ito smudge before his lodge, and together they talked about
everything under the sun, or, at least, everything that in the Northland
is under the sun, with the sole exception of marriage. John Fox had come
particularly to talk of marriage; Snettishane knew it, and John Fox knew
he knew it, wherefore the subject was religiously avoided. This is
alleged to be Indian subtlety. In reality it is transparent simplicity.

The hours slipped by, and Fox and Snettishane smoked interminable pipes,
looking each other in the eyes with a guilelessness superbly histrionic.
In the mid-afternoon McLean and his brother clerk, McTavish, strolled
past, innocently uninterested, on their way to the river. When they
strolled back again an hour later, Fox and Snettishane had attained to a
ceremonious discussion of the condition and quality of the gunpowder and
bacon which the Company was offering in trade. Meanwhile Lit-lit,
divining the Factor's errand, had crept in under the rear wall of the
lodge, and through the front flap was peeping out at the two logomachists
by the mosquito smudge. She was flushed and happy-eyed, proud that no
less a man than the Factor (who stood next to God in the Northland
hierarchy) had singled her out, femininely curious to see at close range
what manner of man he was. Sunglare on the ice, camp smoke, and weather
beat had burned his face to a copper-brown, so that her father was as
fair as he, while she was fairer. She was remotely glad of this, and
more immediately glad that he was large and strong, though his great
black beard half frightened her, it was so strange.

Being very young, she was unversed in the ways of men. Seventeen times
she had seen the sun travel south and lose itself beyond the sky-line,
and seventeen times she had seen it travel back again and ride the sky
day and night till there was no night at all. And through these years
she had been cherished jealously by Snettishane, who stood between her
and all suitors, listening disdainfully to the young hunters as they bid
for her hand, and turning them away as though she were beyond price.
Snettishane was mercenary. Lit-lit was to him an investment. She
represented so much capital, from which he expected to receive, not a
certain definite interest, but an incalculable interest.

And having thus been reared in a manner as near to that of the nunnery as
tribal conditions would permit, it was with a great and maidenly anxiety
that she pee