," whispered Grant, leaning across the priest,
and he knocked the boy's feet from under him bringing him down to the
bench with a thud.

"He needs more outdoor life, that young one! It goes to his head mighty
fast," remarked Cameron. "What were you saying about your hard luck?"
and he turned to the northern winterer again.

"Call that hard luck?" broke in a mountaineer, laughing as if he
considered hardships a joke. "We lived a month last winter on two meals
a day; soup, out of snow-shoe thongs, first course; fried skins, second
go; teaspoonful shredded fish, by way of an entree!"

The man wore a beaded buckskin suit, and his mellow intonation of words
in the manner of the Indian tongue showed that he had almost lost
English speech along with English customs. His recital caused no
surprise.

"Been on short, rations myself," returned the northerner. "Don't like
it! Isn't safe! Rips a man's nerves to the raw when Indians glare at him
with hungry eyes eighteen hours out of the twenty-four."

"What was the matter?" drawled the mountaineer. "Hudson's Bay been
tampering with your Indians? Now if you had a good Indian wife as I
have, you could defy the beggars to turn trade away----"

"Aye, that's so," agreed the winterer, "I heard of a fellow on the
Athabasca who had to marry a squaw before he could get a pair of
racquets made; but that wasn't my trouble. Game was scarce."

"Game scarce on MacKenzie River?" A chorus of voices vented their
surprise. To the outside world game is always scarce, reported scarce on
MacKenzie River and everywhere else by the jealous fur traders; but
these deceptions are not kept up among hunters fraternizing at the same
banquet board.

"Mighty scarce. Some of the tribe died out from starvation. The Hudson's
Bay in our district were in bad plight. We took six of them in--Hadn't
heard of the Souris plunder, you may be sure."

"More fools they to go into the Athabasca," declared the mountaineer.

"Bigger fools to send another brigade there this year when they needn't
expect help from us," interjected a third trader.

"You don't say they're sending another lot of men to the Athabasca!"
exclaimed the winterer.

"Yes I do--under Colin Robertson," affirmed the third man.

"Colin Robertson--the Nor'-Wester?"

"Robertson who used to be a Nor'-Wester! It's Selkirk's work since he
got control of the H. B."

"Robertson should know better," said the northerner. "He had experience
with us befo