ing the white man, when it comes to a question of trade.

"The plan of bartering skins for stores is not a good one, and the
man who buys the skins ought not to be the one who sells the sugar
and tea," Jervis remarked in a dictatorial tone; but Katherine only
laughed at him, and said that he knew nothing whatever about the
red man of the Keewatin wilds, or he would never suggest cash
dealings.

"Still it will come, and the red man will be educated to a proper
appreciation of his privileges," Jervis maintained, with the quiet
obstinacy that Katherine had sometimes noticed in him before.

"I hope I shall be out of the trade before that time comes," she
said, as she guided the boat in to the landing place. "As soon as
Miles is able to take control of the store I shall return to my
proper avocation of school teaching--that is, always providing
there are children to be taught."

'Duke Radford sat in a cushioned chair at a sun-shiny window of the
kitchen. He looked up with a smile when his daughter entered the
room, and when she bent over him to kiss him he murmured: "Pretty
Katherine", and stroked her face caressingly; then he turned with
the pleased eagerness of a child to greet Jervis, whom he regarded
as a very good friend indeed.

Katherine sighed as she went back to help with the unlading of the
boat. It was a great comfort to feel that her father suffered
nothing either in body or mind, but sometimes she would have been
very thankful if she could have gone to him with her business
worries, and got his advice on things which perplexed her so much.
However, it was something to be thankful for that his burden of
apprehension was lifted so completely, and the thought of this
banished her tendency to sighing, bringing the smiles back instead.
Life might be hard, but while there was hope in it, it could not be
unbearable.

CHAPTER XIII

Mary

"Are you ready, Mary?"

"In one minute, Father. Let me see: three bags, a valise, a
hold-all, a portmanteau, two hatboxes, a camping sack, a case of
books, and a handbag. Oh dear, what a collection of things to look
after! How I wish we were like the dogs, dear creatures, which
grow their own clothes and have only their tails to hold up, or to
wag in sign of amity!"

The speaker was a girl of perhaps twenty, although she had one of
those quiet reserved faces which render difficult a correct
guessing of the age. She was standing in the porch of the Bellevue
H