from the pipe.

"The wind in the woods aisles is full of words, my brothers," he said,
in his own tongue, "and tales flit down the lakes like the leaves in
autumn. From the Saskatchewan come the French, who tell the Assiniboines
that at their posts will be given four axes for one beaver, eight pounds
of shot and four of powder. Yet thy brothers come down from their lodges
to Fort de Seviere because of the love they bear to you, and for the
fairness in trade that never varies. Many beavers are in the packs, much
marten and fox and ermine. We will do good trade. Guns that are light
and neat shaped to the hand, with good locks. Also much tobacco and
sweet fruits. Of these things we are sure,--also are we sure of the
next year and the next. Therefore do we come down the rivers to the
Assiniboine.

"The tales that flit in the forest, my brothers, tell of a new fort of
the French far, far to the northwest on the shores of the Slave Lake,
whose factor is of the name Living Stone. Also there are whispers that
fly like the wintering birds of new people, fair-skinned and red in the
cheeks, who come into the upper country from the west where lies the Big
Water. These are strange people, like none that trade with the Indians,
who are neither friends to the English, nor yet the French, but strive
for barter with those tribes that come up from the Blackfeet Hills and
down from the frozen regions of the North with bearskins, the one, and
seal and sea-otter, the other.

"A runner of the Saulteurs, resting in the lodges of the Assiniboines,
has told Quamenoka of their strange customs, their hardness, and their
shut forts guarded with suspicion and sentinelled with fear."

He ceased a moment and smoked in silence.

No breath of sound broke the stillness, for this was ceremony and of
great dignity.

Only McElroy was acutely conscious of the figure in the doorway and the
peering face of the girl, so full of hushed intensity.

"Also do we bring word of a great tribe, the Nakonkirhirinons, living
far beyond the River Oujuragatchousibi, who this year journey down to
Fort de Seviere with many furs,--more than all that will come from
the Assiniboines, the Crees, the Ojibways, and the Migichihilinons put
together.

"Past York and Churchill on the Great Bay they come, because of unfair
dealings which met them at those places last year and the year before,
down to the country of the Assiniboines, in whose lodges they will eat
the great