Katherine. "That bank is always a beautiful
sight; but wait until you have seen the rhododendrons on the long
portage."

"Where is that--at Astor M'Kree's?" asked the young man, whose time
was too much occupied to admit of much exploration of the
neighbourhood.

"No, four miles farther up the river, and the portage is a mile and
a half long. Phil and I call it the backache portage," replied
Katherine.

"Why, do you deliver goods so far out? With no competition to be
afraid of, I should have thought you might have made your customers
come to buy from you," he said, frowning, for he knew very well
what kind of work was involved in a portage, and it did not seem to
him a fit and proper employment for a girl.

"But there is competition," laughed Katherine. "There is Peter
M'Crawney, with all the great Hudson's Bay Company behind him.
That is our most formidable rival, while up on Marble Island there
has been started a sort of United States General Stores and Canned
Food Depot. Of course, that is eight hundred miles away, and
should not be dangerous, but it makes more difference than anyone
might suppose."

"Well, it isn't round the corner of the next block at any rate,"
Jervis replied, laughing to think that trade could suffer from a
rival establishment so far away.

"Yes it is, only the block is a big one, you see," she answered,
and they all laughed merrily. When one is young, and the sun is
shining, it is so easy to be gay, even though grim care stalks in
the background.

"I thought that you and M'Crawney were rather in the position of
business partners than trade rivals," Jervis said, as, passing the
last bend of the river, he swung the boat along the stretch of
straight water to the store.

"In a sense we are partners; that is, we agree to work together,
and to supply each other's shortages in stores so far as we can.
But the rivalry is there all the same. Peter M'Crawney knows he
would sell three times the stuff that he does now if it were not
for us; while of course our hands would be freer but for him, only
we are tied to him, because half of our customers are able to pay
us only in skins, and then Peter M'Crawney is our Bank of Exchange."

Katherine could not forbear a grimace as she spoke, for peltry can
be a very odorous currency, and she had to examine every skin
closely before deciding what it was worth in flour, bacon, or
tobacco, because the red man is a past master in the art of
outwitt