at?" he asked
in return. "'Twas only to string Orcutt along, thinkin' he had me
bested till the last minute--then bring him up with a jolt. I didn't
know it would work out so lucky for me."

"How do you mean--lucky?"

"You wait an' see," grinned McNabb. "D'ye know, Orcutt offered me ten
thousand dollars for my tote-road? An' it cost me a hundred thousand!"

A long silence followed McNabb's words, during which Hedin cleared his
throat several times. The older man smoked his pipe, and cast covert
glances out of the tail of his eye. Finally he spoke. "What's on
ye're mind, lad? Speak out."

Hedin hesitated a moment and plunged into the thing he had dreaded to
say. "Mr. McNabb, I've been up here several months now--" he
hesitated, and as the other made no comment, proceeded. "I have come
to like the country. It--I don't think--that is, I don't want to go
back to Terrace City. You can understand, can't you? You have lived
in the North. I wasn't born to be a clerk. I hate it! My father was
a real man. He lived, and he died like a man. This is a man's
country. I am going to stay." Hedin had expected an outburst of
temper, and had steeled himself to withstand it. Instead, Old John
McNabb nodded slowly as he continued to puff at his pipe.

"So ye're tired of workin' for me. Ye want to quit----"

"It isn't that. I would rather work for you than any man I ever knew.
You have been like a father to me. You will never know how I have
appreciated that. I know it seems ungrateful. But the North has got
me. I never again could do your work justice. My heart wouldn't be in
my work. It would be here."

"An' will ye keep on workin' for Murchison? What will he pay ye?"

"It isn't the pay. I don't care about that. I have no one but myself
to think of. And Murchison said that with my knowledge of fur the
Company would soon give me a post of my own."

"But--what of the future, lad?"

Hedin shrugged. "All I ask of the future," he answered, and McNabb
noted just a touch of bitterness in the tone, "is that I may live it in
the North."

"H-m-m," said McNabb, knocking the ashes from his pipe, "I guess the
North has got ye, lad. An' I'm afraid it's got Jean. The lass has
been rantin' about it ever since we left the railway. But--who is
that? Yonder, just goin' into the post? My old eyes ain't so good in
the twilight."

"Wentworth!" exclaimed Hedin, leaping to his feet. "Come on! The time
has c