but facts are stubborn
things, and it is a fact that I am making dollars here like stones.
I'm a fur-trader, my boy. Have joined a small company, and up to this
time have made a good thing of it. You know something of the fur
trade, if I mistake not. Do come and join us; we want such a man as
you at a new post we have established on the coast of Labrador.
Shooting, fishing, hunting, _ad libitum_. Eating, drinking, sleeping,
_ad infinitum_. What would you more? Come, like a good fellow, and
be happy!

"Ever thine, J. MURRAY."

"I'll sell the _farm_," said Jack Robinson, folding the letter.

"You will?" exclaimed Joe. "What's your price?"

"Come over it with me, and look at the fixings, before I tell you," said
Jack.

They went over it together, and looked at every fence and stump and
implement. They visited the live stock, and estimated the value of the
sprouting crop. Then they returned to the house, where they struck a
bargain off-hand.

That evening Jack bade adieu to the Mountain House, mounted his horse,
with his worldly goods at the pommel of the saddle, and rode away,
leaving Joe, the trapper, in possession.

In process of time our hero rode through the settlements to Montreal,
where he sold his horse, purchased a few necessaries, and made his way
down the Saint Lawrence to the frontier settlements of the bleak and
almost uninhabited north shore of the gulf. Here he found some
difficulty in engaging a man to go with him, in a canoe, towards the
coast of Labrador.

An Irishman, in a fit of despondency, at length agreed; but on reaching
a saw-mill that had been established by a couple of adventurous Yankees,
in a region that seemed to be the out-skirts of creation, Paddy
repented, and vowed he'd go no farther for love or money.

Jack Robinson earnestly advised the faithless man to go home, and help
his grandmother, thenceforth, to plant murphies; after which he embarked
in his canoe alone, and paddled away into the dreary north.

Camping out in the woods at night, paddling all day, and living on
biscuit and salt pork, with an occasional duck or gull, by way of
variety; never seeing a human face from morn till night, nor hearing the
sound of any voice except his own, Jack pursued his voyage for fourteen
days. At the end of that time he descried Fort Kamenistaquoia. It
consisted of four small log-houses, perched on a conspicuous promontory,
with a flag-staff in the midst of t