're slow!"

"Hello, fellows! Keep your hair on! If you want to send out for
catalogues in the middle of winter you're lucky if I get here at all.
Next month, if the second class bag's as heavy as this, I'll drop it
through an air-hole--I swear I will! So now you're warned! I got somepin
better to do than tote catalogues. When I die and go to hell, I only
hope I meet the man who invented mail-order catalogues there, that's
all."

"You're getting feeble, Ben!"

"I got strength enough left to put your head in chancery!"

"What's the news of the world, Ben?"

"Sarge Lambert's got a bone felon. Ally Stiff lost a sow and a whole
litter through the ice up there. Mahooly of the French outfit at the
Settlement's gone out to get him a set of chiny teeth. Says he's going
to get blue ones to dazzle the Indians. Oh, and I almost forgot; down at
Ottawa the Grits are out and the Tories in."

"Bully!"

"God help Canada!"

While Gaviller unlocked the bags, Ben went out to tie up his dogs and
feed them. The trader handed out letters to the eager, extended hands,
that trembled a little. Brightening eyes pounced on the superscriptions.
Gaviller himself had a daughter outside being "finished," the apple of
his eye: Captain Stinson had a wife, and Mathews the engineer, an
elderly sweetheart. The dark-skinned Gordon Strange, Gaviller's clerk,
carried on an extensive correspondence, the purport of which was unknown
to the others, and Father Goussard was happy in the receipt of many
letters from his confreres. Even young Stonor was excited, who had no
one in the world to write to him but a married sister who sent him
long, dutiful chronicles of small beer. But it was from "home."

The second-class bag with the papers was scarcely less exciting. To
oblige Ben they only took one newspaper between them, and passed it
around, but in this mail three months' numbers had accumulated. As the
contents of the bag cascaded out on the counter, Stonor picked up an
unfamiliar-looking magazine.

"Hello, what's this?" he cried, reading the label in surprise. "Doctor
Ernest Imbrie. Who the deuce is he?"

"Must have come here by mistake," said Gaviller.

"Not a bit of it! Here's the whole story: Doctor Ernest Imbrie, Fort
Enterprise, Spirit River, Athabasca."

It passed around from hand to hand. A new name was something to catch
the attention at Fort Enterprise.

"Why, here's another!" cried Gaviller in excitement. "And another! Blest
if half