"Yes. But not because I am in the business for money. Josephine got me
into it because of her love for the forest people." He led the way into
his big study; and added, as he threw off his cap and coat:

"You know in all the world no people have a harder struggle than these
men, women, and little children of the trap-lines. From Labrador
westward to the Mackenzie it is the land of the caribou, the rabbit,
and the fur-bearing animals, but the land is not suitable for farming.
It has been, it will always be, the country of the hunter.

"To the south the Ojibway may grow a little corn and wheat. To the
north the Eskimo might seem to dwell in a more barren land, but not so,
for he has an ever abundant supply of game from the sea, seal in
winter, fish in summer, but here are only the rabbit, the caribou, and
small game. The Indians would starve if they could not trade their furs
for a little flour, traps, guns, and cloth to fight the cold and aid
the hunter. Even then it is hard. The Indians cannot live in villages,
except at a post, like Adare House. Such a large number of people
living in one spot could not feed themselves, and in the winter each
family goes to its own allotted hunting grounds. From father to son for
generations the same district has been handed down, each territory rich
enough in fur to support one family. One--not two, for two would
starve, and if a strange trapper poaches the fight is to the death,
even in the normal year when game is plentiful and fur prime.

"But every seventh year there may be famine. Here in the North it is
the varying hare, the rabbit, that feeds the children of the trap-lines
and the marten and fox they trap, and every seventh year there comes a
mysterious disease. One year there are rabbits in millions, the next
there are none. The lynx and the wolf and the fox starve, there are no
fur bearers in the traps, the trapper faces the blizzard and the cold
to find empty deadfalls day after day, and however skillfully he may
hunt there is no game for his gun. What would he do, but starve, if it
were not for the fur trader and the post, where there is flour, a
little food to help John the Trapper through the winter? The people
about us are not thin in the waist. Josephine has made a little oasis
of plenty where John the Trapper is safe in good years and bad. That's
why I buy fur."

The giant's eyes were flushed with enthusiasm again. He pushed the
cigars across the table to Philip,