI.
The Indians were surly and crafty. They knew all the tricks of the
fur-trade. They killed out of season, and understood how to make a
rusty pelt look black. The former agent had accommodated himself to his
customers. He had no objection to shutting one of his eyes, so long as
the other could see a chance of doing a stroke of business for himself.
He also had a convenient weakness in the sense of smell, when there was
an old stock of pork to work off on the savages. But all of Dan Scott's
senses were strong, especially his sense of justice, and he came into
the Post resolved to play a straight game with both hands, toward the
Indians and toward the Honourable H. B. Company. The immediate results
were reproofs from Ottawa and revilings from Seven Islands. Furthermore
the free traders were against him because he objected to their selling
rum to the savages.

It must be confessed that Dan Scott had a way with him that looked
pugnacious. He was quick in his motions and carried his shoulders well
thrown back. His voice was heavy. He used short words and few of them.
His eyebrow's were thick and they met over his nose. Then there was
a broad white scar at one corner of his mouth. His appearance was
not prepossessing, but at heart he was a philanthropist and a
sentimentalist. He thirsted for gratitude and affection on a just basis.
He had studied for eighteen months in the medical school at Montreal,
and his chief delight was to practise gratuitously among the sick and
wounded of the neighbourhood. His ambition for Seven Islands was to
make it a northern suburb of Paradise, and for himself to become a
full-fledged physician. Up to this time it seemed as if he would have to
break more bones than he could set; and the closest connection of Seven
Islands appeared to be with Purgatory.

First, there had been a question of suzerainty between Dan Scott and the
local representative of the Astor family, a big half-breed descendant
of a fur-trader, who was the virtual chief of the Indians hunting on
the Ste. Marguerite: settled by knock-down arguments. Then there was a
controversy with Napoleon Bouchard about the right to put a fish-house
on a certain part of the beach: settled with a stick, after Napoleon had
drawn a knife. Then there was a running warfare with Vi