s but just to say that the terms he then made of three axes for
a beaver were thereafter adopted, and that his firmness saved the
Company many a cargo of these implements. His harangue produced an
immediate impression upon all save the humiliated brave, who declared
that, if the Assiniboines came hither to barter, he would lie in ambush
and kill them.

The French trader's reply to this was, to the Indian mind, a terrible
one.

"I will myself travel into thy country," said he, "and eat sagamite in
thy grandmother's skull."

While the brave and his small circle of friends were livid with fear and
anger, Radisson ordered three fathoms of tobacco to be distributed;
observing, contemptuously, to the hostile minority that, as for them,
they might go and smoke women's tobacco in the country of the lynxes.
The barter began and, when at nightfall the Indians departed, not a skin
was left amongst them.

BECKLES WILLSON: "The Great Company."

THE BROOK

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I m