ere, and pick them up after I have left you at the steamer. You
see," continued he, "my people live about two miles on the other side
of the town, closer to the Hudson Bay post. I must go back and get
acquainted with my family."

"Have you any children, Alex?" asked Rob.

"Five," said Alex. "Two boys about as big as you, and three little
girls. They all go to school."

"I wish we had known that," said Rob, "when we came through town, for
we ought to have called on your family. Never mind, we'll do that the
next time we're up here."

They paddled on now quietly and steadily along the edge of the
marshes, passed continually by stirring bands of wild fowl, now
indistinct in the dusk. At last they saw the lights of the steamer
which was to carry them to the other extremity of Little Slave Lake.

And so at last, after they had gone aboard, it became necessary to
part with Alex in turn. Rob called his friends apart for a little
whispered conversation. After a time they all went up to Alex carrying
certain articles in their hands.

"If you please, Alex," said Rob, "we want to give your children
some little things we don't need any more ourselves. Here's our
pocket-knives, and some handkerchiefs, and what toffy John has left,
and a few little things. Please take them to your boys, and to the
girls, if they'll have them, and say we want to come and see them
some time."

"That's very nice," said Alex. "I thank you very much."

He shook each of them by the hand quietly, and then, dropping lightly
into the _Jaybird_ as she lay alongside, paddled off steadily into the
darkness, with Indian dignity now, saying no further word of farewell.

XXXII

LEAVING THE TRAIL

Continually there was something new for the travelers, even after they
had finished their steamboat journey across the lake on the second
day. Now they were passing down through the deep and crooked little
river which connects Slave Lake with the Athabasca River. They made
what is known as the Mirror Landing portage in a York boat which
happened to be above the rapids of the Little Slave River, where a
wagon portage usually is made of some fifteen or sixteen miles. Here
on the Athabasca they found yet another steamboat lying alongshore,
and waiting for the royal mails from Peace River Landing.

This steamer, the _North Star_, in common with that plying on Little
Slave Lake, they discovered to be owned by a transportation company
doing considerable b