actory
business. It is true that the Moose that Walks had only to walk in
through that parchment window and help himself until he was tired. But
no, that would not do.

"'Ah,' my Christian friend will exclaim, 'Ah, yes, the poor Indian had
known the good missionary, and had learnt the lesson of honesty and
respect for his neighbour's property.'

"Yes; he had learnt the lesson of honesty, but his teacher, my friend,
had been other than human. The good missionary had never reached the
Hope of Hudson, nor improved the morals of the Moose That Walks.

"But let us go on. After waiting two days he determined to set off for
St. John's, two full days' travel. He set out, but his heart failed
him, and he turned back again.

"At last, on the fourth day, he entered the parchment window, leaving
outside his comrade, to whom he jealously denied admittance. Then he
took from the cask of powder three skins' worth, from the tobacco four
skins' worth, from the shot the same; and sticking the requisite number
of martens' skins in the powder barrel and the shot bag and the tobacco
case, he hung up his remaining skins on a nail to the credit of his
account, and departed from this El Dorado, this Bank of England of the
Red Man in the wilderness. And when it was all over he went his way,
thinking he had done a very reprehensible act, and one by no means to
be proud of."

If it were necessary further to establish the honesty of the forest
Indian, I could add many proofs from my own experience, but one will
suffice:

Years ago, during my first visit to the Hudson's Bay Post on Lake
Temagami, when the only white man living in all that beautiful region
was old Malcolm MacLean, a "freeman" of the H. B. Co., who had married
an Indian woman and become a trapper, I was invited to be the guest of
the half-breed Hudson's Bay trader, Johnnie Turner, and was given a
bedroom in his log house. The window of my room on the ground floor
was always left wide open, and in fact was never once closed during my
stay of a week or more. Inside my room, a foot from the open window, a
lidless cigar box was nailed to the wall, yet it contained a heap of
bills of varying denominations--ones, fives, and tens, and even
twenties; how much in all I don't know for I never had the curiosity to
count them--though, at the time, I guessed that there were many
hundreds of dollars. It was the trader's bank. Nevertheless, beside
that open window was the favouri