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Title: The test of Donald Norton

Author: Robert E. Pinkerton

Illustrator: J. Allen St. John

Release date: December 8, 2025 [eBook #77425]

Language: English

Original publication: Toronto: Copp Clark, 1924

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77425

Credits: Tim Lindell, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TEST OF DONALD NORTON ***

THE TEST OF DONALD NORTON

By ROBERT E. PINKERTON

THE COPP CLARK CO., LTD.

TORONTO, CANADA

COPYRIGHT, 1924

BY THE REILLY & LEE CO.

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

I.

A MYSTERY OF BIRTH

II.

THE PORTENT OF A DREAM

III.

THE MAKING OF A MAN

IV.

VICTORY AND PROMOTION

V.

A PILGRIMAGE FOR A FRIEND

VI.

DONALD MEETS A STRANGE GOD

VII.

DONALD LOSES A FRIEND

VIII.

RED SMEARS DONALD'S DREAM

IX.

CORRIGAL DRIVES HIS MEN

X.

NEE-TAH-WEE-GAN'S REVENGE

XI.

CORRIGAL BARES HIS SOUL

XII.

DONALD BUILDS A DEFENSE

XIII.

DONALD TASTES DEFEAT

XIV.

A FIGHT TO THE FINISH

XV.

A BITTER DAY FOR CORRIGAL

XVI.

FATE SAVES A CROOK

XVII.

A DUEL FOR FUR

XVIII.

JANET BARES HER HEART

XIX.

AGAINST GREAT ODDS

XX.

SUPERSTITION LENDS A HAND

XXI.

MILLINGTON'S PLOT FAILS

XXII.

THE REAL MAN WINS

XXIII.

NEE-TAH-WEE-GAN'S PROOF

XXIV.

NEE-TAH-WEE-GAN DIES

XXV.

HATE ENDURES TO DEATH

XXVI.

AT THE END OF THE TRAIL

The Test of Donald Norton

CHAPTER I

A MYSTERY OF BIRTH

A bear came out of the brush immediately behind the drying racks, attracted by the odor of curing fish. Once in the open she halted defensively, not because she had seen the man and woman near the falls but because of a sound beneath the roar of the water and because of something small and chubby and dimpled that was waving within six feet of her nose.

A baby, laced securely in his back cradle, had been set upright against a boulder. As the bear wrinkled her black nose and peered at this strange living thing with her small, beady eyes the infant waved both hands ecstatically.

The man and the woman, who had seen the bear when it emerged from the brush, did not move. Only their eyes proclaimed animation and those of both were bright with interest and delight. Even when the bear took a slow, stealthy step forward, wrinkling her nose curiously, they remained motionless. But the man's lips parted and he hissed the word, "Wee-sah-nah!"

The woman nodded almost imperceptibly and with suppressed excitement as the bear took another slow step forward, peering into the face of the gurgling child. Suddenly the great head swung swiftly around, the beady eyes stared at the man and woman for a moment and then with a grunt the huge animal turned and shambled back into the brush.

Instantly the man and the woman were confronting each other, both radiant.

"Muk-wah!" the woman cried. "A bear!"

"Wah-bee-muk-wah!" the man shouted excitedly. "A white bear!"

The woman's elation vanished and her black eyes widened in sudden terror.

"Kah-win!" she shrieked, uttering the negative with a panic stricken expression unattainable with the one-syllable English word.

The man stared at her in amazement. They had spoken in Ojibwa because it was the only language he knew. His first word, "wee-sah-nah," is not translatable unless it be construed as "personal totem." It denotes some animal which visits all Ojibwa children in their infancy, apparently coming to the camp for the sole purpose of seeing the child.

While they cannot tell clearly why they do so, Ojibwas treasure the name of this animal throughout their lives. The child's mother watches eagerly for its approach and it is never molested, even though the family be starving and the visitor is wanted for food.

No animal had ever come to look at Wen-dah-ban, the boy in the back cradle, and both Wazh-e-na-be, the man, and Nee-tah-wee-gan, the woman, were over-joyed when they saw the bear watching him. To them the curiosity of the animal was indicative of a profound and kindly interest in this particular child, a fact which made Nee-tah-wee-gan's terror the more inexplicable to her husband.

"She was white," he protested. "She was very old and the hair on her face had turned gray. It is not often a bear lives so long and it must mean something to the boy, perhaps that the white men will take him sometime and——"

"Kah-win!" (No!)

Nee-tah-wee-gan's fierce denial cut off his idle interpretation. She stood glaring at him, her face contorted with rage and terror. Wazh-e-na-be was accustomed to her shrill outbursts but never had he seen her thus. He stared for a moment and then glanced in wonder at the child.

"So you do not like it that the wee-sah-nah should have a touch of white," he said. "And you are afraid. Is it because you do not wish to lose the boy? Yet you never fondle him as do other mothers. I wonder," and a taunting note crept into his voice, "if the white bear does not tell the truth?"

"Kah-win! Kah-win!" Nee-tah-wee-gan's voice had risen to a shrill scream. "The boy is not white. His father was a white man but I am his mother."

Wazh-e-na-be's eyes lighted with vicious cruelty at this frenzied protestation.

"You have told me about the father," he said. "The boy was born when I took you for my woman and I did not care. But why did you say the boy was ill and always keep his face covered? Why did you make me leave Fort James? Why did you never go near the post or the other Indians after—"

He paused and grinned maliciously as she shrank from him.

"—after the house of the manager burned and his wife and son died in the fire?"

Nee-tah-wee-gan was paralyzed by terror. She could not take her eyes from Wazh-e-na-be's face. He continued to grin evilly and then suddenly his own eyes widened in astonishment.

"So that is what happened!" he cried. "I was a fool not to have seen it long ago."

He laughed more maliciously than before as his wife cowered in panic.

"And the child's father was white!" he taunted. "Yes, his father and his mother, too. You were the cook at Fort James. You lived in the dwelling house. You were there the night of the fire. And the body of the child they found with the white woman's! That was not hers. It was yours. You saved the other and kept it and you became my woman and made me find a new hunting ground so that no one would know."

He had begun with little more than a conjecture but before he finished he read confirmation in Nee-tah-wee-gan's utter terror and he grinned exultantly because he knew he was torturing her. Like most Ojibwas, he loved to watch others in torment and now he saw an unending means of entertainment through the long winter.

"A white child!" he jeered. "And you took it because you had lost your own. What a story to tell!"

He had turned away as he finished, back to his fishing, and he did not see the sudden stiffening of Nee-tah-wee-gan's body or the desperate, savage light in her black eyes.

She stood still, watching his every movement as he picked up the dip net, attached to a long pole, and walked to the edge of the rock that hung over the falls. Below him, she knew, the river plunged violently through a narrow gorge, the current twisted and flung aside by huge boulders.

And as she watched her terror left her. Her body, stiff with fear, now became tense with fierce passion. She leaned forward, eager and determined, as the man, catching a gleam of silver in the water far below, plunged in his net. He lifted it, a large whitefish struggling in the folds, but when he turned with a graceful sweep and deposited it on the rock beside Nee-tah-wee-gan she was stooping over to pick up her knife.

"A white child!" he taunted.

As if she had not heard, Nee-tah-wee-gan grasped the fish to slit it and place it on the drying rack, but the moment she saw that Wazh-e-na-be was again looking down into the water she started forward.

There was the stealth and cruelty of a cat in her movements. As the man stood there, waiting for another gleam of silver in the rushing water beneath, she crept up behind him, swiftly and with murderous fury. She saw his arms stiffen, caught the swift descent of the net and then as he leaned over the brink she hurled herself against him and he went out and down.

When the black head was no longer visible in the boiling water she turned away. Rage and fear had left her and she smiled triumphantly as she picked up the fish.

A week passed and an Indian paddled up the river. From the bend he saw Nee-tah-wee-gan, outlined against the blue October sky, as she stood on a rock above the falls and plunged a dip net into the roaring current. A frown crossed his face. He had believed this hunting ground unoccupied and he had come a long way to claim it for his own.

Later, when he emerged from the brush that flanked the portage trail and saw the drying racks heavy with the manna of the north, he frowned again. All this might have been his had he come sooner, and had he been blessed with a woman so industrious.

But the frown vanished and his eyes lighted expectantly when a high, shrill wail sounded through the roar of the falls. He turned to see Nee-tah-wee-gan huddled beside the door of her wigwam, a blanket over her head.

Nee-tah-wee-gan's acting was convincing. Her death howl was as dismal and depressing as any Pe-tah-bo, the man, had ever heard. He sat down and waited for half an hour. Then she lifted the blanket and started as if in amazement.

By sunset the simple arrangements were made. Nee-tah-wee-gan was without a man because hers had been careless at the brink of the gorge, when his moccasins were wet and slippery. She faced the winter without a hunter and provider. Pe-tah-bo, wifeless, lacking a place to hunt, believed the situation to be nothing less than miraculously arranged. The next morning he plunged into the winter's work, a sense of good fortune doubling his industry.

In many ways Pe-tah-bo was an excellent husband. He was good natured, fond of laughter and jests, and he lacked the savage cruelty of his race. He was richly endowed, too, with that Ojibwa characteristic, a love for children. He had never had any of his own and from the beginning he took great delight in Wen-dah-ban.

It was inevitable that he should discover that the boy's hair was not coarse, that his skin was fair, his features not those of an Indian. From the first he had seen that Nee-tah-wee-gan was a half-breed but even this did not explain the child.

"What is his wee-sah-nah?" he asked one day as he fashioned a snowshoe frame.

Nee-tah-wee-gan hesitated an instant. Then she said shortly,

"Muk-wah."

"That is good. It means he will be big and strong and a great hunter."

"Of course he will be a hunter!" Nee-tah-wee-gan cried.

Her vehemence startled him but when he looked up at her his eyes were squinting shrewdly.

"You have told me you once lived at Fort Bruce," he said. "All the post managers gather there in the summer. When there are so few white women it is natural that the men should turn to our people. And you were there."

"What do you mean?" Nee-tah-wee-gan demanded with just a trace of unsteadiness in her voice.

"Nothing," Pe-tah-bo laughed, "except it is as I thought. Wen-dah-ban's father was white."

The woman's black eyes were brilliant with sudden anger, but she had learned one lesson. With an effort she controlled herself.

"It is none of your affair," she snapped.

"No, and I do not care. You were not my woman then."

"He is my child, and an Indian," she rushed on. "He will always be an Indian, and a hunter."

Pe-tah-bo let the matter drop there for the time. When he took it up again it was not that he was doubtful of Wen-dah-ban's parentage. That had been explained to his satisfaction. But he did take a mischievous delight in referring to Wen-dah-ban's father because he saw that it angered Nee-tah-wee-gan.

"How you hate the white man!" he laughed one day. "Wouldn't he take you for his woman? Did you expect to live in the fort and have other women cook for you?"

"I would not live with the 'big trader' himself," she answered viciously.

"Who could it have been?" Pe-tah-bo mused, pretending great concern but watching her slyly. "Two years ago! I went to Fort Bruce that summer with the Kenogami fur brigade. The 'big trader' was there, and MacKar. I remember John Corrigal of Fort James, but he had just taken a white woman and would not look at a red one. Layard was not there, was he?"

"You'll never know," Nee-tah-wee-gan cried angrily. "It was my own affair."

He grinned and smoked his pipe in silence for a time, watching his wife's wrathful face. Then he turned to Wen-dah-ban, poking his finger at the boy's ribs and smiling contentedly when the child chuckled with mirth.

"But you will call him your son?" Nee-tah-wee-gan demanded suddenly.

Pe-tah-bo glanced at her in astonishment. She was no longer angry. She was pleading that he do this.

"Of course," he said good naturedly. "He is a fine boy. I would like to call him my son. I will make of him a good hunter. And I will watch his wigwam when it is time for him to fast, when he will learn Po-wah-gom, 'The Thing You Dream About.'"

Several times that winter Pe-tah-bo jested about the boy's father, but not with the cruel satisfaction of Wazh-e-na-be. Nor did he obtain the same result. Nee-tah-wee-gan became angry and delighted him with her outbursts, but she was crafty in her rage. She knew she had severed the last connection with Fort James and that no one in this distant place would guess her secret.

Pe-tah-bo, unsuspecting, content with his simple amusement, did not give the matter much thought. Nee-tah-wee-gan was proving a good mate and he possessed only an idle curiosity as to whom the white man may have been.

But when spring came and they were ready for the long journey to the fort with the winter's harvest of fur he was amazed by the woman's refusal to accompany him. It is the big event in the Indian's year, this journey to the trading post with its purchase of goods, the gathering of the band, the gossiping with friends and relatives, the long, sunny, lazy days in the great clearing.

Yet Nee-tah-wee-gan not only refused to go but she refused to give a reason. At last Pe-tah-bo loaded his canoe and departed, wondering and also a little angry because he had to do all the paddling and portaging, and cook his own meals.

He returned in the early fall, his canoe filled with supplies for the winter, his head with news of the trading and the gathering of the band and of his long journey as one of the crew of the fur brigade.

Year after year this continued. Each spring Nee-tah-wee-gan refused to go to the fort. Pe-tah-bo understood it was her hatred of a white man, which had become a hatred of all things white, that kept her away. Sometimes he poked fun at her. Always he marveled that this hatred had endured. It was incomprehensible to his easy-going nature.

Meanwhile Wen-dah-ban had graduated from his back cradle to a small bow and arrows, to a tiny paddle wielded in the bow of the canoe, to a lively interest in all the marvelous and attractive things about his home. But no brothers or sisters came to keep him company. Only on rare occasions did he ever see other Indians or their children. He never knew the glorious, romping summer days at the fort, when scores of wild youngsters played through the long days.

Buried in the depths of the wilderness, cut off even from his own small world, sensing from the beginning a coldness in Nee-tah-wee-gan's attitude, the little boy became at last a starved and lonely figure. He had been happy when still a romping child but as his sphere remained unchanging, as his growing mind began to reach out for other things than the isolated camp afforded, a cloud passed beneath the sun of childhood.

His eyes lost the brightness of anticipation, for no new delights unfolded before them. His spirit grew heavy, for there were no fresh joys to uplift it. Often he sat for a long time in the sun, staring across the lake, oblivious of his surroundings. Pe-tah-bo watched him thus one day and when at last a moose swam out from a point and the boy did not see it the man turned to his wife in astonishment.

"Wen-dah-ban has a spirit that leaves his body," he said in an awed tone. "He sits there, his eyes open, and yet he does not see the moose."

He marveled silently for a time and then he exclaimed with sudden inspiration:

"It is the white blood in him!"

"Kah-win!" Nee-tah-wee-gan cried so loudly Wen-dah-ban heard and looked around.

"But you are half white and his father is white," Pe-tah-bo persisted. "The boy is far more white than red. Why should he not be more like a white man? I remember a trader at the fort who sat thus, looking but never seeing. He was young and lonely. He suffered from the sickness of long, long thinking."

"And you believe Wen-dah-ban, too, is homesick," Nee-tah-wee-gan scoffed. "A boy who has never been away from his people."

"Perhaps that is it. Perhaps the white blood in him is crying. White men are different. They do wonderful things. They can make things we cannot make. They do not have to work hard as we do. Men paddle and cook and carry burdens for them."

"Yes," she agreed, "and why? They cheat and rob. They take what is ours. They take our women but scorn our children. They are liars, thieves—these white men."

Wen-dah-ban had crept close to listen and, as there is no seclusion either for the body or for the spirit in an Ojibwa home, it was inevitable that throughout his boyhood he should hear many things that troubled him. Unconscious of Pe-tah-bo's amusement in stirring Nee-tah-wee-gan to anger, he believed the entrancing tales of the white people and sensed something unfair in Nee-tah-wee-gan's bitter tirades against them.

"All my life I have traded with the men of the Hudson's Bay," Pe-tah-bo would protest, "and never have I been cheated."

"It is because you are a fool and do not know when they rob you," always was Nee-tah-wee-gan's retort.

Wen-dah-ban learned, too, in countless hours of gossip, that the families of all the other hunters made the long journey to the fort each summer, that all gathered in a huge clearing strewn with wigwams, that many children played games through the long, careless days.

But these things interested him only casually. It was in the white race, of which Pe-tah-bo seemed never to tire of telling, that his curiosity centered. As he grew older this theme occupied his thoughts more and more, until one day he was driven to expression.

"If my father was white and my mother is half white, then I am more white than Indian and I should be a white man," he said.

Pe-tah-bo, highly amused because of the effect he knew this would have on Nee-tah-wee-gan, burst into loud laughter but his mirth was quickly stilled by the fury of the woman's outburst.

For a time she was incoherent in her rage. Ten years of isolation and hatred had made a fearsome thing of her.

"You white!" she screamed at last. "You are an Indian. You are my son and I am an Indian. As long as you live you can never escape it. Tell a white man you are white and he would laugh at you."

The boy crept away, in abashed silence.

Once Pe-tah-bo brought forth a similar explosion. He had been talking at random and his hand was on Wen-dah-ban's head. A close bond had grown between them—Nee-tah-wee-gan's bitterness driving them together. As he idly stroked the boy's hair, he stooped suddenly and looked at it.

"See!" he exclaimed. "It is not all black like an Indian's. There is brown in it and it is softer. And his lips. They are thin. His skin is white beneath his shirt. His eyes are not nearly so dark as ours."

Nee-tah-wee-gan was beside herself with fury. She picked up a heavy knife and charged at her husband so quickly that he was forced to turn and flee. Wen-dah-ban, frightened by her murderous passion, ran into the forest and did not return for two days.

But Nee-tah-wee-gan's fits of rage did not affect the boy's desire to see these white people of whom he had heard so much and when he was thirteen years old he decided that he would act. He knew better than to broach the subject to Nee-tah-wee-gan but when Pe-tah-bo was ready for his annual journey to the fort Wen-dah-ban slipped away into the brush. An hour later he waved from a point far down the lake and the Indian, chuckling over the joke he was playing on his wife, took the boy with him.

It was as a journey around the world for a city youngster who had never been farther from his home than the city park. The four hundred men, women and children gathered at the fort frightened Wen-dah-ban at first. He was as shy as any animal of the forest, but his compelling curiosity and longing soon drove him forth.

He did not play with the other youngsters or listen to the men as they smoked and told stories of the winter's hunt or of their journeys to the great headquarters post with the fur brigade. The fort attracted and held him—the huge structures of logs, their white-washed sides glistening in the sunshine, the constant bustle and activity, the trade shop crammed with dazzling goods, and, most of all, the three white people.

Merton Layard was manager of the Hudson's Bay post at Kenogami. He had been there for several years with his wife, Evelyn, and their six-year-old daughter, Janet. Layard fascinated Wen-dah-ban. He went about confidently, with his head high. His words were sharp and quick, even in the Ojibwa language, and when he spoke men sprang to do as he told them.

To Wen-dah-ban, accustomed only to Nee-tah-wee-gan's shrill voice and bitter disposition and to Pe-tah-bo's careless good nature, knowing only the laxity and aimlessness of a savage's home, Layard was a superman.

And this conception of the white man was not wholly extravagant. The post manager was a splendid example of those youths who come in an endless stream from England and Scotland, their minds aflame with brilliant romance, their hearts eager for dazzling adventure. Dreams have painted the wilderness as a land of colorful deeds, its brown people as brave, wise and noble, life in its solitudes as a succession of glad hazards.

Those dreams endure. They continue despite hardship and isolation, despite monotony and disillusionment. And coupled with them there grows something else, something bigger, finer and more concrete. The Hudson's Bay Company is a stern parent, exacting and unsparing, but it is understanding, protective and beneficent. It demands much and it gives much. It pardons, humors and condones, and it enjoys a loyalty that borders on the fanatic.

The Hudson's Bay demands loneliness and it gives unlimited power. It insists that a man isolate himself from others of his race and it makes him a ruler over hundreds of childlike men and women. It places him in a position where he may be generous and fair, just and scrupulous. He is made law-giver, judge and executive and he becomes father of a people.

Behind him are two and a half centuries of achievement, a precedent that becomes a creed, a history that embraces deeds of cruelty and greed and yet stands resplendent because of the faith, the integrity and the enduring dreams of these Scotch and English lads who are lured to wide adventure and remain to be the real rulers of an immense empire. The almost bloodless story of Canada's Indians testifies to their fidelity to an ideal.

Merton Layard was one of the best of these silent, unsung barons of fur land. In his mind there was disillusionment but in his heart the early visions persisted. He knew the Indian to be a child, and he treated him as such, kindly and firmly, guiding, aiding and encouraging, by ruse if necessary but always with a beneficent purpose.

Yet when June came and dozens of wigwams lined the shore, when yellow bark canoes floated on the blue waters of the lake, when half-wild children romped and shrieked in the great, green clearing, when women laughed and gossiped and men stretched on the grass and smoked and talked in slow, measured tones, when trade goods—blankets, capotes, brilliant assumption belts, tobacco, kettles, gilling twine, yards of colored strouds, beads, guns, shot, powder, powder horns and bars of lead for bullets—when all these passed over the counter and the fur loft was piled with pelts—beaver, fox, otter, wolf, mink, bear, fisher, ermine, lynx, muskrat and wolverine—then all the colorful romance of Layard's boyish dreams returned and the north became a land of glorious adventure.

Yes, Fort Kenogami in June was a colorful place. For nine months each Indian family had been cut off from relatives and friends, struggling against cold and hunger, fighting desperately to exist. Now they came, one, two, three canoes at a time, from a hundred miles in every direction. Men chuckled, women shrieked greetings and jests. Laughter was everywhere. Happiness and contentment and comfort brought out the natural, mirth-loving spirits of these forest people.

They were as excited as children. The fur was to be traded, "debt" wiped out, and then would come the spending of the surplus in a glad, frantic riot of selection, rejection and vituperative family squabbles. A distant fur post in June is like an orphan asylum on a holiday.

It was into such a scene that Wen-dah-ban had been thrust and in those first astounding days that he encountered the color line and recognized that Nee-tah-wee-gan was not alone in distinguishing between the races. He had quickly discovered that the dwelling house in which the three marvelous white people lived was surrounded by a picket fence and that within this fence Janet Layard played.

Indian women hung about, marveling at the child's golden hair and coaxing her near enough so that they might feel of it. Youngsters pressed their faces close between the pickets but never did a hunter or his wife or children invade the yard, sacred to the smiling, happy, little girl of the golden hair and white and pink skin.

Wen-dah-ban spent long hours staring through the fence at Janet and her parents. From the time of his arrival he had been set apart as much by his history as by his own actions. He was known to every Indian at the fort as Nee-tah-wee-gan's child—the one she had kept hidden in the bush since infancy. For years he had been the subject of much wigwam gossip, and now that he had come to Kenogami at last he was the object of all the curiosity and cruelty that is characteristic of the Ojibwa.

A group of women would stop him as he passed, grasp him by an arm and form a circle about him.

"See that hair!" one would cry as she felt of it. "Soft like a mink's, and with the same brown in it."

"Like a white man's," another would protest. "The trader's hair is like that. And the eyes, too."

Purposely they acted as if he were a sled dog and discussed him as freely and impersonally.

"Look!" one would exclaim as she ripped open the boy's shirt and exposed the white skin beneath. "He must be nearly all white," and there would follow an obscene joke that brought a storm of laughter. Sex is almost the sole source of the Ojibwa's humor.

The first time the women stopped Wen-dah-ban he was gratified by their declarations that he appeared to be white. But he quickly sensed the ridicule and shrank from it even as it mystified him.

"Why do you laugh?" he burst forth one day. "The trader is white and he is a big chief. It is good to be white."

The women shrieked their mirth and gathered about him in a close circle. Like taunting children they bent down, felt of his hair, peered into his eyes.

"I know who it is that he looks like!" one exclaimed. "It is the 'big trader' himself who is his father."

"Kah-win!" another protested. "He walks like John Corrigal."

"A walk means nothing," a third declared. "It is the eyes. Do you remember Nicol MacKar? That is the man."

Something in the boy rebelled. He did not feel any disgrace but he resented ridicule of something that he felt to be so important, of something that was closest to his heart. In sudden fury he burst through the circle and escaped.

He went at once to the picket fence to watch Janet Layard at play. He wanted consolation. His yearning, empty heart craved something that he could gratify only by watching this white child.

As always, she seemed oblivious of his presence and then suddenly she approached him.

"You are the boy whose mother would not let him come to the fort," she said in Ojibwa.

He nodded.

"You have always lived in the bush and have never seen white people?"

Again he gave dumb acknowledgment.

"They say your father is white and your mother half white but that makes no difference. You are an Indian just the same."

Anger such as he had never known seized Wen-dah-ban. Nee-tah-wee-gan, in her wild outbursts, had often said the same thing and had cowed him with her vehemence. The Indian woman had silenced him with her ridicule but from this white child the statement was a taunt and a challenge and it brought forth a quick, passionate retort.

"Kah-win!" he exclaimed fiercely. "I am not an Indian. I am white."

Janet drew back, startled by the violence of his protest and a little frightened at the blazing wrath of this wild creature who stared through the picket fence. Then she turned and ran to the house.

CHAPTER II

THE PORTENT OF A DREAM

In the spring following Wen-dah-ban's journey to Fort Kenogami Pe-tah-bo advised the boy that it was time to go into the forest, build a small wigwam and remain there, fasting and alone, until he had dreamed. The boy responded eagerly. Not only had he absorbed the Ojibwa viewpoint but he had looked forward to this event as a portent of emancipation. Although it really marked the beginning of adolescence, he considered it the dawn of manhood.

Wen-dah-ban was large and strong. He could follow Pe-tah-bo all day on snowshoes, carry a fair burden on the portages, handle a canoe with skill, and hunt fur and food. Thus he entered upon his fast with something more than the Ojibwa boy's superstitious faith in its significance.

The suppressed longings of a starved childhood, the vague desire that had assumed distinct form at Fort Kenogami, and a growing ambition to abandon the ways of the people with whom he had always lived and to become a white man—all were associated in his mind with this auspicious period in the Indian's life.

Primitive though the custom is, it has a psychological foundation which has served to perpetuate it in the minds of the Ojibwas. Memories of boyhood, vague impressions, rise from the unconscious when freed from the repressive influences of everyday life. Things long forgotten by the parents are sometimes related with startling vividness and confirm the Indians' belief in the dream as a supernatural portent.

Thus Nee-tah-wee-gan and Pe-tah-bo waited impatiently in their camp as, day after day, Wen-dah-ban lay alone in his tiny birchbark wigwam. Sometimes Pe-tah-bo came and sat at a little distance to watch. Usually he brought a small piece of meat.

"But do not go near it or see that it is here until after the sun has set," he would say. "You may eat it when the sun does not watch you."

For a week Wen-dah-ban remained in the wigwam. At first his nights were peaceful and dreamless. Only during the day did visions come and he built frothy, exotic castles that floated entrancingly in the soft spring air—castles of white-washed logs inhabited by white people, castles in which he himself lived. When he became weak from hunger and his usually active body rebelled at the slothful existence, vague impressions flitted through his mind at night, although none remained with sufficient distinctness for him to reassemble them in the morning.

Wen-dah-ban strove desperately to remember these visions, for to the Ojibwas the fasting at the beginning of adolescence is of much significance. In this period the youth dreams of something that becomes a charm throughout his life. Invariably it is a thing with which he is familiar, as some forest creature, and afterward he kills one of these animals, dries the skin or a piece of it and carries it as a charm in his pind-gee-go-san, or medicine bag. It is called Po-wah-gom, "The Thing You Dream About."

The seventh night the boy was rewarded. A dream came that was so vivid and so real that he wakened before it ended. His imagination busy reconstructing it, adding and retouching and reshaping until it fitted more closely with his desires, he lay there until dawn and then arose and went back to camp.

Wen-dah-ban's return was an event in the bare, dreary lives of Nee-tah-wee-gan and Pe-tah-bo. They saw him coming along the shore that morning and waited, motionless and expectant.

When he stopped before them his eyes were bright and his face was radiant. He glanced once at good-natured Pe-tah-bo but it was to Nee-tah-wee-gan, crouching beside the fire, that he turned resolutely.

"I dreamed," he said.

She caught a certain defiance in his tone but her eyes were inscrutable as she arose and faced him.

"I dreamed," Wen-dah-ban continued slowly, "that I am white."

Nee-tah-wee-gan's body stiffened and then swayed backward. Her eyes were wide and staring.

"I dreamed that my father was white and that I will become a white man," the boy rushed on.

He was excited now and the fasting flame in his eyes was fanned to fresh brilliance.

"I dreamed that I am not to be an Indian but that I will become the manager of a fort for the great company and will live in a big house of the white men and have servants to paddle my canoe."

Nee-tah-wee-gan had retreated a step as the eager words rolled from his lips but when he stopped, breathless and jubilant, she sprang forward. The fear that had gripped her was gone. The venom that had seethed within her for so many years was suddenly unleashed. Incoherent at first, her rage crowding the shrill syllables into jumbled bursts of sound, she stood and screamed at him.

"You are not white!" she shouted at last. "You are an Indian and you always will be. A dream does not make you a white man. With an Indian mother you will never be anything except an Indian."

"But I have not told you all that I dreamed!" Wen-dah-ban exclaimed. "I dreamed that you are not my mother but that my mother was like the woman of the manager at Fort Kenogami."

Nee-tah-wee-gan staggered backward, holding out her hands as if warding off some unseen evil, and her eyes, glazed with fear, never turned from the eager face of the boy.

"I dreamed that my father and my mother lived in a fort with many Indian servants, that my father was one of the big men of the company," Wen-dah-ban continued.

"You dreamed that?" Nee-tah-wee-gan whispered hoarsely.

The boy nodded.

"And then, after that, you dreamed—"

"There was much thunder and lightning and everything was red as if—"

A scream from Nee-tah-wee-gan stopped the words. She sank to the ground and cowered before the boy. Pe-tah-bo, simple, kindly, superstitious as are all his people, was dumfounded by this action of the woman who had domineered his camp for so long—whose strong, hard, compelling spirit had shaped the course of his own and Wen-dah-ban's lives.

As Nee-tah-wee-gan remained prostrate, moaning and rocking back and forth, the man and the boy glanced at each other in bewilderment.

"I believe you dreamed the truth," Pe-tah-bo said in an awed voice.

"Kah-win!" Nee-tah-wee-gan screamed as she sprang to her feet. "The whole dream was a lie. He did not have a white mother. I am his mother, and he is an Indian. He always will be."

"But he dreamed this, the seventh night after he had begun to fast," Pe-tah-bo protested.

He and his people had accepted the portent of the fasting dream for centuries and never before had he heard such heresy.

But Nee-tah-wee-gan had regained her self-control. She squatted beside the fire and resumed her cooking.

"And what will he put in his pind-gee-go-san?" she asked scornfully. "Should he kill a white man and dry his skin and carry that as a charm?"

"This is my pind-gee-go-san!" Wen-dah-ban exclaimed as he struck his chest with all the dramatic fervor of the Ojibwa. "Here in my heart I will carry that dream always. I need no other charm."

He stood before them, his eyes burning with the brilliancy of his vision, his voice clear and high. He had fallen easily into the flowery phrases of the poetic people among whom he lived. Weak from his fast, seeing in his dream a fulfillment of the longing which had possessed him ever since his visit to Fort Kenogami the previous summer, his words were uttered with a fervor and an assurance which impressed the simple-minded Pe-tah-bo and left him staring dumbly.

But Nee-tah-wee-gan only glanced scornfully at the boy, her features twisted in an evil grin, and then resumed her cooking.

A few days later Pe-tah-bo prepared for his annual journey to the fort. When he was ready to depart Wen-dah-ban, carrying the bundle of furs he had caught in the previous winter, walked toward the canoe.

"I am going with you," he announced.

Pe-tah-bo glanced uneasily at Nee-tah-wee-gan, for he had learned to dread her outbursts.

"Go!" she cried scornfully. "Tell the white people you dreamed you are one of them and hear them laugh at you. Go and learn that the wind whispered lies in your ears while you were sleeping the fasting sleep. Go and learn that you are only an Indian, the son of Nee-tah-wee-gan."

Wen-dah-ban listened without comment and when she had finished he stepped into the bow of the canoe. Pe-tah-bo took the stern and they paddled away. As they rounded the first point the boy looked back. Nee-tah-wee-gan was crouched beside the fire staring at them.

It was thus that Wen-dah-ban left his childhood home. Despite his mother's farewell he was in ecstacy, yet he said nothing to Pe-tah-bo of what was in his heart. Not only had he learned to keep his thoughts to himself but he could not have explained the high resolve which gripped him, the urge which had sent him forth, an unkempt savage, to the home of the whites.

Soon after his arrival at Kenogami he followed Pe-tah-bo to the trade shop and handed out his furs to be graded as the other's were. But when Merton Layard announced the total, his eyes did not turn at once to the shelves as those of hunters always do. Neither did he make that first purchase of all Ojibwa boys, a rifle.

"I will not trade now," he said simply.

He turned and went out, leaving the manager staring after him.

"In fifteen years I've never seen that happen," Merton said to Emile Finlayson, his half-breed assistant.

"It is Nee-tah-wee-gan's boy," Emile replied as if the statement explained everything.

Being a good fur trader, Merton knew all the gossip about Nee-tah-wee-gan but the explanation was not enough.

"Strange lad," he said and went on with the trading.

It was the busiest time of the year for the manager and he did not think of Wen-dah-ban again, except to tell his wife of the incident, until after the fur brigade had departed for Fort Bruce, the headquarters post. Pe-tah-bo was one of the crew and the boy remained at Kenogami. The day after the three York boats, carrying the entire winter's catch of fur, had departed, Wen-dah-ban entered the trade shop.

"You have come to trade," Merton greeted him.

"No," Wen-dah-ban answered. "I do not need anything now."

Merton stared in amazement.

"What!" he said. "An Indian boy who does not need anything?"

"But I am not an Indian."

It was not a protest nor was it a declaration. Rather it was an announcement as if of a purpose. He stood there, a typical child of the wigwams, in shapeless moccasins, hatless, dirty, his scanty, ill-made clothing hanging grotesquely, and yet there was something in his eyes which gave the statement dignity.

For Wen-dah-ban's eyes were not the eyes of a native. They were clear and unafraid. Merton searched them for the shadows and the furtiveness of the aboriginal but they stared back steadily, glowing with a high resolve.

"I am not an Indian," the boy repeated, "and I have come to live with my own people."

"But Nee-tah-wee-gan is your mother."

"Her father was a Frenchman and my father was a white man. The white blood in me told me to come and live as the white man lives."

For a moment Merton studied him. There was none of the demanding insolence of the half-breed, presuming on a mixed heritage. In his years as a trader he had learned how to handle that, but this boy puzzled him.

"How do you expect to begin?" he asked kindly.

"I will work for the great company."

"But what can you do?"

"I will learn to do anything."

"You are too young to be a tripper. You don't know a word of English and——"

"But I can learn!" the boy broke in passionately. "My dream told me that I can be a white man."

"Your dream?" Merton repeated.

"Yes. This spring I fasted. You know it is the time when a boy becomes a man. And the seventh night I dreamed that I am white. Before that I thought much of it, even when I was little. But now I know. Something within told me that my dream was true. If I were an Indian would I feel that way? Would I wish to leave the hunting camp if I had only dreamed? At the fasting time the heart does not lie."

Though he had clothed his impassioned outburst in flowery Ojibwa, Merton was more than startled. The boy had spoken in the only language he knew, but the mental processes back of the words were different—a fact overshadowing in significance the strange longing harbored by a wigwam-bred child.

The post manager stared for a moment in thoughtful silence. The boy carried a smoke smell as strong as any Indian's but he did not have the typical Indian's hair or features. And never had Merton seen an Ojibwa's eyes glow as did Wen-dah-ban's. He recalled, too, all the gossip about Nee-tah-wee-gan and her strange action in keeping the boy hidden until at last he had run away. The whole thing spelled mystery but above all there was something gripping and compelling in the brave, confident declaration, something which convinced his heart, against the knowledge gleaned in fifteen years of fur trading.

"My boy," Merton exclaimed in English, "I believe you are white!"

CHAPTER III

THE MAKING OF A MAN

In the north country June is the smile of a bitter old man. The sun is bright and warm, the waters are blue and placid, the poplars and birches open their buds and drip ointment into eyes smarting from the long strain of dreary monotones. Yet the vast spruce swamps remain as desolate, the great, sprawling lakes as empty and the loneliness as crushing as in the bleak, cold spring. The harsh, relentless spirit of the land is wafted on the gentlest breeze.

Evelyn Layard had never been able to escape this thought. Cruel and ruthless she knew the north to be and only a conviction that the human soul is supreme, that environment and circumstance are never unconquerable, had carried her through eight years as the wife of a Hudson's Bay Company post manager. That she had won happiness and contentment she ascribed to the love of her husband and to her philosophy, never realizing the part played by her own warm, impulsive, compassionate nature and by her capacity to act upon conviction.

It was this compassion and this capacity that led her immediately to the championship of Wen-dah-ban's cause. When she talked to him she was more deeply moved than her husband had been. The boy did not repeat the vehement declarations he had made in the trade shop, but she caught glimpses of the high resolve that had defied Nee-tah-wee-gan and had made it possible for this shy, wilderness-bred creature to open his heart to a strange white man, and she was moved by this spontaneous effort of a boy to rise above his environment and above circumstance.

"He will never stick it out," Merton said when she announced that she would help Wen-dah-ban. "You'll simply lead him on to ultimate unhappiness."

"At least we should give him the chance he asks for," she answered. "I am going to do what I can for him while Pe-tah-bo is away with the fur brigade."

Merton smiled. He loved these impulsive attempts to lighten the burden of a savage life, even though they failed, for to him they were an expression of Evelyn's blindly altruistic nature. Now he was glad that she would have such an effort to occupy her during his long journey to Fort Bruce.

It was thus that Wen-dah-ban was suddenly removed from the harsh, stifling sway of Nee-tah-wee-gan's vengeful nature to the sympathetic and unfolding influence of Evelyn Layard and almost immediately he began to repay her in a manner she had not expected. In the first few days he was silent and unresponsive. He followed her about like a dog, watching her with wide, sober eyes, listening with painful attention when she spoke English. Yet those eyes were clear and direct—never furtive, or with hidden lights. They began to haunt her and to escape them she found tasks for him to do.

"The change was startling," she told Merton enthusiastically when he returned from Fort Bruce. "As soon as I gave him something to do he became a different boy. He gave me the creeps, staring at me with those dumb eyes, and I thought he was only curious."

"He was," Merton laughed.

"But he wasn't! He was studying the way I do things. And when I set him to work there was never a bit of that Indian idea that he must be paid for every little task. He understood everything at once, too, and he was so faithful."

"Poor little devil! He must have had a dog's life—shut up in the bush since he was born."

"I know, Merton. He's been cramped and dwarfed through the very years that should have been free and stimulating. But it was like a miracle to see him develop. Why, Merton, I could actually see that boy's soul unfold. He tried so hard to speak English and he got on so rapidly. His face was actually shiny from scrubbing and he washed his shirt so often, rubbing it on the rocks down at the lake, it was soon full of holes."

Merton smiled. Evelyn's enthusiasms were so typical of her buoyant spirit.

"Don't laugh!" she protested. "There's something different here. You know how it is with these Ojibwas. There is always a baffling unresponsiveness, a suspicion they can't quite conceal, and a greedy grasping for surface things. I imagine white men have always had to contend with it when they tried to elevate people of another race. There's never been an exception among the women I've trained for housework.

"But in Wen-dah-ban all that is lacking. He is so intent it is pitiful. He seems like a starved spirit. It isn't only that he does everything so well and tries so hard to please me. There is something more, something deeper. I couldn't understand it at first and then I knew. It is a sense of race equality."

Merton laughed indulgently. "I suppose that fasting dream of his has gone to his head," he said.

"No," Evelyn declared passionately, "it's more than that. He told the truth when he said he felt all white. It isn't only that I never knew an Indian or a half-breed who thinks as he does and it isn't that he lacks the half-breed's superciliousness towards Indians when he believes he is becoming a white man. Wen-dah-ban hasn't that at all—nor is it a calm assumption that he is white. He just seems to feel that he is."

"I'll admit he possesses one quality no Indian ever had," Merton answered. "Since I've been back I've noticed that he sticks to a thing until he gets it done and then jumps right into something else. Doesn't he ever stop to play? He's just a boy."

"That's the pitiful part of it!" Evelyn exclaimed. "He's so serious. He has never known childhood. Nee-tah-wee-gan must have been a terrible creature and just now, when he should be carefree, he has shouldered this enormous burden upon himself."

"He doesn't seem to stagger under it."

"No, but he will some day—some day when he has grown up and reaches out for the thing he desires most. Then he will discover that unseen wall, that impassable thing that has been reared between the races. It is terrible, Merton, for he will not have deserved it."

But as the weeks passed Wen-dah-ban did not suspect the presence of that unseen wall. His quick, eager feet were taking him up the white man's ladder and his faith in the white man's judgement, when he should reach the top, made so subtle an appeal to the heart of Evelyn Layard that she was rushed into a recognition of his viewpoint despite the warnings of her husband.

"He's different, Merton!" she protested. "If he fails it will be our fault and not his. I know how you feel about half-breeds but Wen-dah-ban is the exception."

Merton smiled in indulgence of a faith that had persisted despite years of disillusionment.

"I know," he answered. "The boy gets you. He did me, too, that first morning in the trade shop. But don't count too much on it. Remember that you're building castles on the foundation of an unknown father."

"But that's only another reason," Evelyn replied. "Whoever the man was, he's given the boy something. I don't mean just honesty. Many Indians have that. I mean an integrity of character, a sense of right that he must live up to, not because he wants to please us but because there's something in him that compels it."

"That," and her voice softened as she turned her tear-dimmed eyes away, "is why I want to help him—to make up to him now while I can for the sorrows and struggles that will come."

It was to this warm-hearted champion that Wen-dah-ban came one day in early winter. Evelyn had already arranged that he was to remain at the fort and Pe-tah-bo had gone back to his wigwam and Nee-tah-wee-gan long before.

"I am called Wen-dah-ban," he began seriously. "It means 'coming dawn'—that it was then I was born. But it is an Indian name and I am not an Indian. I must have a white man's name."

There was something so confident and yet so pitiful in the request, something so expressive of the boy's whole life's problem, that Evelyn turned away to hide the quick tears. She saw him not only as a nameless, raceless, kinless waif, but as one destined to go on through life without contacts, belonging neither to one world nor to the other—with nothing behind him, nothing ahead.

"Had you thought of a name?" she asked.

"I don't know the white man's names, only Mr. Layard's and the 'big trader's.' Indian names are not like them. They are names of things. Pe-tah-bo means 'tea water.' White men's names are real names. They mean something and the children have names before they are born because they have their fathers'."

"And you—you have never heard your father's name?"

It was the first time Evelyn had ever mentioned the subject to him but he was not embarrassed.

"Nee-tah-wee-gan keeps silent," he answered simply. "Pe-tah-bo often asked her. It made her angry and she would shout at him and she always said that she would never tell. So I cannot have my father's name."

Again the tears came but she winked them back furiously.

"Wen-dah-ban," she said in a choked voice, "you shall have a name. You shall have my father's. I have always loved it. I think it is a beautiful name—Donald Norton. Do you like it?"

She did not tie strings to her gift. She did not tell him her father had been a good man and urge him to be worthy of the name. Bestowal came from her warm, compassionate heart and although he did not understand its significance he did sense the generous impulse and respond to it.

"You are very good to me," he said. "I like Donald Norton."

Unconsciously he had reached forth a hand. Never before had tenderness come so close. He felt it all around, suffocating and entrancing, and then suddenly Evelyn had thrown her arms about him and strained him close. He felt a kiss on one cheek and then both cheeks were wet.

He had never been kissed before. Not since infancy had he wept. In sudden confusion he dug his fists into his eyes and turned away.

Before the winter was over Merton Layard began to share his wife's viewpoint. Wen-dah-ban, or Donald, as he was now called, made an appeal to the fur trader just as surely, though in a different way, as he did to Evelyn. The woman's heart had been touched by the pitiful, lonely figure, the man's by the youngster's courage and determination. Layard shared in the task of instruction and in the pleasure it gave and when spring came he was as firm a champion of the boy as his wife.

In June the hunters arrived and among them was Pe-tah-bo. The big, good-natured Indian clucked in amazement when he saw Donald.

"You dreamed true," he said, and there was a note of awe in his voice. "You are a white man."

Then his eyes gleamed and his mouth widened in a grin.

"Nee-tah-wee-gan is here," he said. "When she sees you she will be like a wolf in a trap."

But Nee-tah-wee-gan did not come near the fort for several days. She was camped far down the shore and did not visit the other Indians, practically none of whom she had ever seen. And then one noon, when Donald came out of the trade shop, he found her huddled against the white-washed wall.

She looked up at him with a twisted smile, her cruel lips curled contemptuously, her black eyes glittering with an evil light.

"Keen nish-e-na-be!" she hissed. "You are an Indian."

"Kah-win!" he retorted.

"So! You think you are a white man?"

"Yes," Donald answered confidently. "It is as I dreamed. I am learning to become one of them."

"You!" she burst forth scornfully, the word "keen" lending itself to the derision of her shrill voice. "You! One of them! It is easier for an Indian to make his canoe fly like a bird than to become a white man. You do not know the white man. He will let you work, slave like a dog, learn his ways, and then when your back is turned he laughs at you.

"He will take our women but he will never take our children. Often have I heard the white man say, 'One drop of red and all is red.' You think I do not know. My father was white and he left me and my mother and returned to his own country. Do you think the blood of such a man has made you white?"

"But my father——" Donald began.

Nee-tah-wee-gan's shrill laughter stopped him.

"Your father!" she gloated. "How you wish you knew! But you never will. You are the son of Nee-tah-wee-gan. That is all you know and it is all they care. Some day they will tell you so and send you back to your own people.

"Fool! Work for them. Listen to their lies when they say they are making you one of them. Some day you will learn the truth."

She had begun her tirade in the shrill voice he remembered so well, venomous and bitter and unrelenting. But now her tone changed. Her black eyes fastened upon him and into her voice came some of the solemnity of a prophecy, or of a curse.

"Go!" she cried. "Go and find that it is as I tell you! Now you are a child and it is easy to deceive you but when you are a man and would take one of their women you will learn that it is as I say. Go put wings on your canoe and ride in the clouds and say you are a white man but some day they will say to you what I say now, 'You are an Indian.'"

She repeated the last words, "keen nish-e-na-be," gloatingly, as though the very sound of them were a source of infinite pleasure, and then drew her shawl about her head. The boy, more shaken and awed than he had ever been before, stumbled away toward the dwelling house.

After that Nee-tah-wee-gan came to the fort each day. She rarely spoke to anyone but would squat in front of the trade shop and watch for Donald as he went about his daily tasks. Sooner or later he would have to pass her and always she would hiss the words, low and venomous:

"Keen nish-e-na-be!"

Never during that summer was he permitted to forget it. "You are an Indian," was dinned into his ears constantly. Each night when he went to bed he remembered it. Each morning when he arose he dreaded it. Indians and employes of the fort heard it and always laughed, for their greatest amusement is derived from torture and ridicule, but Nee-tah-wee-gan was careful never to let the Layards hear her.

And then one day Janet, walking softly in her moccasins, came up behind the Indian woman as Donald was passing.

"Keen nish-e-na-be!" Nee-tah-wee-gan hissed.

"Kah-win!" the little girl cried angrily in Ojibwa. "Wen-dah-ban kah-win nish-e-na-be! You are a mean old woman to say such a thing. You can't be his mother or you wouldn't be so cruel to him."

Nee-tah-wee-gan spat contemptuously on the ground at Janet's feet.

"Wen-dah-ban is an Indian," she repeated coldly. "Some day you will remember what I have told you."

She pulled her shawl about her head and Janet ran in search of her father. Layard set a trap for the woman and heard one of her vitriolic outbursts. Without speaking to the boy about it, he ordered Nee-tah-wee-gan to keep away from the vicinity of the fort. The next summer she did not come to Kenogami with Pe-tah-bo.

Four wonderful years followed for Donald. Kenogami was a small world—an infinitesimal world isolated by the great distances, twisting waterways and long winter trails of the north, and in that world the boy won a place. Some quality in him conquered the inevitable feeling of race superiority, conquered British aloofness and the precedents of fur land because it had conquered the hearts of the Layards.

Yet the entering wedge had ceased to be a factor. The woman's heart was no longer touched by a pitiful, lonely figure or the man's by a boy's courage and determination.

"I can't believe he's the same boy," Evelyn said to her husband one night just before he was leaving for his annual journey to Fort Bruce. "I've seen him develop and still I'm wondering how it happened."

"It's very simple," Merton told her. He smiled and yet there was something of adoration in his tone. "He's never been away from your influence for five years."

She flushed with pleasure even as she disputed his statement.

"No one could give him what he has," she declared. "He has always had it. He needed only the opportunity. That first year I was afraid. He was so serious, tried so hard. It was pitiful. He always made me think of a starved sleigh dog."

"You can't see his ribs now."

"Merton!"

"And he ought to make a good leader."

"Please——"

"You started it."

Despite her shocked expression, Evelyn was delighted. She understood her husband too well to fail to comprehend—knew that emotion often drove him to concealment in raillery.

"But that is the way I did think of him at first," she insisted. "Now I can't imagine it. Why, Merton, I never knew a more charming boy. All the somberness is gone, all the reticence. I can't understand how such a disposition could have survived a wigwam and that dreadful Nee-tah-wee-gan. And his mind! Why, Merton——"

"And yet you objected to my saying he would make a good leader."

"I know, but—"

"But I meant exactly what I said and when I get to Fort Bruce I'm going to start something. Nick is through and——"

"Merton! The outpost!"

"Why not? Right now that boy will make a far better trader than an old half-breed who has spent a lifetime in the service. He deserves a chance."

Soon after his arrival at Fort Bruce, Layard told Duncan Mactavish, the district manager, what he intended to do.

"I'm going to put that boy in charge of the outpost at Wabinosh this fall," he said. "He's only nineteen but he's the best man for the place now that Finlayson has taken a pension. And look at this list of books he wants me to bring him from the district library."

The old Scotchman, who had spent half a century in fur land, glanced over the sheet.

"On the strength of that alone I would say you are making a mistake," he commented drily. "He wants a college, not an outpost. But give him the place."

Layard promised his two Indian canoemen a bonus for a quick trip home and as the light craft came racing across Lake Kenogami Evelyn, Janet and Donald ran down to the shore to meet him.

"Donald goes to Wabinosh!" Layard shouted when still far out.

Janet danced about in glee and Evelyn, tears in her eyes, grasped the boy's hand.

"Isn't it wonderful!" she cried.

He returned the pressure with a quick, fierce grip and then suddenly lifted her fingers and kissed them.

"Where homage is due," he said.

He had tried to speak lightly and had not succeeded. Evelyn glanced at him quickly, saw the twitching muscles of his face and forced gay laughter as she made an elaborate curtsey.

"Well spoken, Sir Knight of the Rueful Countenance," she said.

"I shouldn't look rueful," Donald grinned. "Or did you mean an outpost is only a windmill?"

"Silly!" she retorted. "It's wonderful, to be in charge of one at nineteen!"

Layard's canoe was close to shore now and all three ran down the bank to greet him. In the two weeks that followed Donald tried to hide his elation but the three Layards would not let him. They were over-joyed to think that Duncan Mactavish had given him this opportunity. Few things happened in their small world and this was one of the greatest.

When at last he departed, seated in a four-ton York boat loaded with trade goods and rowed by a crew of Indians, Donald realized the true significance of the event. The Indians toiling at the oars while he sat in idleness, an open book on his knees, told how far he had come in five years and foreshadowed how far he might go. His fasting dream had ceased to be a vision. He felt that he had entered the white man's world.

When he returned the next June this had become a conviction. His accounts were in perfect shape. He had taken in a record amount of fur. He knew he had conducted his post satisfactorily. Evelyn and Merton welcomed him warmly and when the books had been examined they were elated.

"I'm going to take him to Fort Bruce with me," Merton told his wife. "The boy's a born fur trader. Mactavish will make him a post manager."

But a month later when he spoke to the kindly old district manager, himself the father of two half-breed boys who had long been post managers, he encountered a dismaying lack of enthusiasm. Mactavish talked to Donald, asked him questions about Wabinosh, even referred to the many books the young man had been getting from the district library and drawing out his opinions of them, but he said nothing about a promotion or the future.

"What's wrong?" Merton demanded angrily when he and Mactavish were alone. "He had a record year for Wabinosh."

"Huh!" the old man grunted as he glanced over the reports. "He hasn't lost the smoke smell yet. Send him back for another year."

"But don't you see? He's earned something better. The boy's made good."

"In a season? It takes more than one snow bird to make a winter in the north country."

Merton protested and argued. His vehemence would have brought joy to Evelyn if she could have heard and have known the sincerity of his championship. But the old Scotchman, usually so sympathetic and so quick to see promising material, was obdurate.

"I once saw an Indian boy get his first rifle," he said. "He went outside the trade shop, loaded it and shot at a loon a quarter of a mile out in the lake. And he hit it.

"Well, the fort became too small for that young buck. He got out of hand entirely. So I set up a board at fifty feet and he missed it ten times running."

"But Donald's not an Indian!" Merton exclaimed.

"Eh? Not an Indian? And he spent fourteen years in a wigwam? And Nee-tah-wee-gan his mother? Send him back to Wabinosh, Merton. Let's see if he can hit a board at fifty feet."

Layard broke the news to Donald as best he could but after the first few sentences the young man smiled.

"There's nothing to do but go back," he said. "Mr. Mactavish doesn't know anything about me except that one year's work."

"But he's going to give you a contract as an employe, not as a servant of the company. He won't even make it an apprentice's contract."

"Old Nick Finlayson was only an employe and he ran Wabinosh for years and never worked for anyone except the company since he was sixteen."

"But that's different. Old Nick was a——"

Merton stopped in sudden confusion. Unconsciously he had assumed the attitude that Donald was white, that he deserved a white man's treatment.

"Anyhow, it's settled," the young man said. "I'll go back and do the best I can and if I have another good year he'll act differently."

When they returned to Kenogami Evelyn, too, failed to share Donald's easy acceptance of Mactavish's action.

"Back to Wabinosh!" she exclaimed. "It's a shame! I'd like to tell old Duncan so myself."

"You will want me in his place in another year," Donald laughed. "I shouldn't wonder but what he's right. I'm only twenty. There's lots of time."

The subject was dropped. Both Evelyn and Merton feared the boy would think he had been discriminated against because of his parentage but this thought never entered Donald's mind. He knew the old district manager's two sons, half-breeds, had gone far in the service. To him it was only a matter of caution on Mactavish's part and he was content to wait.

It was thus that he started to the tiny outpost in much the same spirit as the year before. He arrived to find the caretaker hysterical with momentous news and a free trader erecting a post a quarter of a mile from the Hudson's Bay establishment.

CHAPTER IV

VICTORY AND PROMOTION

In the century and a half of its existence Fort Kenogami had never known opposition. Isolated in that vast territory to the south and west of Hudson Bay, separated by hundreds of miles of difficult waterways from railhead or sea, it had been too impregnable a redoubt for free traders to attack.

Gradually but surely, ever since the days when it relinquished its monopoly, the Hudson's Bay Company has been forced to admit the presence of these outlanders. It has fought them and it still fights them with the fervor of religious fanaticism and the pride and strength of an ancient feudalism that refuses to die, but to-day the north is dotted with twin posts and crossed by twin lines of commerce.

In this half century of bitter struggle Kenogami was one of the few posts that had remained aloof from warfare. Free traders had looked upon it greedily but none had dared carry the fight to so inaccessible a spot. The great company began to believe Kenogami impregnable and all its servants spoke with pride of this stronghold of the olden times.

Donald Norton had never known any other world than Fort Kenogami and the Hudson's Bay Company. His fourteen years in a wigwam had given him the impression there was no other, for neither Pe-tah-bo nor Nee-tah-wee-gan knew of anything beyond the wilderness, and always he had heard the company referred to by the Indian name for it, a word meaning "that to which we owe thanks."

As the York boat approached Wabinosh Donald had seen the two buildings being erected down the shore and instantly there flared in him a fierce resentment. The Indian boatmen also had seen and understood and were chattering among themselves.

"Look, free trader!" the guide, standing in the stern, said to Donald, excitement impairing his scanty stock of English words.

None of the boatmen, Wabinosh hunters, had ever traded with the opposition. For generations they had known only the Hudson's Bay but they had heard of these buyers of fur and curiosity gripped them.

"I hear these men pay much more," one said to his seat mate.

"They pay it once," Donald declared savagely. "They fool you. They lead you on and then they pay you less. Only the great company is fair to its people."

Policy did not prompt the statement. It was a sincere conviction. At Kenogami the influence of the Hudson's Bay was completely dominant. Loyalty and faith pervaded the fort as a spirit of sanctity fills a church.

"They would let you starve, just so they got the fur," Donald continued. "They think only of the present, try only to get what they can. Wait and see."

He said it with all the confidence of zealous youth, and it was not confidence in himself but in the company. In his mind nothing could be more glorious than the Hudson's Bay. He had grown to manhood under the influence of the Layards. Merton retained much of his early romantic conception of the service and Evelyn was true to her sex in contributing a blind, passionate allegiance.

The York boat had not landed before Donald was busy with his plans. He threw himself into the struggle with all the fervor of confident youth but he had hardly taken the first step when a new element entered the situation. An hour after his arrival Nee-tah-wee-gan appeared in the trade shop.

"I have come to watch Wen-dah-ban, my son, try to be a white man," she announced contemptuously.

Donald was startled. When she entered he had given her only a glance, believing her to be the wife of a Wabinosh hunter. It was four years since he had seen her. He had not realized that she might follow him to the outpost.

"What do you want?" he demanded.

"Want? I have told you. I have come to watch my son turn into a white man."

"You mean you are going to stay?"

"Surely a white man would not turn his old mother into the forest to starve?"

"But there is Pe-tah-bo. He will take care of you and he needs you."

"You have forgotten what a mother is like. As she grows older it is the son she loves, not the husband. I want to be with my son, now that he is turning so white. I want to watch him succeed, watch him rise above the Indians, watch him tie wings to his canoe and fly among the clouds."

She was not only contemptuous but malicious. There was a diabolical sneer in each word and in her eyes there was a savagely gloating light.

Donald was mystified. He had seen something of the fierce passion with which Indian women cling to their half-breed children, fighting blindly and persistently to hold them in the savage world, to prevent them from adopting the ways of white men. But in Nee-tah-wee-gan's actions he sensed something more—a venom and a hatred that failed to accord with her expressed desires.

"I will live in the house of the manager," Nee-tah-wee-gan broke in upon his thoughts.

She spoke so confidently Donald started.

"You can't do that!" he protested. "The 'big trader' and Mr. Layard forbid it. The company forbids it."

"Then my son has not grown so great? He is not yet his own master?"

"You can put up your wigwam outside the clearing," Donald said, ignoring her taunt.

"And my son will sit in comfort and eat flour and pork while his mother starves in the forest? It is the seventh year and there will be no rabbits."

"You won't starve. I will give you part of my rations."

He knew it meant that he must subsist largely on fish through the winter. Nee-tah-wee-gan protested and denounced but without success. Donald understood that neither Mactavish or Layard would countenance an Indian woman living in the dwelling house, even though she were his mother, and in the end the old woman erected her shelter a half mile away.

Each day she came to the post and remained for an hour or two. She never spoke to other Indians. She did not seem to know they were there. And she seldom talked with Donald. Only, each time they were alone, she would look up at him as he hurried about his work and exclaim with a sneering, contemptuous hiss, "Keen nish-e-na-be!"

He heard it every day without fail, sometime between dawn and dark, "You are an Indian!" He never answered, never showed resentment. He schooled himself to control his features and his eyes, and yet each time it was like the touch of a red hot iron on raw flesh.

Only the struggle with the Keewatin Company saved him from a winter of torture. Before he had gone to bed that first night he had learned much of the opposition's plans and understood what he must do. He spent two hours with Joe Snowbird, the half-breed caretaker and assistant.

"What will we do?" Joe wailed in high-pitched Ojibwa. "He is a big man. He talks loudly and makes the hunters think he is even bigger. He has trade goods we never saw before—things the women like."

Joe had spent his entire life at Wabinosh, had grown soft in a monotonous, stagnant existence. Since infancy he had believed implicitly in the might of the Hudson's Bay. Now he quailed at the flash of a few cheap articles of barter.

For a moment Donald resented the man's dismay and then he laughed exultantly. Joe was of Indian blood but no vision, no hope, no fasting dream, led him on. There was no faith that the white blood could be predominant. But he, Donald, felt white and he had the vision, the hope and the faith that he could become all white.

In that instant he saw the test and the proof. He was not afraid. He was confident, aglow with eagerness for the struggle. He felt white. He was white. He was proving it.

"Gaudy trinkets won't fill an empty stomach," he declared jubilantly, in the flowery speech of the Ojibwa. "Big talk doesn't mean strength or big prices for fur. A lynx growls and spits and shows its claws and its paper skull cracks from the tap of an ax handle."

"But this man is not a lynx," Joe persisted. "He says the Hudson's Bay is becoming old and weak and will not live much longer. He says he has come to stay, to pay more for fur, to give more trade goods, to make all the hunters happy."

It was heresy, an insult, but Donald only laughed happily. A little while before Nee-tah-wee-gan had hissed, "Keen nish-e-na-be!" and the words had stung. Now the contrast between his attitude and Joe's wiped out all thought of her insistent phrase. He was proving that she was wrong.

"It is too late to send word to Kenogami and have Layard come," Joe wailed. "When he get here in the winter this free trader have all the fur. What can we do?"

"Stop that talk!" Donald commanded sternly. "If I hear you saying such things again, even to me, I'll send you off into the bush to hunt for the rest of the winter. Understand that? If a hunter says anything to you, tell him this free trader is a boaster, a liar and a thief. Tell all the hunters there will be no free trader here when the snow is gone."

"But what can we do, we two, against him?" Joe insisted. "Mr. Layard should know."

Donald laughed again, scornfully. In his new confidence and strength the mere fact that opposition had come exalted him. He was alone, cut off by approaching winter, responsible for the prestige and welfare of the great company in this tiny, lonely redoubt. He was, in fact, for that moment and for that spot, the Hudson's Bay itself and he was thrilled with a romantic conception of his place in fur land's eternal strife.

"What can we do?" he repeated. "We can't do anything if you feel that way. But I don't. I'm going to drive this fellow out."

Donald plunged into the struggle with dash and boldness. The fire of youth, the force of a great ambition, the loyalty and zeal that had grown out of his idolatrous conception of the Hudson's Bay—all these drove him to a savage onslaught that in the end had its effect. Before the winter ended William Bawlf, manager of the Keewatin Company's new enterprise, abandoned the fight. He locked up his buildings and disappeared. When Layard arrived for his late winter inspection the struggle had ended.

Even before he learned what had happened, Layard saw the change in Donald. There was a confident expression in his eyes and he carried his head differently.

"What's happened?" he demanded before he got out of his cariole. "Been having a twenty-first birthday?"

"I believe that's it," Donald answered with a smile as he shook hands. "How are Mrs. Layard and Janet?"

"Fine. Both sent their love to you. But what's doing down the shore? Neighbors?"

"We did have neighbors."

The mere presence of a free trader in his territory had been so startling Layard did not get the significance of Donald's answer. He sprang out of the cariole and stared at the new buildings. No smoke came from the chimney of the house. A recent snow had banked up the door of the little trade shop.

"Licked 'em, by gad!" Merton cried. "Before the first winter was over! Boy! Boy! Wait until I tell old Duncan about this." He threw his arms about Donald and hugged him.

"Licked 'em!" he repeated jubilantly. "Licked 'em the first season! I knew you had it in you."

The next summer Donald again made the long journey to Fort Bruce. Merton was confident now that Mactavish would recognize the young man's ability and give him a post of his own.

"How about this free trader at Wabinosh?" the district manager growled the moment they entered his office. "Why wasn't I told about it?"

"How did you know he was there?" Layard countered. "I didn't know it myself until he had gone."

"Never mind that. It's my business to know. When did he start work?"

"Early in September," Donald answered. "He had two buildings nearly done when I got to Wabinosh."

"Why didn't you send word to Layard?"

"There wasn't time for him to reach the post before the hunters would be outfitted and gone."

"What did you do?"

"Bawlf had a large part of his trading outfit cached a hundred miles south. I hired all the hunters at increased wages and set them to fishing. When Bawlf wanted to bring in his cache he couldn't get anyone to work for him."

"By what right did you raise wages?"

"It was better to spend a few dollars that way than lose several thousand dollars' worth of fur later."

"But why didn't you put them at work on something away from the post?" Mactavish persisted. "Then this free trader couldn't influence them."

"But I wanted the fish."

"Why?"

"It was the seventh year. I knew rabbits would be scarce and there would be starving times before spring!"

"Huh! Then what?"

"In January the hunters began bringing their families to the post. There was nothing to eat in the bush, no rabbits. I fed the women and children on the fish I had put up in the fall, outfitted the men with flour and pork and sent them back to hunt."

"Dug into your year's reserve supply, eh? Don't you know that is against my express orders?"

"Yes," Donald answered, "but I knew that before spring we would be able to buy a trading outfit at our own price."

"Huh!" Mactavish growled. "I want you to understand, young man, that regulations are to be obeyed."

Donald's anger had been rising. He knew he had handled the situation successfully and he expected some consideration. Instead he was being hectored, barked at, cross-questioned like a criminal.

"I understand that I was there to get the fur!" he retorted. "I got it. The Keewatin Company didn't."

Old Duncan glared at him but the glare suddenly became a smile.

"You'll do, lad," he said.

He whirled upon Layard and demanded:

"How old is this boy?"

"Twenty-one."

"Twenty-one years old, eh? There are post managers in this district who have been in the service longer than that and I've yet to hear them say what he did. Did you hear it, Merton? 'I was there to get the fur and I got it.' That's all a fur trader ever needs to know. It's the whole creed of the game. It's fur land's ten commandments, thirty-nine articles and catechism packed into one sentence. I'd like to brand it on the chest of every apprentice clerk with a red hot iron."

The old Scotchman turned back to Donald.

"That's all now, lad," he said kindly. "Come in this afternoon and I'll have a new contract drawn up for you to sign. And get ready to go out with the Whitefish Lake brigade. There's a free trader there, the same company, and I want to see you try your hand at him."

"Whitefish Lake!" Donald repeated. "You mean——"

"I mean you're to be manager at Whitefish Lake post. MacKar has been there three years and he's losing ground. But run along now. There are a few things I want to talk over with Merton."

"Look here!" Merton exclaimed when Donald had gone. "You knew last summer that the Keewatin Company was going to make a try at Wabinosh."

Mactavish grinned and did not answer.

"Well, you tested him out. I told you he had the right stuff in him."

"Yes, he hit the board as well as the loon. But you have to prove everything. The boy is going to make a great fur man. You couldn't have handled that situation any better yourself."

Merton laughed, happily, exultantly, and then he suddenly became serious.

"Evelyn and I will miss him," he said slowly. "He has been like one of the family for years now. And next summer Janet goes out to school."

"I know how you feel," Mactavish said gently, "and both of you can be proud of what you've done. But be careful. Remember Kipling's poem, 'Don't throw your heart to a dog to tear.'"

"You don't mean——" Merton began angrily.

"I don't mean Norton is a dog by any means. But don't forget his story, and his mother."

"That's nonsense. Donald's white clear through. I'd trust him anywhere. He's the exception."

"I've lived in the north country fifty years and there are no exceptions. I say it remembering that I'm the father of two sons whose mother was born and bred in a wigwam. Some day, in some way—but wait and watch. He'll make a great fur trader, a servant the company can be proud of, but he's hitched his wagon to too high a star."

"You can believe that if you want to," Merton retorted. "I won't. I know Donald too well. Don't ever say anything to him that suggests such a thing. The Keewatin man did."

"Eh? What's this? Norton didn't tell me anything about it."

"Nor did he tell me either. I learned it from the people at Wabinosh. Bawlf called him a half-breed before a crowd of Indians and Donald licked him."

"Before the hunters, eh? That explains it. That's what gave him the prestige. He was thinking all the time. He even turned the off-year for rabbits into an advantage."

"And he never lost sight of the main thing," Merton added. "Although he took care of his people, kept them from starving, he never let the men quit hunting."

Mactavish grinned.

"But you're wrong when you say he fought to impress the hunters," Merton insisted. "It was resentment. He says he is white and he intends to be."

"None of which weighs in the end against the fact that Nee-tah-wee-gan is his mother. Her father, I remember, was the only factor I have known who was run out of the service because he was naturally bad—a rotter all the way through, a mean, ugly man, cruel as an Indian."

"But if you believe so thoroughly in bad blood you must admit there is something in good," Merton declared. "The boy's father must have had something that he passed on."

"I have been wondering about his father ever since I saw the lad last summer," Mactavish said. "There is something about his face that is familiar though I can't place him. You knew he was born at Fort James?"

"I never heard. You don't think it was Corrigal?"

"The boy doesn't look like him. Besides, John was married and badly smitten. Wonderful little woman, Mrs. Corrigal. He was a broken man after the fire. Got a transfer to the Saskatchewan district and has been out there ever since. A better fur trader never lived."

"But I've heard Corrigal was interested in Nee-tah-wee-gan when she was in the mission here."

"Oh, that!" Mactavish answered. "John was like all of us get, just plain home hungry, and Nee-tah-wee-gan was young and pretty. He forgot her completely as soon as the governess arrived."

"But didn't Nee-tah-wee-gan follow him to Fort James?"

"Yes, as the wife of a half-breed trapper there. But quit worrying about the boy, Merton. He's going to make a competent servant of the company. I'm giving him a good start and I'll look after him. Still, you and Evelyn must not build your hopes too high. I've spent fifty years in the bush and while white hasn't always been white by any means, red has always been red."

Donald's transfer to Whitefish Lake removed him completely from the heart-warming intimacy with the Layards but it brought a new and perhaps stronger influence into his life. The Whitefish Lake manager for the Keewatin Trading Company was Philip Collinge, an Oxford man, a younger son who because of a rather harmless wildness and a family fear thereof had been sent to Canada with a quarterly allowance and a forlorn hope of success.

Year after year he and Donald fought—bitterly, stubbornly and implacably, according to that ancient, barbaric, remorseless code of fur land—and year after year a strong friendship grew between them. Collinge possessed a brilliant mind and its reaction upon Donald's was the greatest mental influence that had come into the young man's life. He responded and expanded, discovered a new, wide world of thought and interest, and he learned, too, the peculiar, far-reaching, deeply-rooted effects of that thing called breeding.

For Philip Collinge, though married to an Indian woman and the father of two black-haired children, though cut off completely from his world and family and considered by them a failure and a disgrace, retained an inherent sweetness and a sense of honor which can come only through generations of effort.

Perhaps it was because of his sons, wild, furtive-eyed youngsters whose hair and skin and features proclaimed their mixed ancestry so unmistakably and who remained stolidly dumb despite Philip's patient efforts to teach them English, that the father turned to Donald when that young man first appeared at Whitefish Lake.

He called soon after Donald's arrival and found the new Hudson's Bay manager unpacking a box of books, some of them the gifts of Evelyn Layard, others from the district library and many purchased with his own scanty savings.

"We may be hating each other inside a month," Philip drawled as he introduced himself, "but there's no sense in starting off that way or in two men turning cat and dog just because they happen to be working for rival companies."

Donald shook the outstretched hand not only with diffidence but with suspicion. He mistrusted everything and everyone not connected with the Hudson's Bay and he had come to Whitefish Lake with no other thought than to wipe out of existence the post operated by this stranger. Now he wondered if Collinge were suggesting a truce, a pact to carry on only a perfunctory warfare.

"This is my first post," he said, and he could not repress a belligerent tone. "The thing I'm thinking of is holding it."

"Bless my soul, yes! That's what most of us who depend on jobs do. But even working for the Hudson's Bay needn't rob a man of all human qualities," and Collinge laughed so genuinely that Donald's resentment of the last sentence quickly faded.

Collinge talked on, easily and charmingly, but all the time he was reading Donald quite accurately.

"Only a cub," his thoughts ran, as he spoke of the closing of a mission at Whitefish Lake two years before and the consequent loneliness of the rival post managers. "First post and crammed with all the pride and arrogance of the old company. Half-breed, I've heard, but he doesn't look it. Handsome chap. Fine, intelligent eyes. I must make him smile like that again. He'll probably lead me a devil of a chase but—Good Lord! What a lot of books!"

"I say, old chap!" he exclaimed. "You don't intend to read all those this winter?"

"I've read most of them, some several times, but I'll probably get through them again before spring."

Collinge picked up a volume, then another. He turned over others, glancing at the titles.

"All's fish in your net," he laughed.

"You mean the selection is not right?" Donald demanded quickly.

"You have some good things but a lot of trash."

"Tell me where."

Collinge laughed to hide his pleasure in the eagerness of the request.

"That's a big order. Besides, my idea of trash might not coincide with yours or with those of many others. But come over. I've a lot of books and many of them need exercising. I'll be glad to talk to you about them, and to lend any you wish. Where did you get these?"

Donald told him.

"You see," he concluded, "I didn't learn English until I was nearly fifteen, and reading after that."

Collinge glanced at him sharply and suppressed a whistle of amazement.

"And you're now about twenty-one. It's a wonder you're not a chronic dyspeptic after all that stuffing. Lad, I'll have to take you in charge."

It was thus, through books, that their friendship began, and it grew despite their Jekyll-Hyde relationship. For six years these two men lived side by side, battling for pelts, each seeking the other's commercial ruin, contesting with that fierce, unscrupulous zeal which is the fur trader's heritage from the days when monopoly and kingly favoritism sowed the north with treachery and stealth, and yet retaining and enriching a friendship and a sense of honor which entered largely into the formation of Donald's character and into the rehabilitation of Philip's.

And in this period Donald found his fasting dream come true. Ever since that day when he had looked across the counter and unburdened his heart to Merton Layard he had continued to feel white, but as the years rolled swiftly by he began to lose that fierce insistence which had buoyed him in the beginning. Unconsciously he came to accept his first desire as an accomplished fact. His wigwam years faded and his origin became a phantom of the dissolving past.

Everything was conducive to this attitude on Donald's part. He had the friendship of Philip Collinge—not Collinge the fur trader, whom he defeated in their endless war for pelts, or the husband of an Indian woman and the father of two black-haired children, but the other Collinge, the man of culture and refinement who had come to Canada and failure but who had slipped out of the bondage of those disastrous years for Donald's sake.

In the world of fur Donald won the respect and liking of all the managers in the Fort Bruce district. His record in rebuilding the fortunes of the Hudson's Bay at Whitefish Lake earned for him the reputation of being an unusually clever fur trader and gave him the open admiration of Duncan Mactavish.

"He's going to be a marvel," the old Scotchman once said to Merton Layard. "Too bad he didn't live fifty years earlier. He'd have been a chief factor before he was thirty-five. Notice how all the men like him? The boy's a born leader and fighter."

"Why fifty years earlier?" Layard demanded. "The company needs his kind now as much as ever."

"Needs him but won't take him."

"But it has taken him."

"Only so far. Merton, you're nearing fifty and belong to the old days. I'm past seventy but I haven't been blind to the changes that have come to fur land."

"You mean the way the company feels now about the 'country marriage'?"

"That's only an indication of the changes. In the old days it didn't matter. We had the north to ourselves. We were four times as far from England. The men had something to say about the government of the company. And they were lonely men, men who accepted the fact that they were cut off from their world. They took Indian women and raised families. I know. I was one of them—a clannish lot. As soon as our sons were old enough they came in with us. We helped them along."

"And some of them climbed close to the top," Merton declared. "They made good fur traders."

"Some of them, yes. But do you think the company forbade the 'country marriage' on moral grounds? It did not. The product of the 'country marriage' doesn't jibe with the modern idea of efficiency."

"You can't name a more efficient post manager than Donald."

"I can't," Mactavish admitted readily, "but I'm not the company and I'm not impersonal. No, Merton, I'm old but I've seen the new day dawning in the north. With stronger competition the old strong-arm methods of trading are gone. You fellows kick on the double-entry system of bookkeeping the company has installed but you don't see what is back of it."

"The company is making a mistake in becoming so impersonal," Merton declared.

"The company is going on with its new ideas and ours won't change it," Mactavish answered solemnly. "The company banned the 'country marriage' because it didn't like the results. It was one way of banning the half-breed from the service. It doesn't believe he can meet the big test when it comes. That is, the average of them can't, and that's why I mean Donald should have lived fifty years earlier. He's as modern as the company can wish but the company will only point to the fact that he's not a white man.

"I'm sorry. If we'd seen this coming a lot of us older fellows would have acted differently. But don't worry about Donald. So long as I am here he will have the best chance I can give him. He's got something no half-breed ever had and when I get too old to stay I'll try to fix things so they won't shake him loose. You can be proud of the boy, Merton. He's won through."

Yet Donald had not won through so completely as the others thought. There were times when the fading wigwam years returned with startling, numbing clearness, when doubts assailed him. He was able to beat back the thought of Nee-tah-wee-gan but he could not escape her in the flesh. As at Wabinosh, she found him his second year at Whitefish Lake.

Year after year she remained there, subsisting on the rations he furnished, dwelling in a small cabin he had built for her. She rarely associated with the hunters' families, or with the employes of the post and in time they began to shun and fear her for she had become a fearsome thing, twisted and warped by hate—a bitter, venomous embodiment of evil that shocked even the savage instincts of the Ojibwas.

CHAPTER V

A PILGRIMAGE FOR A FRIEND

Donald opened his eyes before dawn one morning in his second winter at Whitefish Lake. For a moment he was conscious only of a great lassitude, of a head numb from pain.

A lamp, turned low, was on a stand near his bed. With difficulty he twisted about and looked at it. Beside the stand, huddled in a chair, her head nodding drowsily, sat Nee-tah-wee-gan.

He stared at her in bewilderment. She had never entered his room before, had never been in the dwelling house. As he looked her head snapped up and to his astonishment he read joy, a fierce exultation, in her face.

"You will live!" she whispered jubilantly in Ojibwa.

"Live?" he repeated feebly.

"Yes, live! I was afraid! For days you knew nothing. You did not speak or move."

"I have been ill?"

"Yes, but do not speak. Sleep again. Be quiet."

She became savagely insistent in her solicitude and crossed to the bed to tuck the blankets closer. Donald, wondering, continued to stare at her as she leaned over him.

"You must be quiet!" she commanded, and then with a sudden, frantic wail she added, "You must not die!"

As he marveled at this passionate, despairful cry she laid a weather-roughed hand on his brow. Instantly her eyes glowed with satisfaction.

"The fever is gone," she whispered triumphantly. "You will be better soon."

Donald closed his eyes and as he lay there flashes of memory developed vaguely. He recalled talking with Philip Collinge, complaining of a cold, coming home and going to bed early. He retraced a night of delirium, of thirst and chills, a dawn with a sleepy cook bringing hot tea and soggy bannock.

Later there had been an explosion of energy, shrill, angry voices in the hall, a protesting cook hurled bodily from the room and Nee-tah-wee-gan's cruel, deeply-lined face, grotesque now with solicitude and terror, swaying hazily above him.

This last vision persisted. He knew now that she had nursed him with a savage zeal and amazing sacrifice, that she had remained at his bedside day and night, that she had fought desperately to save a life which in the past she had sought only to make a torment.

Nee-tah-wee-gan had mystified Donald since his childhood. Countless times he saw Ojibwa mothers exhibit affection for their children, indulging them, petting them, crooning over back cradles. Nothing of this sort, no tenderness, no embraces, had come to him. Yet there had always been this fiercely protective spirit. No privation was too great for Nee-tah-wee-gan in starving times. He had never forgotten Pe-tah-bo's return from two days of fruitless search for game in bitter weather, the man's haggard face scarred by frost, his legs barely able to drag his snowshoes.

Donald was sitting beside the fire when the hunter entered. He had just taken the hind leg of a rabbit from the kettle, the last bit of food in the camp, his first that day, and was tearing at it ravenously. Pe-tah-bo sank down beside him, weak and hopeless.

Then his nostrils swelled as the odor of food touched them. His eyes, wide with privation, suddenly narrowed and flared with a savage hunger. He reached out and wrenched the meat from the boy's hands.

Instantly Nee-tah-wee-gan, though weak from hunger, flung herself across the wigwam. She struck Pe-tah-bo across the eyes with a stick of firewood, beat him savagely over the head and tore the rabbit leg from him and returned it to Donald. The next morning she herself went out to hunt and she did not return until she could bring food.

Yet, with one exception, this strange maternal instinct was confined strictly to his physical well-being. Throughout his boyhood she had diligently crammed his mind with the legends of her people. Patiently and endlessly she had recounted the myths and legends which swayed their superstitious minds. The ways of the wilderness, all the lore and all the art of savage existence, these were taught painstakingly.

"You will be a great hunter among your people," was a phrase he heard almost daily.

But after she had nursed him through his illness at Whitefish Lake, spending day and night at his bedside, careless of her own strength and comfort, she resumed, as soon as he had recovered, her taunting and reviling. Apparently she had helped him back to health only that she might hiss her spiteful declaration.

"You are an Indian," was her form of greeting. She seemed to have no object in life except to remind him of his parentage. Her body became bent and flat and thin. Her face was seamed and twisted and horribly expressive of the venom that seethed within her. Only the bitter, savage spirit seemed alive.

It was revealing of the place Philip Collinge filled in his life that Donald should speak to him of this strange hatred that had dogged his footsteps so long. Even Evelyn Layard had never been able to break down the barrier by which he had walled off the sense of ignominy and shame Nee-tah-wee-gan's actions had caused. The Englishman came upon him just as one of the old woman's tirades had left him trembling.

Humiliated, Donald turned away, for he saw his friend had heard, and then he whirled back.

"But you've known it!" he cried. "Everyone has. I understand the north well enough to see how a thing like that gets whispered from one post to another."

"Not as you think, though," Philip said gently. "Everyone likes you too well, old chap. I've heard it talked about and the wonder is always expressed that you let her stay here."

"I can't drive her away. I'm her son. But has any human the right to do that to another? She bore me but she has never been a mother to me," he ended bitterly. "She's never shown anything except hate."

Philip placed an arm across his friend's shoulder and led him away.

"Just remember that she can't do anything to you unless you let her," he said. "Don't you understand? It's your strength, not your weakness, that drives her to this."

"How can that be?"

"You've left her so little, so very little, and the ways of an Indian woman are so infernally warped by jealousy. I know. Perhaps none knows better."

Donald glanced at him in surprise. He had often wondered at Philip's acceptance of his wife's sway over their boys.

"Don't you see?" the Englishman continued. "A white man may take an Indian woman and she may bear him children, but there is always the racial struggle. The result is that the children are cursed by the folly of the father and again by the mother's unwillingness to give them up to a world she may not enter. Very rarely they are lucky, as you are. They may have the feel of the white blood but it is beaten back by the environment in which the mother keeps them. I wish I might have given my boys what your father gave you."

"But mine stepped out," Donald said bitterly.

"Don't hold that against him. Man's a frail sort of thing, especially up here where there's nothing to hold him, where all the little props are absent."

"You stuck. You didn't run."

"I can't claim the credit for that. Perhaps I was too lazy to run. But we're getting moody. Strip off your shirt and we'll have a go with the gloves."

It was the Englishman's racial diffidence that kept them from going too deeply into some things and it was his wisdom that provided a diversity of interests for the two. He mixed boxing lessons with philosophical discussions, shooting expeditions with the reading of plays, and as Donald grew and expanded Philip began to take the pride in his friend he had once hoped to have in his sons.

The effect of Donald's association with Philip was soon noted at Fort Bruce. Mactavish would have been gratified by the growing success of the Whitefish Lake post alone—by the rehabilitation of the Hudson's Bay fortunes there—but the old Scotchman was something more than a fur trader. His own private library was the largest within a thousand miles and he soon unearthed Donald's new interests.

"Do you know, Merton," he said to Layard, when Donald had been at Whitefish Lake five years, "I wish you would convey my respects to Mrs. Layard and tell her I regard her as being clairvoyant."

"How's that?" Merton laughed.

"She saw something in Donald Norton that has never been in a half-breed before. She saw it and brought it out while you and I chuckled at her sentiment. And I want to tell you something. I once said he came fifty years too late—that the company would think first of his parentage and refuse him the place he deserves. I was wrong. That lad can go to the top, and he's going."

But Philip Collinge recognized Donald's advance better than any other and because he did he was troubled. He knew something was needed to round out the character upon which he had labored so long and at last he hit upon an idea.

"See here," he said one night. "I know you intend to stick to the fur trade, live in the bush all your life, but that's no reason you shouldn't know other things as well. What you want right now is a glimpse of the outside world."

"You mean I ought to ride on a railroad train and a steamship and perhaps in one of those motor carriages they're beginning to talk about?" Donald asked.

"I'm in earnest, old chap. It would be a rounding out, you know. Make your life fuller in every way. There'd be a stimulation in it. You'd be a better fur trader for a month in London."

"You mean I should go to London?" Donald demanded. "Why, I don't know a soul, wouldn't——"

"It's the only city in the world." Philip could not keep down the longing in his voice and strove to cover it with sudden enthusiasm. "Why, you'd have a marvelous time. I'd give you letters to the governor and to Sis. She's Lady Hawarth now and a ripping sort. And I have a brother in the Home Office—something in the undersecretary line. And then my mother! Don, she'd treat you like a son! Stiff and cold and prim as Victoria but when she'd get you off alone she'd melt. She'd love you to death just because you had——"

He broke off suddenly and wheeled toward a window. Donald, understanding the yearning that tore at his friend's heart, raged inwardly that Philip should be tied to a dreary post in the wilderness.

"I'll go," he said suddenly. "This summer. I'll write Mactavish by the winter packet and tell him. I've a leave of absence coming after eight years straight. And I'll see them all, Phil, your father and mother and brother and sister."

He knew what it meant, a vicarious homecoming, a stop-gap for loneliness, and joy, on his return, in the stories he would have to tell.

Donald left the wilderness by way of Winnipeg and that summer Janet Layard returned from six years of English school life, coming in through Hudson Bay and York Factory.

When Donald returned after three months of London, Janet had gone to join her parents at Kenogami. He was sorry to have missed her. The little girl with whom he had romped and read and studied and who had been so strong a champion in the first stumbling days had left a vivid memory, but even his disappointment was forgotten when he saw Duncan Mactavish.

"I've already sent Dale Millington out to Whitefish Lake," the district manager said. "You've put the Keewatin Company on the run there and now I want the same thing done at Fort James."

"Fort James?" Donald made no attempt to hide his surprise and pleasure. It was the largest and best post in the district and it seemed only yesterday that he had stood in the same office and listened to the hard decision that he must return to Wabinosh for another year.

"Yes, Fort James," Mactavish repeated. "You're young and there's a big job there but I hope I'm not such an old fogy I can't recognize a man by his record."

As Donald looked down into the kindly old eyes which made such a pretense of glaring from under the shaggy brows he suddenly realized how much this man had done for him. Grudging in his praise, stern in his demands, and yet gentle and just in his decisions, he seemed for the moment to personify the spirit of the great company, a spirit which had reached out to that dirty, unkempt child of the wigwams.

Whitefish Lake was off the direct route to Fort James but Donald went out of his way to spend a few days there. He not only wanted to pack his books but nothing could have induced him to miss seeing Philip and delivering in person the messages he bore.

All the Englishman's repression and control were necessary when they met. There was the first warm greeting, a silent handclasp, broken phrases, and then Donald plunged into an account of his stay in London.

Never had he had a task so bitter sweet. He saw his friend grasp longingly for the smallest crumbs of the story and felt him wince at each fresh detail. Yet Donald drove himself to what he knew was torture. He gave his glowing impressions of Philip's father and mother and brother and sister. He told of their kindness to him, of all the things they had done to make his visit enjoyable. He described the places he had seen, laying special stress on those he knew to have been his friend's favorite haunts, painting London in all the charm in which he had seen it.

Then he returned to the family, taking up each member. He made them live there in that lonely trading post—the courtly father whose ease and worldliness of bearing failed to hide completely the real man beneath, the proud, formal mother whose Victorian manner had sustained her until that morning in the garden, the clear-eyed, startlingly straight-speaking sister, the brother who could shed completely the stiff, ceremonious official manner and become so delightful and understanding.

"And the questions, Phil!" Donald exclaimed. "All four asked them. And so differently. There really weren't enough facts to go around. There wasn't a thing about your life here they didn't want to know, that they didn't ask about again and again.

"They knew a lot, too. They must have learned your letters by heart. They wanted this explained, and that, without end. But most of all it was you, how you were and not what you did, how you felt and not how you lived. Your mother—of course I wasn't surprised after you'd warned me. But your father! I never saw such a change come over a man as when he——"

"Good God! Stop!" Collinge cried as he hurled himself from his chair and plunged across the room.

The agony of that cry halted Donald but though he saw his friend's shoulders shaking, heard the muffled, sobbing groans, he watched and listened eagerly.

"Phil," he began at last, his own voice trembling, "don't you see——"

"See! I saw from the beginning. I understood what you were doing. But I can't! I can't!"

"You're a fool!" Donald cried passionately. "They want you. Every one of them. It's killing your mother."

"Stop it!" Philip commanded. "I can't, I tell you."

"Others run. No one expects them to stick. You can't do your boys any good. They're going to be exactly what they are, what Ellen has made them—just two half-breeds hanging around a trading post."

"Don!"

The younger man ignored the desolation of that cry.

"But your family expects you. They think you will come. They've made all the plans. They've forgotten everything. Your father blames himself for it all and it's killing him, Phil."

The Englishman turned back from the window. Anguish had twisted his face but his eyes were steady.

"I'm tied, Donald," he said firmly. "I've tied myself. So far as Ellen is concerned, I wouldn't hesitate. It means nothing to her. I couldn't harm her by going. But the boys! They've been doomed from the beginning, I know, but I alone am responsible and I've got to stick. I've got to see them through as best I can. Some day, in some way, I may be able to help them a little. When that time comes I want be on hand."

"Rot! What could you do for them?"

"Perhaps not much; probably nothing. But I'd be there. Just that would help them—knowing their father was ready to back them up."

"They wouldn't care what you——" Donald began, and then all the fight went out of him.

In that moment, in the agony of Philip's sacrifice, Donald was brought face to face with the reason for a vague discontent, an obscure longing, which had possessed him from the beginning.

It was not that he had failed to make his fasting dream come true. He had climbed high since he had left Pe-tah-bo's wigwam and he could climb still higher. He knew the Layards, Philip and Mactavish were loyal, that the great company itself approved and trusted him. The men in the service, fine, big-hearted fellows, had accepted him. All, he believed, would stick through anything—had long ago forgotten the smear of red.

Yet despite the place he had won with these people, despite his success and his growing confidence in himself and his future, there was the misty yearning for something else, a constant sense of incompleteness.

Now he suddenly knew it for what it was, understood the longing which tormented him, the thing of which he believed the cowardice of one man had robbed him. He knew that no matter where he went or what he might achieve, he would never feel the touch of a father's hand on his shoulder, never have the joy of realizing that the man who was responsible for his being stood beside him.

CHAPTER VI

DONALD MEETS A STRANGE GOD

Philip read his friend's thoughts accurately.

"What's this about your stopping only a few days?" he asked quickly. "Why is this new man at the Bay?"

"I've been sent on to Fort James," said Donald.

Philip whistled. He knew Fort James was the pride of the Hudson's Bay, the best post in the district, and that his own company had been undermining its prestige.

"You've earned it!" he exclaimed. "Mactavish knows what he is doing. Your ladder's set against a star. I'm going to miss you terribly but that doesn't make me less glad. I fancy you know how I feel."

Then he added with his old banter, "Perhaps it's going to be to my advantage. I'm not up to my former speed and you had me on the run. But how about this chap Millington? Will he give me time to catch my breath?"

"You'd better not try it," Donald laughed. "They say he is a wonder. One of the new school."

"I know what you mean. The efficiency sort. But how about it? Do you like him?"

"I don't know," Donald answered. "I haven't had time to get acquainted since I've been here and he came on from the Saskatchewan district only a couple of years ago."

"But you've seen him at Fort Bruce."

"A year ago. He's popular because there's a sort of dash and wit about him that's amusing to most of the people."

"You don't like him, then?"

"I didn't say that."

"No, but I think I understand. I've called on him, of course, yet I fear I'll be rather lonesome this winter. I'm an Englishman but not the sort that thinks everyone who comes from London is—well, I know London."

The next morning as Donald tramped along the shore to the Keewatin post he found Nee-tah-wee-gan waiting for him beside the trail. He had not seen her since his return. As he approached she studied his face closely before speaking.

"Now that you have seen the country where the white man comes from you are sure you are one," she sneered at last.

Donald had long refused to be drawn into such a discussion but as he watched her now he saw something other than contempt in her eyes. It was very close to fear.

"Is that what you are afraid of?" he demanded suddenly.

"Afraid!" she laughed, the old, bitter, contemptuous laugh. "Why should I be afraid of what can never be? A white man with Nee-tah-wee-gan his mother! He is still the same boy who wishes to make his canoe fly like a bird."

Donald walked on but Nee-tah-wee-gan followed. "And where does Wen-dah-ban go now?" she asked. "Where does he go to try to be a white man?"

For a moment he did not answer and then, realizing that she could easily learn, he swung around.

"The 'big trader' has sent me to Fort James," he answered.

For the first time since he had told her of his fasting dream a genuine fear was in her eyes. She cowered before him and then she asked haltingly: "Is it that you are to be the trader at Fort James?"

"Yes, but why do you fear it?"

"Fear it!" she screamed in sudden fury. "There is nothing I fear. It is good. I laugh. It is what I wish. The higher you go the harder will be your fall. For never forget, Wen-dah-ban, that you are an Indian, that some day the white man will drive you back to your own people."

She turned abruptly and left him and he did not see her again during his visit at Whitefish Lake. He went on to Fort James, confident that she would follow, but the first ice came and her canoe did not appear. The year passed and she did not come and at last he began to believe that his success had dismayed her and that she had abandoned her attempt to drive him back to a wigwam.

When Donald reached Fort Bruce the next summer he learned that Merton Layard had been shifted to the managership of the headquarters post and that he and his family had already arrived. Although they had written to each other as often as fur land's mail service permitted and Merton had come to Fort Bruce each summer, Donald had not seen Evelyn Layard for seven years and he went at once to the dwelling house.

"Donald!" Evelyn cried when she opened the door.

She stared at him a moment, unable to hide her amazement, and then she added: "It is Donald, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's still Donald, Donald Norton," he answered. "Do you remember?"

She knew he referred to the day she had given him her father's name but the thought back of it told her that this handsome, well dressed young man whose poise and ease of manner had been startling and a little disconcerting was still, at heart, the boy she had known at Kenogami.

"How could I forget what a dear lad you were?" she cried and, urged by pride and affection, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

"Oh, Donald, you have made me so proud and happy."

Tears came, tears of joy through which her smile shone more gloriously. Donald's arms tightened about her in a sudden throb of emotion.

"But tell me about yourself," she commanded as she drew him into the living room. "Everything! Every detail! Donald! Donald! I can't believe it. Seven years! What a short time! And how long it has been!"

She drew up a chair and he found himself falling easily into confidential chatter, for the years had not changed Evelyn Layard. There was still the same warm, impulsive nature, the same quick understanding.

Evelyn, seeing reminders of the boy she had known but exulting in the new Donald that had emerged from those first intense years, watched and marveled as his charm expanded and she found her love recaptured.

While they were still talking Janet entered the room. The girl did not recognize Donald. She had carried away with her the memory of a serious youth, who sometimes frightened her with his relentless application and who had often aroused her anger because of the ease with which he surpassed her in their school work together. She had never forgotten their first meeting, when he had peered through the fence at her and had vehemently denied that he was an Indian, or the time when she had heard Nee-tah-wee-gan hiss "keen nish-e-na-be" and she had flown so fiercely to his defense.

But there was nothing in the young man before her in the least reminiscent of that boy or suggestive of what she might have expected him to become. Long ago fur land had ceased to look for native characteristics in his face or actions. There was a touch of brown in his hair, of gray in his eyes, and his features were clear cut and handsome in a purely British fashion. But most of all it was in the eyes, those unmistakable countermarks of race, that were found the qualities which made her forget Nee-tah-wee-gan. Donald's eyes lacked utterly the furtiveness and suspicion, the veiled yet ever-present questioning, which indicate the Indian. In them was the warmth, the clearness and directness and the half-hidden dancing lights of a kindly, strong and lovable nature.

As the girl hesitated in the door the mother exclaimed: "Janet! You haven't forgotten Donald!"

At the name, Donald stared in as great bewilderment as the young woman. He remembered a light haired, pink-and-white skinned child, shut off from the Indian children by the picket fence. His last sight of her had been as a long-legged, awkward youngster of thirteen waving good-by to him from the Kenogami dock when he had left for Fort Bruce. He was not prepared for the startlingly vivid beauty who now stood before him.

"Donald!" Janet repeated. "Not—not Wen-dah-ban?"

It was the name by which she had first known him and with which she had always spoken to him and it came naturally to her lips.

"Janet!" her mother cried in quick dismay.

"Wen-dah-ban," Donald laughed. "Of course. Janet never called me anything else."

Janet's glance thanked him for the easy manner in which he had met the situation. The moment she had spoken the name she had regretted it, though he had not shown resentment.

"I can't believe it!" Donald exclaimed in frank admiration, as he stepped back and looked at the girl. "And yet I don't imagine you had any difficulty in getting used to her," he laughed to her mother.

"You won't either," Evelyn laughed back.

"How about me?" Janet asked. "I'll have to begin all over again, too. Mother, it wasn't fair of you. You should have warned me."

She said it easily but in reality her banter was hiding a genuine amazement. Since her return she had heard much of Donald from her father but had attributed that warm-hearted gentleman's praise to pride in the development of a successful fur trader. With her London viewpoint, she had not been able to imagine Donald being anything else.

"It is seven years since I have seen him," Evelyn reminded her. "I, too, will have to get acquainted again."

"Please don't," Donald begged. "You make me feel like a stranger and—well, I don't want to be one."

He was not a stranger to the Layards in the days that followed. The old relationship with Evelyn was established immediately but with Janet it was another matter. They had parted as boy and girl, one uncouth and in deadly earnestness, the other only a child. There was little left from their five years at Kenogami that could serve as a bond or basis of understanding.

Yet youth never lives in the past and these two quickly ceased trying to pick up the days when they had first known each other. During her six years in England Janet's interests had been varied. She had lived with an aunt who was a rebel in many ways and the girl had escaped the rigorous and stifling supervision usual in an English home. She had been thrown in contact with minds that were keen and not heavy, that found pleasure in lightness and gayety and thereby gave to their serious moments an added weight.

In Donald she found a man so much like those she had known that she was constantly puzzled. There was a different exterior, a sturdiness and a directness, but beneath was a delightful keenness and mobility as amazing to Janet as it was charming. Her wonder drove her to what she believed to be a discreet question.

"You were in London only three months?" she asked.

"I had six years of it before I went there," he answered, for he had divined her thought.

"You mean the free trader at Whitefish Lake?"

"Yes," and Donald's eyes lighted with the thought of his friend. "I wish you could know Philip. You would like him. I missed him a lot last winter."

"Dale Millington doesn't seem to share your opinion of Mr. Collinge."

"What does he say?" Donald demanded.

"Nothing direct. He has mentioned him only incidentally. He once spoke of him as a squaw man with a couple of savage youngsters."

"That would be like Millington," Donald said quietly but with a sudden hardening of his voice. "He would see only that."

Janet flushed and glanced at him in sudden panic. She had regretted the words instantly, for she had recognized their application to his own history, and yet it was not of this that Donald was thinking. For a week Dale Millington had been vaguely disturbing. The young Englishman was the modern type of fur trader, a little in advance of his time, although old Duncan Mactavish had read the signs long before and knew his worth. He was daring, clever and original in his methods and he brought to the management of a post that system and quick efficiency which the older servants of the Hudson's Bay, steeped in precedent and routine, had failed to adopt when a strengthened opposition began to force the change.

Personally Millington was something of a favorite. He had a ready wit and a certain ease of manner which made him a welcome addition to "Bachelors' Hall" during the summer gatherings of the post managers and the central figure in the round of teas given by the women of Fort Bruce.

Janet Layard was not only unusually beautiful and charming but she was the only young white woman in the entire district. It was inevitable that she should attract Millington and that the girl herself should find enjoyment in his company after the lonely winter at Kenogami.

Donald's own pleasure in Janet's presence was such that his month at Fort Bruce was nearly gone before he realized just how much of her attention Millington claimed and what was at the bottom of his own reaction to it. But it was the Englishman who, in the last few days, discovered exactly what the situation was. Confident and a little vain, he had boasted to Janet of the Whitefish Lake fur receipts.

"I've got that fellow Collinge on his last legs," he said. "Another year or two and there'll be no Keewatin post at Whitefish."

Janet flared instantly.

"Don't forget that someone else spent six years laying the foundation for such a thing," she retorted.

Millington hesitated for an instant before he said: "Oh, Norton is a good man, though he has his limitations. Just at present I am encumbered with one of them."

"That is contemptible!" Janet cried. "You are the first person I have heard refer to Donald's mother since I came to Fort Bruce."

"But I don't mean it as you think," Millington answered quickly, for he had recognized his mistake. "I was merely marveling that he could have suffered her presence there so long. She isn't even human. She's pure venom. I understand that she never let a day go by without reminding him that he is part Indian."

"She is the only person in the entire Fort Bruce district who thinks he is," Janet declared. "I don't know a finer man than Donald Norton."

The very vehemence of her defense not only showed Millington that he had made a mistake but it opened his eyes to a new possibility. He had believed that Donald's history automatically eliminated him and he had seen in Janet's unconcealed interest in Donald's success only the natural result of their childhood association. Now he realized that in the Fort James manager he had a rival and a strong one and, although it touched his pride and vanity to be forced to compete with the son of a venomous old squaw for the favor of the only girl he had ever wished to marry, he never transgressed in Janet's presence again.

But his attitude toward Donald changed immediately. They met frequently at "Bachelors' Hall," yet Donald had always sensed something in the young Englishman that made him withhold his friendship. Now Millington gave cause. The word "half-breed" began to find a place in his vocabulary when Donald was present. From the first Donald had accepted the fact that all fur land should know of his parentage but he felt that it could not be circumstance alone that permitted him to overhear Millington make several references to Nee-tah-wee-gan.

Yet Donald gave little heed to this. He was absorbed by a new and baffling emotion, was responding to stimuli which had never touched his life before. Love was a factor which had not entered the struggle through which he had lifted himself from a wigwam to a position high in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. He had made no provision for it, had never considered it as a possibility.

Isolated from white people during the first half of his life, reared in an atmosphere of bitterness and savagery, shut up in lonely posts, battling always to lift himself and attain the goal he had set, knowing for only five crowded years the softening influence of a woman, he was not prepared even to recognize the true significance of what had come to him until it was time to say good-by to Janet.

He was starting early in the morning for Fort James and Evelyn asked him to dinner.

"It will be like the old times at Kenogami," she said. "Just the four of us."

But Donald found it was not like the old times. Then he had always turned to the mother. Now it was to Janet. Every word the girl said held his attention. He caught himself staring at her, trying to impress every feature of her vivid beauty upon his memory, storing up her characteristic phrases for solace during the long winter.

Later in the evening when duties called both Evelyn and Merton from the room, Donald discovered a difficulty in saying farewell he had never before experienced. He had always gone out to his post eager for the battle for pelts. Now he found himself thinking of the long, lonely months which lay ahead and he was conscious of an inexplicable desire to remain in Janet's presence.

"I'll be away almost a year," he finally forced himself to say. "Will you be here when I get back next summer?"

"Of course," and there was a catch in her laugh which prompted a quick, intuitive defense. "At least, I have no other plans now."

"You mean you may go back to England?"

Consternation had caused a sudden tremor in his voice. Janet saw, but her own emotions, in a quickening whirl, were equally disturbing.

"I should stay with father and mother," she admitted. "I have been away so long."

"But you would rather go back, rather live there?" He was almost accusing in his apprehensions.

"It was wonderful in London. I have missed many things."

There was no cruelty in Janet's thoughts, no attempt at coquetry. She had suddenly found herself on the brink of something new and startling and inexplicably alluring and was fighting desperately for poise. Before Donald could speak he heard Evelyn returning. Suddenly conscious of what his expression must tell, he began to examine a book on the table.

Even this would have told Evelyn something had her thoughts not been busy with a bit of news—the story of an Indian hunter at Kenogami, who, when his family was starving, had dragged his frozen feet over many torturing miles to get aid—which she had just heard through that important agency of fur land gossip, the kitchen. All three knew the Indian, a jovial, easy-going fellow, and in their expressions of sympathy Janet and Donald regained their composure.

But a little later when Donald arose Janet went forward with outstretched hands.

"You'll write to me, won't you?" she asked. "By the winter packet. A big, long letter."

"And you?" he demanded joyfully.

"Of course. We all will. Now that we have found you again, Donald, we are not going to lose you."

"But next summer?"

She laughed as she withdrew her hands. There was the instinctive feminine attempt to speak lightly of her decision but it could not conceal the sincerity or courage of her answer.

"I'll be here," she said. "I've come home to stay."

CHAPTER VII

DONALD LOSES A FRIEND

Philip Collinge had begun another attempt to teach his two sons to read and write English. Patiently and determinedly, he was working with them one evening when Donald burst in upon him.

"What's happened to you?" Philip demanded after the first excited greetings and he had drawn away to look at his friend.

"Happened?" Donald repeated. "Nothing. Why?"

Philip accepted his friend's unconscious evasion. There was no need to press the question. Gossip travels strangely swift trails in fur land and he knew the Layards had been shifted to Fort Bruce and that Janet had returned from England, a radiant star in the dreary sky of the north.

Though weary and hopeless, his own shattered existence permitting only a cynical interest in the affairs of others, Philip always found an exception in Donald. The pleasure he had derived from the youth's development was real, his affection was great, and now he knew, as clearly as though he had been told, what Janet's presence had done to his friend.

It had sickened him, aroused a fierce passion of protest, for he glimpsed the sorrow Donald was building for himself. Yet he knew he could not even hint at such a possibility, could do nothing to save his friend.

"But what are you doing here?" he asked. "It's so late in the season I didn't expect you to come around this way."

"I did stay at Fort Bruce quite a while," Donald answered, "but this is only fifty miles off the route and I've promised the canoemen a bonus if they would hurry things so that I could get a day with you. But what do you mean by asking what has happened to me?"

"I fancy it's just success," Philip drawled. "I must say, though, that I don't like your successor here."

"What has Millington been doing?" asked Donald.

"Oh, he's getting into me about as you did. He's under my guard all the time. Knows fur and all that and yet somehow I can't like him, or trust him. I admire an out-and-out blighter but I hate a crooked bounder."

"I know how you feel," Donald said, "but I wouldn't let it worry me."

"Yes, I dare say he'll come a cropper of his own making some day."

After his arrival at Fort James, Donald began to comprehend a little of what Philip had meant when he asked, "What's happened to you?" Only the separation and the loneliness were needed to make him understand how necessary Janet was to him and through long, bewildered hours he went back over the time he had spent with her, trying to determine how much of her warm interest had been for the boy with whom she had played at Kenogami and how much for the man he had become. Even the letter which came in the mid-winter packet did not assure him. He read it again and again, trying to find some confirmation of his hopes, some phrase or suggestion upon which he could hang a golden dream. Then something happened that jerked him out of his reveries. His best tripper came in from the western side of the Fort James domain with only a few pelts on his toboggan.

"The fur she gone!" the man reported excitedly. "And it not the Keewatin Company."

"Gone!" Donald repeated. "Who got it?"

"The hunters they not talk. They say they sick and not hunt or the fur is scarce but me see the trade goods in their camps, new things, and they not Keewatin trade goods. They Hudson's Bay goods."

Donald comprehended instantly that Millington was sending a tripper out of his own territory, was buying fur from Fort James hunters, but his indignation was short lived. It was an affront and it was a means taken to discredit him as a post manager, yet Donald laughed exultantly, for he saw that the Englishman considered him a rival and one so strong he must be fought.

Feuds between managers of adjacent posts had occurred in the past and sometimes they had developed into warfare almost as open as that between the Hudson's Bay and free traders. Always they had been a product of that strange, distorted life which servants of the company must lead. A post manager may easily gain a false impression of his own importance and dignity, may resent fancied wrongs and break forth in retaliation without heed to any harm the company might suffer.

Donald understood these psychological reactions but in Millington's case he knew there was something different—that the man was waging a personal campaign because he feared him as a rival.

His first thought was to make up his losses by similar raids on Whitefish Lake territory and he was eager for the success he knew he could attain. But a day's reflection brought abandonment of this plan. Not only did loyalty to the Hudson's Bay forbid but a high regard for the good will of Duncan Mactavish withheld him.

Mactavish was the last of the old chief factors, a man whose life and energies had been devoted to the great company for more than fifty years, a warrior for pelts who had scorned a pension and final years of ease in "the old country." He had remained at his post because he would rather die fighting.

The Hudson's Bay service, with its isolations, its great power, its sense of superiority fostered by an ancient prestige and by close association with an inferior race, brings out the best and the worst in men. It develops strangely contrasting virtues and weaknesses, opens the way to petty meanness as well as beautiful fellowship, and no one understood more thoroughly and with greater sympathy the distorting, dwarfing and ennobling factors in a fur trader's life, and the consequent mental and moral quirks, than old Duncan.

In Donald the district manager had recognized something more than an efficient trader and in the years when he needed encouragement most the old man's hand had gone out to the lonely boy. Now, no matter what Millington might do, Donald saw that he could not impair that friendship and trust, that he must keep his own hands clean, be true to the childhood dream that had carried him out of the wigwam.

Yet he did not intend to remain passive in the struggle. He could still guard against the raids, could set a trap for Millington, and in the summer he could lay the facts before Mactavish, relying on a sense of justice he had never found wanting.

But the long, lonely winter at Fort James had produced a far more disturbing situation and when Donald started for Fort Bruce in the summer it occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else. Without Philip Collinge's companionship to keep his mind occupied and normal, with new thoughts and desires and doubts drawing his attention from books, he had become the victim of that soft, gripping, devastating emotion which comes to all youth and which makes all men young. He looked forward only to seeing Janet.

The journey itself was long and irritating and because Fort James was one of the posts most distant from headquarters Donald was the last of the post managers to arrive. When his canoe turned a point down the lake and Fort Bruce came into sight the Indians suddenly ceased paddling and broke into excited chatter. The flag on the tall pole was at half-mast.

It might mean anything from the death of the King of England to that of a post manager and Donald, who had not received news even from his own world since the mid-winter packet, urged his canoemen to a last burst of speed.

He found all Fort Bruce in mourning. Duncan Mactavish, last of the chief factors, the spirit of the Hudson's Bay incarnate, was dead. For the first time Donald experienced a real sorrow and in the sincerity of his grief the possible consequences meant nothing. He was greeted by his fellow post managers, was warmly welcomed by the Layards, but the death of the man who had been the Hudson's Bay itself to an entire district still hung heavily over the fur land capital. Everyone who had known Duncan Mactavish had loved him.

Only in Janet's presence could Donald forget the grief that hung over Fort Bruce. He had much leisure and spent many hours with her.

"You are not thinking of going back to England?" he asked the first time they were alone together.

Despite her assurance in their farewell the previous summer the fear had haunted him.

"No," the girl answered, "I can't. I staid away too long. I never realized what I can do for father and mother. There is too much loneliness in fur land."

"That is all that keeps you here?" he questioned boldly.

"It isn't just a sense of duty. I was born in a fur post. I've lived in one all my life, except the six years I was away."

"But you've had a taste of the other sort of life."

"Not enough to wipe out first impressions. Nothing could after you have known the north country."

"Even now it doesn't seem desolate to you?"

"Desolate isn't the word. It is bleak and it is raw and it is cruel very often but there is a challenge in it, an eternal dare to one's courage and strength and sanity."

"Yes, there is that, for men."

"Why not for women?" Janet demanded. "Don't you think we ever want romance and adventure? But that isn't all I meant. It seems to me that if one can survive the north he has proved something he could never even understand in a softer country. It's so easy to do wrong here, where men have so much power and so little supervision, so easy to be weak."

"You're back to the men again."

"I'm not. You're only blind. They're talking in London of the new age that is dawning for women but women don't change over night. They still like to see their men prove themselves, still get a thrill in vicarious adventure and conflict."

"I'm going out and stir up a mutiny among the Indians," Donald declared with a laugh.

"How about the battle for pelts?" she asked with her quick smile. "To me there has always been something thrilling in that. Think of it! A ceaseless struggle waged through four thousand miles of wilderness! Why, if I were a man I'd never want anything more than to be a servant of the Hudson's Bay Company."

Donald found unexpected comfort and delight in her words, experiencing the joy of a man who knows the woman he loves understands the glory of his struggle, and the real Janet of that summer became far more wonderful than the girl of his long winter dreams.

There were no conjectures now, no evasions, no perplexities. He loved her, and so consuming was this new and entrancing emotion, so heady this first draught of the wine of life, he failed to hide his intoxication or to perceive that Janet, too, despite woman's inherent guards and devices, was being swept into the same emotional whirl.

But Evelyn Layard was not unaware of what was happening. Perhaps mothers are the first to recognize such situations because they await them from the daughter's infancy. After much hesitation she spoke to Merton.

"Have you noticed how much Janet and Donald are together?" she asked with an attempt to be casual.

"I've noticed that they have a mighty good time," he answered. "Janet's quick. She's bright, but Donald's a match for her. I'd rather hear them talk than have ten copies of Punch."

He laid down his copy of the London Times and turned to face his wife.

"You know there isn't a keener sense of humor in the district than Henry Milner's," he continued. "Yesterday he started an argument with Janet on some theory or other she picked up in England. He pretended to be serious but was really poking fun at her. Donald pitched in to help her and Milner thought they were in earnest but they turned the tables on him so neatly he threw up his hands and ran."

Evelyn let the matter rest there when she saw that Merton did not suspect what was troubling her. She was not even sure that she was troubled. She told herself she was glad and yet doubts came. They were vague and she fought them back. She even despised herself when they gained a sudden ascendency and in the reaction her attitude toward Donald became warmer and more impulsive than ever.

Then one day Millington called, ostensibly to see Janet though he had watched her leaving the dwelling house with Donald, and he remained to talk to the mother. Quite skillfully, for he had learned the Layard attitude the previous summer, he brought up the name of Nee-tah-wee-gan.

"Is she still at Whitefish Lake?" Evelyn asked.

"Yes, living on the rations her son supplies."

"It is strange she hasn't gone on to Fort James. She has always followed Donald wherever he has been. It is a fearful thing, for she seems to have devoted herself to making life unbearable for him. I am glad he has been free of her for the last two years."

"I never knew a human being to be so filled with bitterness and hatred," Millington said. "She seems hardly human. But, while Norton has not had her with him, I don't see how he can escape the thought that she is his mother. It must be a terrible load for a man to carry, just that thought."

He had spoken with a sympathy evidently sincere and when Evelyn did not comment he continued:

"Even if she were dead there would be the memory of her, a memory a man could never shake off, for he not only knows it but all fur land does."

For several days Evelyn brooded and then growing fears drove her to Merton.

"There isn't a finer chap in the north country than Donald!" he protested.

"I know it," she answered. "I tell myself that constantly. I am ashamed that I have any doubts."

"But why should you?"

"Oh, I'll admit all you say, and I feel responsible for Donald. We both are."

"Yes, and he'd be in a wigwam to-day if we hadn't given him a chance."

"That's just it. I would suffer anything rather than hurt him. I cannot be the one to drive his parentage home in such a way."

"Evelyn! You're working yourself up over nothing. There's no need——"

"But don't you see? There's Nee-tah-wee-gan. Think of that fearful old thing being the grandmother of Janet's children!"

Merton was staggered. Evelyn could not have chosen words better suited to arouse that age-old, instinctive aversion of the white man. He had loved Donald as a son but he worshiped Janet and now there was unfolded for him all the unconscious dreams of the parent for the daughter's happiness.

"Damn Nee-tah-wee-gan!" he cried, and stormed out of the room.

Neither he nor Evelyn brought up the subject again that day, though Janet and Donald spent much of the time together. The mother, sensitive now to every clue, saw the daughter's heightened color and a new, happy light in her eyes.

Presently there came an event that absorbed the attention of all Fort Bruce. For some time everyone had been busy with conjectures as to who would succeed Duncan Mactavish. That clannish spirit developed among men who spend a lifetime in a common service was eager for the selection of one from the district—Merton Layard's name was mentioned most often—but still no word had come from Winnipeg.

Then one day black eyes were the first to see an approaching canoe and to distinguish the chief factor's flag in the bow. In a moment all Fort Bruce was aware that its new district manager had come.

The canoe moved swiftly. The paddlers, conscious that they were being watched by several hundred pairs of eyes, put forth their best efforts and the craft fairly leaped from the water with each stroke.

"It's the chief but why is he coming from that direction?" Nicol MacKar demanded irritably.

"The Commissioner has gone outside the district," Sandy Hay of Kenogami answered. "He's picked someone from York Factory."

"Those Indians are from the Saskatchewan or I never saw one paddle," Millington declared. "And that means the white man sitting in the middle is John Corrigal."

"Corrigal!" MacKar repeated. "I haven't seen John since he left nearly thirty years ago. He has been district manager out there, hasn't he?"

"Yes, and he's a whirlwind for fur," Millington said. "I ran a post in the Saskatchewan country three years before coming here and if Corrigal is to be in charge we'll see some changes."

"Changes!" MacKar repeated quickly, for he never had made a success of any of the dozen posts he had operated in more than thirty years of service.

"Knock out the opposition, get the fur, keep a post up to snuff, and Corrigal's satisfied," Millington continued. "He's a fighter and he loves a fighter. The only man who is liable to suffer is Norton."

"Norton!" Layard exclaimed. "Why Norton? There isn't a better post manager in the district."

"If he were the best in all Canada it wouldn't make any difference," Millington replied. "Efficiency is a religion with Corrigal and he thinks the red blood can't meet a crisis. In the three years I worked for him there wasn't a man of mixed blood in a responsible position in the whole Saskatchewan district."

MacKar, Layard and several others had been watching the approaching canoe while Millington talked and the young Englishman alone caught a glimpse of Donald as he joined the group. But he pretended not to see and finished his statement. Then the canoe landed and they all walked down the bank to greet the new district manager.

All that day John Corrigal was the center of interest at Fort Bruce. He was busy greeting old friends, men with whom he had begun his service for the Hudson's Bay nearly forty years before, and becoming acquainted with the younger ones. He met Donald with the others and when he shook hands his eyes were suddenly clouded as if from pain.

"Fort James, eh?" he said. "That was my last post in this district."

Donald knew he referred to the death of his wife but he was saved from any embarrassment when Corrigal asked quickly:

"Is the opposition in there now?"

"Yes, the Keewatin Company."

"We'll have to get them out. Later I'll talk it over with you."

That evening he singled out Donald and continued the conversation. The young man watched his new superior closely at first but found nothing to substantiate what Millington had said on the lake shore and ascribed it to the Englishman's scheme of persecution.

"Fort James is our biggest post," Corrigal began. "When I left the district there had never been a free trader near it."

"The Keewatin Company started operations nine years ago," Donald told him.

"Nine years, eh? And how long have you been there?"

"Two."

Corrigal drew out a pad and scribbled on it.

"I'll see you in the office at eight o'clock to-morrow morning," he announced shortly. "We'll talk over the entire situation. The Keewatin Company must go, Mr. Hay," and he turned to Sandy, "at nine in the morning. My office. There should be another outpost at Kenogami. Nothing like a strong outer defense to keep back the opposition. We've got to keep the Kenogami record clear."

"The Keewatin Company got in there about ten years ago," Sandy laughed.

"In Kenogami! I thought——"

"Oh, they didn't stay long. Four months finished them, four months and this lad," and he laid an arm across Donald's shoulders.

Corrigal wheeled upon Donald, a new light in his eyes.

"What's this? You? Knocked them out in four months? Ten years ago? How old were you?"

"I was twenty. It was nine years ago. I was running the outpost at Wabinosh."

"He'll never tell you," Sandy said when Donald paused. "But everyone in the district knows it and has been using him as a pattern ever since."

He told the story, grown now but still fairly accurate, for Duncan Mactavish had recounted it scores of times. Corrigal listened with close attention and when Sandy finished he turned again to Donald. His severe features had softened and his eyes, usually so hard and cold, glowed warmly.

"That's it!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "Drive 'em out! Get the fur! It's what we're here for, what we've got to do. We'll get together, young man, and do the same thing at Fort James."

That was the impression Fort Bruce formed of Corrigal. "Get the fur" and "force out the opposition" were his watchwords. He was hard, driving, ceaseless in his efforts, as unsparing of himself as of others. He thawed only when, as upon listening to the story of Donald's exploit at Wabinosh, he heard of fresh gains for the Hudson's Bay or a defeat of the opposition.

From the moment of his arrival he had thrown himself into his work with a determination that was almost savage. Nothing else mattered. Fur and the gathering of fur, the stamping out of free traders, the prestige and might of the great company, these were the only things that entered his life.

All Fort Bruce was smiling in recollection of Corrigal's first conversation with Nicol MacKar. They had been apprentice clerks together at Fort Bruce, had come over on the same ship.

"Say, John," Nicol laughed after he had greeted his old friend, "do you remember the time we were in the office here and switched the personal requisitions of those two old fellows at Kenogami and Lynx Head Falls and Alex Smith got the Bibles and tracts and the big box of marmalade while the case of whisky went to Ben Hardisty?"

Corrigal stared at him blankly for a moment and then nodded absently.

"Yes," he said. "Where are you now, Nicol? Hungry Hall? Always was a weak post. Queer sort of Indians. We've got to put some ginger into them somehow. We'll talk that over right away."

But while Fort Bruce smiled at old Nicol's discomfiture it was a crooked smile—twisted by apprehension—for twenty-four hours after his arrival Corrigal's personality had been impressed upon everyone and the effect was that of a blow. So long as anyone could remember, the spirit of Duncan Mactavish had pervaded the district. The old man had been hard but human. He had demanded but had always given. There had been an inspiration in his fairness, in his deep understanding and in his ability to forgive.

John Corrigal, though nearly fifty-five, was the new type of fur trader, alert, aggressive, recognizing the changes that had come to fur land and quick to adopt methods necessary to meet new conditions. In him men found themselves confronting a stern, relentless nature, a driving, compelling spirit. They sensed hardness and remorselessness and began to fear a leader who would command and never give, whose judgment would be merciless and as cold as an accountant's report.

CHAPTER VIII

RED SMEARS DONALD'S DREAM

Donald Norton took little note of the agitation of his fellow-workers over the methods of the new district manager. His thoughts were elsewhere. His heart was torn by doubt and hope, by fear and stern resolve. He was aware only that he must return soon to Fort James and that he could not face another long winter of uncertainty.

Just how he should end that uncertainty Donald had not determined. Several times he had been on the verge of speaking to Janet and always fear had prevented him. Love had made him blind to that which otherwise would have been apparent. He felt that if Janet's attitude toward him were still that of the girl at Kenogami he could not spoil it in an effort to assume another role.

Donald also had the lover's usual sense of unworthiness. Janet was so glorious; she might have so much and he could give so little. He was appalled by his presumption and yet driven by his longing. It seemed incredible that she could love him.

It was not that he saw his parentage as a shadow of the bar across his path. He had felt white too long, had been accepted too completely, but he wondered if he had triumphed sufficiently over the disability of his lack of early training. He knew, too, the warmth and gentleness Janet had inherited from her mother and he could not bear to hurt her by asking for what she could not give.

In desperation Donald turned to his earliest friend, and decided to speak to Evelyn, to learn if the question he wished to ask would bring sorrow rather than joy to Janet. In those first years after he had left Pe-tah-bo's wigwam Evelyn had been an unfailing ally. On more than one occasion his boyish heart had been opened to her. She invited and received confidences and her sympathy and understanding had always removed embarrassment.

Yet the moment he asked to see her alone he knew something had happened. Evelyn had been waiting for such a visit. Because she had dreaded it her manner was an unmistakable expression of her attitude. Donald, always sensitive, and responsive to her mood, caught it at once.

For a moment they faced each other. He had come prepared for the warmth and sympathy he had always received and he could not understand this sudden change.

"What have I done?" he demanded incredulously.

"Oh, Donald!" Evelyn cried. "Why did you ask that? Don't you see? Don't you understand? It isn't you. It isn't anything you have done."

"You mean," he demanded hoarsely, "that you——"

In one benumbing flash he understood what had brought that expression of agony to her eyes but he felt no sympathy, because of the appalling wreckage into which his own life had been plunged. Fourteen years of ceaseless effort, progress ever upward, all had ended in defeat.

He felt white. He knew he was white in every instinct and characteristic. Yet this woman, whom he had come to love as a mother, was looking back—not at the last fourteen years but at the first, back to Wen-dah-ban, to Nee-tah-wee-gan, to that smear of red he believed he had wiped clean.

Donald tried to speak. His lips opened and then closed. Evelyn saw his agony and remained motionless and silent, her own agony holding her dumb.

Suddenly he realized that there was nothing for either of them to say, that nothing ever could bridge the gap between them. His mind whirled back to that morning at Kenogami when he had found Nee-tah-wee-gan waiting for him outside the trade shop and she had uttered her sneering prophecy:

"Go to the white man, you fool! In the end he will kick you out. Work hard for him. He may even make you ruler of a post but you will gain nothing. When your back is turned he will grin and say, 'He is a half-breed.'

"If you want a woman you must take an Indian. In the end you must come back to your own people, to the place where you belong."

For a moment the horrible injustice of it overwhelmed him and aroused a savage determination to compel acceptance of his faith in himself. But the cold logic of Nee-tah-wee-gan's words chilled his spirit. Without speaking, he turned and walked out of the room, out of life itself, it seemed, and there was no comfort in the thought that as he departed Evelyn Layard sank to the floor with a sob of anguish.

Blinded and numb and beaten, he walked quickly across the great enclosure of Fort Bruce to "Bachelors' Hall," intent only on finding seclusion in his room. Nicol MacKar was at a table reading but Donald hurried past without a word.

"Corrigal was asking for you," Nicol said as he glanced up from his book. "Told me to send you over to the office if I saw you."

Donald hesitated. At that moment he did not wish to see Corrigal or anyone else.

"He's a driver," Nicol continued. "He's been here only two days and he knows all about the district, where each post stands and all that. Things are going to be a lot different than under old Duncan Mactavish."

There was a rueful note in Nicol's voice that brought a bitter comment to Donald's lips but before he could speak Millington entered.

"Corrigal wants to see you," he said to Donald. "Told me to send you over."

He went on to his room without stopping but there was no mistaking the elation in his voice. Donald took a quick step forward and then Millington halted.

"By the way, Norton," he said, "my brigade starts in the morning. If there is anything special you want to send to your mother you had better get it ready this afternoon."

Donald's anger faded and left him weak. He knew Millington had said this only to taunt him and yet the reference to Nee-tah-wee-gan had served to drive home the part she played in his life, the part she must always play. He turned and walked across to the district office.

Corrigal was sitting at his desk and Donald sensed at once that there was something hard and uncompromising in his manner.

"Norton," he began, "I have just been going over the Fort James records and I find a falling-off in fur receipts during the last year. It's got to stop."

Only the day before Donald had spent an hour with Corrigal, discussing the affairs of the district and of Fort James in particular. There had been nothing brusque in Corrigal's manner then. He seemed to have recognized a kindred spirit in the younger man and he had signified his approval of Donald's views and methods in an unmistakable manner.

That there was only one reason for the change Donald was instantly aware. Millington had talked to Corrigal, had told the district manager of Nee-tah-wee-gan, of those early wigwam days. Now Corrigal looked upon him not as an efficient post manager, not as a man of whom he thoroughly approved, but only as a half-breed.

A half hour earlier Donald had not considered Nee-tah-wee-gan as a factor in his life. He felt white. He believed he had shed the smoke smell completely and for all time. Then, without warning, Evelyn Layard had recoiled in horror from his touch. Now Corrigal was frankly distrustful, even contemptuous. Yet Donald knew he had not changed in any way. His thoughts, his instincts, his character, all were unaltered. He was still the same man to whom they had given their trust and faith.

In that instant he saw the barrier that lay across his trail—a barrier which had always been there but which he now encountered for the first time. But he did not perceive that the barrier was unsurmountable. Youth, desire, courage—all these hurled him at the obstacle, demanded that he tear it from his path. He took a quick step forward, placed his hands on Corrigal's desk, and then suddenly he realized how, in this matter, he was without adequate defense. To answer Corrigal's question he must bring a serious charge against Millington. It would be, for Corrigal, the word of a half-breed against that of a white man, the typically evasive attempt of an Indian to exonerate himself.

Donald had no proof. He had prepared to lay the matter before kind and just old Duncan Mactavish but not a man like Corrigal. Fate, in the old Scotchman's death, had played into Millington's hands. It was Millington who had told Corrigal Donald was a half-breed, Millington who had cut into the Fort James fur receipts with his raids on Donald's territory, Millington who had worked with Corrigal out on the Saskatchewan and who knew his prejudices and was even now working himself into a stronger position at the expense of his rival.

When Donald failed to make any comment after that first brusque statement Corrigal looked up.

"What is the reason?" he demanded.

"It wasn't the Keewatin Company at Fort James," Donald said. "I kept very careful watch and know they fell off a little."

"But you had as many hunters as ever."

"Yes, two more."

"Then why is there less fur?"

Corrigal was relentless and Donald knew he was driven into a corner. He raged at his helplessness and yet he knew he must present a plausible explanation or suffer a cross-examination that would reveal his evasion of the real reason.

"Someone raided the edge of the district late in the winter," he said. "The tripper brought word of it just before the last ice, when there was no chance for me to investigate. None of the hunters would give me definite information when they came in the spring."

"Haven't you any idea who it was?"

"It was confined to the western edge of the territory."

"The Whitefish Lake side?"

"Yes."

"The Keewatin people at Whitefish! Collinge, eh?"

Corrigal looked up sharply as he asked that last question.

"Friend of yours, too, isn't he?" he demanded. "Seems to me someone told me about it. Didn't you go out of your way to visit him last fall?"

"If you think——" Donald began hotly.

"I merely know the Fort James fur receipts have fallen off and that someone from the Whitefish Lake side is getting the fur," Corrigal interrupted.

He paused a moment and then he said crisply: "That has got to stop. Let the Keewatin people or anyone else begin that sort of thing and there'll be no end of it. You should have had more information. If it is Collinge, get after him. Understand? And I expect you to start back to your post to-morrow morning."

He swung around to some papers on his desk to indicate that the interview was closed. Donald, speechless with rage not only against Corrigal and Millington but against his own helplessness, hesitated. The district manager glanced up and saw him standing there.

"Get your requisitions in shape at once," he ordered, irritation with the other's indecision apparent in his manner. "This is important. If Collinge is permitted to make up his Whitefish Lake losses in Fort James territory we don't accomplish much in our fight against the opposition."

Donald turned and went out. After he was gone Corrigal was busy with some reports for a moment. Then he looked up.

"Indian, all right," he muttered. "Sullen and afraid to speak."

Donald went at once in search of his canoemen. After all, he thought, Corrigal's order that he leave immediately offered the best way out of the situation. He could go back to Fort James, back to a long, lonely winter, and there he could fight the battle with himself, effect a reconciliation with the inevitable, accept the fate that had been his from the beginning.

When he had found his Indians and had instructed them to be ready for an early start the next morning he went to "Bachelors' Hall" and packed his belongings. He had no desire to see anyone. After the first flare of revolt his spirit had crumpled, for from the beginning he had accepted as genuine the support that had been so freely given by everyone in the district.

Yet it was not the fact that he was left alone that robbed him of courage. Even though he did not know it, the failure of the Layards to accept him had been like a blow from behind. His affection had grown with his faith and he felt as if he had been deserted by his own father and mother. Bitterness did not take the place of his former attitude, however. There was only a great void. Numbed, beaten, hopeless, he wanted only to get away from Fort Bruce.

With this mood of black despair upon him he saw Janet while going to the district office to make some final corrections in his requisitions for the next year. Even the fact that she was with Millington did not arouse him. He had already abandoned all hope.

Janet called to him from the verandah of the dwelling house and when he halted she ran toward him. He went to meet her and again the thrill of her presence swept over him.

"Donald!" she began breathlessly. "I don't want——"

She halted and stared beseechingly at his averted face.

"I don't want you to think——" she began again, only to have her courage fail her.

He still stared out across the lake. Everything he desired, everything he needed to bring back courage that would scorn Corrigal and Millington and all they might do was there awaiting his acceptance, begging for a glance or a word, and he did not see it.

"I'm starting early in the morning for Fort James," he said in a low voice. "Corrigal has ordered me to return at once."

"Corrigal!" she cried angrily. "You are not letting him, just because he believes——"

She caught herself suddenly on the very brink of the chasm that had opened between them.

"It is not Corrigal," Donald said. "I should get back. And I'll say good-by now for I'll be gone early in the morning."

He forced himself to a faint smile, though he barely glanced at her face, held out his hand, clasped her limp fingers for a moment and then turned and was gone.

He walked quickly to the district office without looking back. He did not see Janet turn and hurry to the dwelling house, passing the waiting Millington without a word. He saw nothing until he reached Corrigal's desk.

"I am leaving early in the morning," he said. "My brigade has gone and everything is in shape. Is there anything else?"

"No," Corrigal answered slowly, for he was evidently puzzled by the young man's brusqueness. "All I ever have to say is, 'Get the fur.'"

"I understand," Donald answered. His head was high and his eyes never turned from Corrigal's. "Then if there is nothing else I'll say good-by now."

He walked out and closed the door without waiting for a reply.

CHAPTER IX

CORRIGAL DRIVES HIS MEN

Before Donald had been gone an hour all Fort Bruce was buzzing with the possible reasons for his sudden departure. In "Bachelors' Hall" post managers and apprentice clerks spoke of it in subdued tones. They realized that the subject touched their own problems very closely, that it was an indication of what they might expect from this new, cold, driving, ruthless superior who had come to take the place of kindly, understanding old Duncan Mactavish.

Nicol MacKar knew Corrigal had sent for Donald and that immediately after the interview the young man had made his preparations for departure, and because Nicol himself had never made a conspicuous success as a post manager he related what he had seen with more or less perturbation.

"Good Lord!" Sandy Hay of Kenogami exclaimed. "If he's riding Donald, what can the rest of us expect? The only thing that makes me feel at all safe is the fact that there is no opposition at Kenogami."

"There is no reason to fear Corrigal," Millington declared confidently. "You'll like him after you get to know him. As I told you when I saw him coming, there's just one thing he asks, 'Get the fur.'"

"If Donald Norton can't get it, no one in the district can," Sandy retorted.

"Perhaps," Millington agreed indifferently. Then he added slowly, "And perhaps he's blown up."

Sandy glanced quickly at the young Englishman. He had sensed this antagonism long before and because he was a fur trader and accustomed both to see and to feel, several significant episodes had not escaped him that summer.

"Be careful that when he does blow up it isn't under you," he warned. "And Corrigal will discover there's dynamite in that lad, too. I'll back Donald."

Millington grinned and Sandy added significantly: "In anything."

It chanced that Millington had called at the Layard home the previous afternoon before Evelyn had recovered from her trying interview with Donald and he had made a very shrewd guess as to what had happened. He knew, too, what the memory of such a blow as Donald had received would do during a long, lonely, brooding winter. He felt that he had cleverly pulled the props from under Donald's dreams.

"Don't risk any money, Sandy," he advised.

"Corrigal's a fool!" Sandy snapped.

"He's not a sentimentalist," Millington answered as he walked out. "Remember what I told you. There wasn't a half-breed post manager in the Saskatchewan district."

"You know, if it weren't for little things like that I'd never remember that Donald has an Indian mother," drawled Harry Milner of Lynx Head Falls post.

"Yes, and Millington's the only one who ever does remember it," Sandy growled.

An apprentice clerk appeared in the doorway and surveyed the assembled post managers with an impish grin.

"Mr. John Corrigal, lord high ruler of Fort Bruce and its people," he began with exaggerated formality, "has commanded the presence of——"

He stopped and began to search through a bundle of papers, casting sly, delighted glances at the perturbed group before him.

"The presence of——"

"Out with it, you brat!" Sandy shouted. "Who does he want now?"

"Mr. Alexander Hay, immediately, in the throne room."

The others laughed as Sandy started to his feet.

"I'll get your things packed so you won't lose any time," Harry Milner offered.

"And I'll look up your canoemen for you," Nicol MacKar added.

It was thus that the subject of Donald's departure received a general application and Donald himself only brief consideration in the minds of the other post managers. No one else was hurried away, but men who had pursued the old ways for a lifetime suddenly found themselves face to face with a new situation, under the sway of a man who thought only of fur.

So long as they remained at Fort Bruce Corrigal spent every available minute helping them plan the winter's campaign and inciting them to increased effort. They departed for the long months alone with the feeling that they were being driven, not led, and they missed the kindly, understanding spirit of Duncan Mactavish—that sympathy which lonely men should have if they are to remain loyal.

It was this that drove Donald from their minds, robbed him of their compassion. Merton Layard alone retained a feeling of resentment which grew until it finally drove him to expression.

"Look here, John," he burst forth one day in the district manager's office, "you're making a big mistake with Donald Norton."

"Mistake?" Corrigal repeated coldly.

"Of course it's a mistake. If you'd taken the trouble to inquire, or look over the records, you'd have seen he's the best fur buyer in this district. What sort of work do you think he's going to do when you send him out as you did?"

"I expect he's going to show himself to be exactly what he is—a half-breed."

"That's all rot. There's nothing of the half-breed in him."

"His mother's a squaw and that's enough for me."

"Then all I've got to say is that you're acting like a bigoted fool."

Corrigal started from his chair but before he could speak Merton rushed on.

"I don't know what's happened to you. We were apprentice clerks together. You were a warm-hearted, altogether likable chap. Everyone was your friend. Now you turn up here as hard and cold as ice. I don't know whether it's a pose or what, but I'm going to tell you now that you've a fair start toward wrecking this district."

"That's enough, Layard," Corrigal interrupted harshly. "So long as I'm head of this district I'm responsible to the company alone and I choose my own course. You and the rest of the men may as well understand now that this sentimental rubbish doesn't go. Nothing counts but results."

"Exactly!" Merton exclaimed. "And you'll learn that without sentiment you can't succeed. You ought to know it. You've been with the company long enough. The trouble with you is that something's died in you."

Corrigal was leaning across his desk, tense with anger, but with the last words he suddenly sank back and there was a flash of pain in his eyes.

Merton knew what it meant. He knew this man had tried to drown his sorrow in work, that ever since the death of his wife and son he had submerged himself in the ceaseless combing of a huge kingdom for pelts.

All fur land knew Corrigal's story. After tragedy had wiped his life clean of all other interests, he had consecrated himself to the great company, living it, breathing it, becoming the Hudson's Bay itself, yet far more impersonal and coldly efficient than the great organization he served.

Though more than fifty years old the onerous life of the winter trails held no terrors for him. He traveled constantly, supervising the work of his managers, devising new ways to rout the opposition and always, in his office, in distant posts, at a lowly hunter's wigwam, thinking, thinking of nothing but fur.

Layard knew all this but his own anger was great.

"Don't you suppose the men in this district understand?" he demanded. "They're truly loyal to the company. You think you are, but they don't think so. They sense something else in you, sense that you've made a heartless machine of yourself, and they know Donald is a victim of prejudice and of nothing else."

"Now that we're back to the point of the discussion," Corrigal said coldly, "I'll tell you exactly why I acted as I did with Norton. The Fort James fur receipts were dropping. He admitted to me that someone raided his territory on the western side and that he did nothing to stop it."

"I won't believe that of him."

"No? And who is on the western side, in a position to do it, and who would he permit to operate unopposed? No one but that squaw man friend of his, Collinge."

Though he did not believe this, Layard was too astonished to protest.

"Let me tell you something," Corrigal continued. "I have no prejudice against Norton, no animosity. But I do know, after years of observation of the half-breed, that sometime, in some crisis, the red blood will predominate. I'm not alone in this. The company feels it and so long as I'm in charge of this district the interests of the Hudson's Bay will not be jeopardized because of sentiment.

"But I've given Norton his chance—another year to make good, though I haven't much hope. There's always a breaking point with a half-breed. A top, no matter how fast it may spin, ultimately will topple. In Norton's actions I have found a characteristic wobbling."

Layard was silent for a moment. He couldn't understand, couldn't imagine Donald letting anyone get fur from the company, but his faith rallied.

"I don't know what's been happening at Fort James," he said at last, "but I do know Donald and that such a thing as you suspect is impossible. But if you're as impersonal as you claim, you'll give him a chance to prove you're wrong." With this he stalked out of Corrigal's office.

Layard did not talk to Corrigal on the subject again. He determined to wait until the next summer when Donald returned and then warn him of Corrigal's attitude.

Meanwhile the district manager was waiting impatiently for the first ice. Early in January he arrived unexpectedly at Whitefish Lake but Millington, knowing his habits, was ready for him. Books, monthly statements, the trade shop, everything was in excellent shape. Millington was a clever fur trader. In the fall he had engineered a coup which had caught Philip Collinge napping and he was exuberant over the prospects of a record winter.

Corrigal remained only a day. He had confidence in Millington's ability and a quick survey told him that everything was going well. The morning of his departure he went to the trade shop, where Millington had gone to see a hunter. As he waited for his half-breed drivers to bring the dog teams to the door, Nee-tah-wee-gan entered.

The district manager was leaning against the counter studying the shelves and gave her scant attention. She was just an old Indian woman, thin, bent, apparently feeble. Her head was wrapped in a shawl that half hid her face.

But Millington, glancing up from the fur he was grading, was held by the light in her eyes. He knew she was venomous and he had often teased her into outbursts of rage but never had he seen such hatred blaze from human eyes as she now directed at the back of the unconscious district manager. It fascinated him, but his quick mind was instantly alert. Then he heard the tinkling of dog bells and the shouts of drivers and Corrigal thrust out his hand.

"Good-by," he said. "I want to get to Fort James as quickly as possible. Don't know whether I'll be back this winter or not."

Millington leaped over the counter and followed him outside.

"Did you see that old woman in the shop?" he asked, as he helped tuck the robes about his superior in the gaudily decorated cariole.

"Didn't notice her. Why?"

"She's Norton's mother."

"Oh, yes. Still lives here, eh?"

"Seven years now. I don't know why she didn't go on to Fort James with him."

"Are her rations still charged to his account?"

"Of course."

Corrigal nodded to the drivers, they cried "march-on!" and the two teams dashed down to the ice.

Millington watched them for a moment and then turned back to the trade shop. Directly in front of him, looking out of a window, was Nee-tah-wee-gan. But she did not seem to see him. Her eyes were turned toward the departing dog teams and Millington shivered in the light of the hatred they expressed.

He went on into the store. The hunter had gone outside to witness in awed silence the departure of the supreme ruler of his world. Nee-tah-wee-gan had not moved from the window.

"You don't seem to like the new chief," Millington said in Ojibwa.

"It is John Corrigal?" she demanded in a low voice.

"Yes, John Corrigal. He is a great man."

Nee-tah-wee-gan made a frightful grimace and turned again to the window. Millington, always quick to gather impressions, looked at her sharply. Just then the door opened and the hunter entered. The trader waved him out with a frown and the door closed again.

"You knew Corrigal when he was at Fort James," Millington said.

Nee-tah-wee-gan did not indicate that she had heard.

"Perhaps you knew him at Fort Bruce, too," he continued, suddenly recalling idle gossip he had heard several years before.

Again she ignored him.

"Corrigal is a great chief," he said. "He has been a great chief in the company for many years. But he does not sit at Fort Bruce. All the time he is on the trails, visiting the posts. Now he is going to Fort James."

Nee-tah-wee-gan wheeled toward him and the venomous light no longer shone in her eyes. For the first time Millington saw them bright with joy but with a joy more diabolical than her hate had ever been.

"Now?" she demanded. "He goes to Fort James?"

She did not wait for his affirmation but burst into a peal of laughter that chilled him.

"It has come!" she shrieked. "It has come! For thirty years I have waited for that—for that and the rest that will follow."

Again she laughed, beating her thin, hollow chest as she did so, laughed until Millington, awed by her outburst, shivered and drew back.

"Tell me," Nee-tah-wee-gan demanded, "is it true what the hunters said when they came with the brigade, what your canoemen told us, that the 'big trader,' this new one, this John Corrigal, wants only white men to run his posts? Is it true that he does not trust an Indian?"

Millington nodded and again the woman burst into laughter. For a moment she swayed back and forth and then as if weakened by the excess of her diabolical mirth she sank to a heap on the floor. Millington, appalled by her actions, watched her in silence.

At last she looked up. Her laughter had ceased but her eyes were still bright with the fiendish joy.

"Then he will not have Wen-dah-ban run a post for him," she said. "He will hear Wen-dah-ban is the son of me, an Indian woman, and he will not want him. He will scorn him. He will tell him he is an Indian and no good. He will tell him to go back to his own people where he belongs."

She stopped, her eyes glowing, her body suddenly rigid, her bony hands clenched before her.

Millington leaned forward eagerly.

"Do you want Corrigal to drive him back to a wigwam?" he whispered.

Nee-tah-wee-gan, still staring, did not seem to hear.

"The 'big trader' will do that?" she cried suddenly. "He will do that to Wen-dah-ban, to his own son!"

CHAPTER X

NEE-TAH-WEE-GAN'S REVENGE

Astounded though he was at Nee-tah-wee-gan's disclosure, Millington's mind leaped instantly to its possible results—not as they affected Donald or Corrigal but as they might determine his own future.

He believed what Nee-tah-wee-gan had said. He knew how hate swayed the woman, how it had so ruled her in that moment that she had spoken unconsciously, wholly unmindful of his presence.

"See here," he exclaimed, as he grasped her shoulder and whirled her toward him, "does Norton know that, or Corrigal? Do they suspect it?"

"Know what?"

"That Corrigal is his father?"

"Is he?"

"You can't fool me. You said so. Hate drove it out of you."

"You do not mean that I hate my own son?"

"Of course you hate him, and Corrigal, too. But does anyone else know? Do they suspect it?"

"Why is the white man so interested? It is none of his affair. Surely you do not hate Corrigal, or——" she paused a moment and looked at him shrewdly—"or Wen-dah-ban."

Millington hesitated. Then he took a chance.

"I have a reason to hate Norton," he said harshly.

"The white girl at Fort Bruce, eh? I have heard. As the traders wish to know the hearts of the hunters, so we know the desires of the white people. There was not an Indian who went to Fort Bruce with the brigades but knew you wished the white girl for your woman—the white girl who looked only at Wen-dah-ban."

"See here!" Millington broke in harshly. "Do Corrigal and Norton know this?"

"How could they know if it is not true?"

Millington was rapidly losing his temper. He saw that Nee-tah-wee-gan was perfectly self-controlled now and was only baiting him.

"They will know it!" he exclaimed. "I'll tell Corrigal. I'll write him a letter."

It was more than fear that flashed in her eyes. It was despair and Millington knew he was on the right track.

"I'll write to Corrigal," he repeated, "and when Corrigal knows, and Norton knows, Norton won't be kicked out as you wish. Corrigal will be glad. For thirty years he has been lonely. He has mourned for the son who died in the fire. Now Norton can take the place of that son and when Corrigal becomes old Norton will be the 'big trader.'"

But Nee-tah-wee-gan laughed scornfully.

"Yes," she said, "Wen-dah-ban will become the 'big trader' and he will get the white girl. You will tell Corrigal so that can happen."

She drew her shawl over her head and walked out of the trade shop.

For several days Millington considered the situation. From the first he had believed the old Indian woman spoke the truth when she watched Corrigal departing for Fort James, understanding how hate had forced the revelation. But if hate had stirred the savage wrath he saw how it might have done so in the past—how under somewhat similar circumstances Donald could have heard the same thing.

He was tempted to talk to Philip Collinge. He knew the bond that existed between him and Donald and took it for granted that Donald, if he knew, would have told his friend. But, though he had only scorn for Collinge, Millington was afraid of his fellow countryman. He sensed his integrity and good breeding.

Millington was repeating his secret raids on Donald's territory. He had planned them cleverly and believed he could escape detection but he saw that it would be folly to continue them if there were a chance that Corrigal should learn Donald was his son.

In desperation he sought Nee-tah-wee-gan, visiting her cabin at night. He was subtle now. The old woman had bested him in the first battle of wits and he determined that the keener mind of the white man should triumph. Purposely he avoided the subject of Donald's parentage, tried to ingratiate himself with presents and to worm his way into her confidence, to establish a common purpose between them. But Nee-tah-wee-gan had nursed her solitary hate too long and met every effort with inscrutability or taunting laughter.

Meanwhile the winter was passing. Millington had delayed further raids until he could extract more information from Nee-tah-wee-gan. He knew that if he were to discredit Donald with Corrigal he must act quickly and he did not dare venture until he had the facts of their relationship and could determine how far he might go. It was thus that when he went to visit the old woman one stormy night he carried a bottle of Scotch with him.

He did not offer her a drink but depended upon the Indian's uncontrollable craving for alcohol to open the way. For a while he sat and talked, gossiping aimlessly, occasionally putting the bottle to his lips and always unmindful of Nee-tah-wee-gan's contemptuous attitude.

At last, as he sat the whisky down, she suddenly reached forth a hand.

"The company does not allow that," he said as he placed it behind him.

"What does the company know or care about an old woman?" she retorted.

He ignored her and went on talking of something else, but Nee-tah-wee-gan, with a pretext of getting wood for the fire, snatched the bottle. He pretended that he wished to recover it but did not succeed until she had filled a tin cup and resumed her seat.

As Nee-tah-wee-gan drank, with slow sips at first, then greedily, the effect was not what he had expected. She crouched beside the little fire. There was no light except the red glow from the open hearth and this brought out in strong relief the old woman's fierce, hate-distorted features. Millington, sitting back in the darkness, waited impatiently for some change—for some indication that her reticence was giving way before the liquor.

But none came. Her brown, deeply-lined face was touched with the red of the coals on the hearth, the deep wrinkles appearing to be even deeper in the sharp shadows. Behind her and on either side was only the black darkness of the room. Even the lower part of her body was invisible. She sat there, immovable, like a sharply silhouetted bust of savagery suspended in midair. Not a muscle moved. Only her eyes, glittering viciously, seemed alive.

Millington did not speak for a long time. At last he took a drink from the bottle and then set it before him. Apparently Nee-tah-wee-gan had not seen but as he leaned back a hand shot out and again she filled her cup.

She drank slowly now but with growing satisfaction. Her eyes became brighter and at last, so suddenly and so unexpectedly that Millington shrank back in the darkness, she burst into diabolical laughter. Whisky had freed the repressions of thirty years.

"To his own son!" she cried. "To his own son!"

Millington was tense with expectancy. He did not speak and hardly moved lest he drive back the revelation he felt was coming. Nee-tah-wee-gan sat there as if alone with the vengeful spirit which had so long possessed her, dwelling on the triumph which was to be hers, talking as she must have talked to herself through many a cold winter night.

"To his own son!" she repeated gloatingly. "He will do that. He will kick him out, drive him back to a wigwam, tell him he is an Indian and no good. Wen-dah-ban won't know. But after it is done, after Wen-dah-ban is again an Indian, then I will tell the 'big trader,' then he will know what Nee-tah-wee-gan has done to him."

"They don't know now?" Millington asked softly.

She turned toward him. "They do not dream it. In all the world no one suspects but you. And you would not have known if my hate had not driven it from me when I saw him for the first time in nearly thirty years. Only it does you no good to know," she added shrewdly. "You have no proof and I would say you lied."

She grinned at him maliciously and then lifted the cup to her lips with a gesture intended to be mocking but which was so uncertain that Millington exulted because she was losing self-control.

"They will never learn until Norton is again in a wigwam?" he demanded.

"Never!" she cried. "It is for that I have waited."

Millington had learned what he wished to know. His own plans could be carried out. He understood Corrigal well enough to see that another bad year for Donald would mean his transfer from the district—a disgrace which would end him forever with the Layards. Yet he must be certain that hate could keep her silent.

"Why do you wait?" he asked.

"To make Corrigal suffer!" Nee-tah-wee-gan screamed, and she rocked back and forth in sudden frenzy.

"Suffer?" Millington persisted, for he saw her tongue has been loosened at last. "How would that make him suffer?"

"Because the son he lost and has always wanted would have been within his reach all these years if he had only known."

"But he would not care," Millington taunted. "He has no use for a half-breed."

"Who is talking of a half-breed?"

"Norton is one."

"Would I do such a thing to my own son?" she countered. "Would I use my own flesh and blood to gain my revenge?"

Millington stared without comprehension.

"You're mad!" he exclaimed at last.

"Mad!" and her voice rose to a shrill scream. "Wen-dah-ban is no son of mine. He is not even an Indian. He is the son of the 'big trader' and his white wife. He is the son Corrigal believes died in the fire."

Dumfounded though he was, Millington realized what this statement meant to him. If Donald was white and well-born, nothing would be denied him. The Englishman visioned his rival's swift climb upward, with love and life before him, and he hated as he had never known he could hate.

Then the preposterous nature of Nee-tah-wee-gan's statement struck him. Such a thing could not be true. It existed only in the malign imagination of this old squaw. He laughed in his relief.

"You couldn't make Corrigal or anyone else believe such a thing," he sneered. "They would say you dreamed it, and you did."

Nee-tah-wee-gan glared at him from the floor. Millington's contempt removed the last restraint. Her body swayed a little. The madness of liquor had been added to the madness of hate. Primitive passion had been freed from the bonds of lifelong purpose. The vanity of the savage demanded expression.

"Dreamed it!" she cried. "I will tell you how I dreamed it, white man—how I have repaid the 'big trader' who cheated and lied to me. Then you will believe, as Corrigal will believe when I tell him—when I remind him of the girl he knew in the mission when he was the trader at Fort James. He was big and handsome and always laughing then. The white people said he was a great man and some day would be chief of all the district.

"In the beginning he did not see me. Always he talked to the white men, laughing and joking, and he never seemed to know there were women. One day I saw him alone and I walked to meet him. I smiled and said 'bo' jou',' but he only said 'bo' jou',' and went on.

"But the next time he smiled and the time after that he stopped and soon we began to talk and laugh together. I was in the mission school then, learning the ways of the white people. My clothes were well made and clean. I was half white and pretty.

"But he only laughed and joked when he saw me. He never touched me. Yet I could wait. I knew what the long, lonely winters do to the white man. He would think of me, many, many times. I would grow more beautiful in his eyes and when he came back the next summer he would look at me differently.

"It was as I thought, when summer came. His eyes were not the same and his voice had changed. The long winter had done what I knew it would. Still he did not say anything with words—only with his eyes. Yet I was content. No matter what the color of her skin, a woman always knows some things, and no matter what the color of his skin there are some things a man can never hide from a woman. Yet a woman knows, too, that words must be said and that the words must be true.

"So one night I walked down the shore just before dark. I knew he would see me go and I did not have to wait long. He did not speak when he found me there in the night. He just put his arms around me so that I could not breathe and he kissed me so that it hurt and then he let loose of me and he said, 'Nee-tah-wee-gan, how would you like to go to Fort James with me and be my woman?'

"It was what I wanted. It meant that I could live in a big house and have servants, that I would not have to work, to scrape hides or set snares for rabbits or paddle a canoe or carry burdens on the portages. It meant that of all the hundreds of Indians at Fort James I would be the highest. I said 'yes.'

"Then we walked back quickly, for I wanted to tell my friends at the mission."

She stopped and her eyes blazed with hatred. Her voice was shrill as she plunged on with her story.

"That night a canoe came from the great salt sea to the north. In it was a woman from England, come to teach the children of the post manager at Fort Bruce. She was young and she was white. When Corrigal saw her the next morning he forgot he had ever seen me. He never came near me again. He never saw me when we passed. All the time he was with the white woman and two weeks after she came they went to the mission and were married."

Nee-tah-wee-gan became speechless for a moment. The blind passion of the primitive overcame her. Hatred flared afresh and she cast aside all restraint.

"I followed them to Fort James!" she cried. "There was a tripper, a half-breed who had come with the Fort James brigade, and my friends were laughing at me. I smiled at him and when he went back I was his woman. The missionary married us. Corrigal knew, but he did not seem to notice. When he saw me at Fort James he smiled like a fool. 'It is best,' he said. 'We will both be much happier.' And I smiled and said 'yes'—and I waited.

"I could speak English then and Corrigal's wife often talked to me because there were no others who could understand her language or teach her Ojibwa. She made me the cook in the dwelling house and I lived in the room back of the kitchen.

"Sometimes when I was alone I laughed. I had thought I would go to Fort James and be the chief woman of the post—that I would live in the dwelling house. I went but I had no servants. I lived back of the kitchen. I was the cook. I worked while the white woman did nothing, and I would laugh, not because of what was but because of what would be.

"A year went by after Corrigal brought his white woman to Fort James and then she had a child, a boy. It was Wen-dah-ban, the one you call Norton. About the same time, I, too, had a child, also a boy. Because I was an Indian I got up the second day and cooked the meals but because she was white she lay in bed for a long time. She was very thin and she suffered and when I brought her food I smiled and said soft things but inside I was laughing. For thirty years I have laughed that she suffered so."

Nee-tah-wee-gan paused and stared at the coals on the hearth. Then she suddenly drained the cup and plunged again into her story.

"After that she was always sick. A year went by and she became very ill and while she lay in bed Corrigal had to go to an outpost, two days' journey away. It was spring and he said he would hurry back. The chance for which I had always waited, to be alone there with the white woman, had come, but I did not see it. I was thinking of something else—of my own child which had never been well and which now I believed was going to die.

"I had asked Corrigal for medicine but he would not give it to me. He said the baby was too young, that he did not dare give it medicine, that the child might die if he did. He went away, for he was in a great hurry to get back to his wife, and the night after he left my baby died."

Nee-tah-wee-gan ceased talking and her bent body straightened. She stared straight before her and Millington, awed by her fiendish expression and well aware of what her savage, pitiless spirit may have driven her to, waited breathlessly.

"For an hour I cursed Corrigal," she began at last, and a tigerish exultation forced out the words with an ominous sibilation. "I forgot all I had planned. I knew only hate. Then suddenly I saw that I could do more than I had ever planned, more than I had hoped. I saw that I could make him suffer for a lifetime and that at the end I could make him think his past suffering had been only joy.

"I took the dead body of my child and went to the white woman's room. She was asleep and I picked up her baby from beside her and put mine in its place. And then I emptied the oil lamp over the bed and the floor and touched a match to it. I ran to my room back of the kitchen with her baby—with Wen-dah-ban—and got into bed and laid there until I heard shouts. Men came and told me the dwelling house was burning and to take my child and run."

Nee-tah-wee-gan rocked back and forth on the floor as if in ecstacy. The very curve of her bent old back seemed to denote a transport of joy and a dry, harsh cackle burst from her lips. Millington, horror-stricken, did not move or speak.

"Corrigal came back after three days," she continued. "I watched him when his dog team stopped at the post. He was like a man who dies inside and only his body moves. He did not stay at Fort James. An hour after he came he took another dog team and drove away to Fort Bruce. I never saw him again until he came this winter.

"That," and she looked up at Millington, "is what I did to John Corrigal. But it is not all I had planned. I was going to make an Indian of his son and soon I, too, left Fort James and no one saw that I carried a white child. For I was going to make an Indian of him and, when it was too late, when he could never be anything else, I was going to find Corrigal and tell him. Then I would be ready to die."

Millington had recovered sufficiently from his horror to begin to doubt. He knew Nee-tah-wee-gan was capable of such a diabolical act, that the primitive hate and the Indian's lust for revenge would carry her to any lengths, but he saw, too, how thirty years of venom and brooding could have affected her mind and how she could have come to believe something that existed only in her imagination.

"You have thought of this so long you believe it is true," he said. "You have dreamed it. You can never prove it."

Nee-tah-wee-gan did not answer. Not only the hatred but the liquor seemed to have been burned out of her by the relation of her fiendish story. Her eyes were dull. Her savage features sagged grotesquely.

"You can never prove it," Millington repeated, convinced now that he was right.

"I do not worry about that," she said dully. "I know. When the time comes I will show one tiny thing to Corrigal and he will believe."

Unconsciously she reached one hand toward her breast and clutched her woolen waist. Millington saw a leather thong tighten about her neck as she did so.

Silently he passed the bottle to her. His face was still in the dark and she could not see the sudden gleam in his eyes but she thrust the whisky from her.

"Go home," she commanded harshly. "I am sleepy—sleepy from the telling of fairy tales to foolish children."

CHAPTER XI

CORRIGAL BARES HIS SOUL

Before he left Fort Bruce John Corrigal had determined that he would arrive at Fort James after dark. He wanted to catch Donald off his guard, in a slack time of the year. In a lonely post, with one long, dreary month following another, even strong men may break down. Little things are the tokens, the crevices in the dykes against moral disintegration which eventually become wide gaps. Corrigal knew the effects of such isolation and because his own dykes had been guarded so carefully he was the more intolerant of weakness in others.

This was not, however, a despicable attempt on his part to take advantage of Donald. He would have done the same with any man of whom he was suspicious and considered his plan only an impersonal effort to gain information to which he was entitled. He felt no animosity—not even prejudice. There was merely an opinion formed through years of observation of the half-breed that sometime, in some crisis, the red blood would predominate and the man would fail to meet the situation.

Yet when he burst in upon Donald late one winter afternoon he failed to find what he expected. The post manager was cleanly shaven. His clothing was neat and well cared for. He wore a linen collar and a tie, evidence of the white man's superiority over his environment in every lonely corner of the world.

The living room of the dwelling house was a distinct surprise to Corrigal. While the curtains at the windows failed to give it a feminine touch, they did relieve the bare monotony to which he was accustomed. With the rows upon rows of books along the walls and the rude but comfortable chairs, the room presented an effect wholly at variance with what the district manager had looked for.

Donald was sitting at the big living room table when Corrigal entered. Several books lay before him but he was busy with his ledgers and reports.

"How do you do, sir," the young man said as he jumped to his feet.

There was no mistaking the genuineness of his surprise and yet Corrigal could see that his failure to extend his hand was not due to bewilderment. Donald was wholly at ease and there was a dignity in his bearing that could not be misread.

Corrigal glanced quickly about the room and then at the post manager. The nonfulfillment of his confident expectation produced surprise rather than disappointment. He saw that he had anticipated too much.

"How are you, Norton," he said as he stepped forward and extended his hand. "How's the fur?"

Donald shook hands formally and placed a chair beside the stove.

"I received word this afternoon that another raid has been made on Fort James hunters' camps and that quite a bit of fur has been purchased," he said.

"Who is doing it?"

"The tripper who brought word couldn't tell me nor could he give any hint as to who it might be."

"Why aren't you out there?"

"It was my intention to start to-morrow morning."

"Where did this happen?"

"On the western side of my territory."

"The Whitefish Lake side, eh?"

Donald nodded.

"It's Collinge," said Corrigal. "Millington has him badly beaten and there's nothing else for the Keewatin man to do if he wants to make a showing. But it's got to stop. We have enough difficulty with the opposition without this promiscuous raiding. I'll send word to Millington to watch Collinge and you get out there and see the hunters who have been selling fur to his trippers. But stop it. Understand?"

"Certainly," Donald answered. "I tried in the fall to get information from the hunters but for some reason they won't talk. I do know they were given a good price—thirty or forty per cent more than we can pay here, and the news of this has spread until there is much dissatisfaction."

"It's Collinge, all right. And the hunters from whom he bought fur received 'debt' here, of course?"

"All of them."

Corrigal jumped to his feet and strode up and down the room.

"Get out there as quickly as you can and find out about this," he commanded. "Make those hunters talk. Learn what they received for their fur and who is buying it. And when you do find out who it is, follow him. Don't let him talk to a hunter alone. Spend the entire winter at it if necessary but stamp it out. I won't have such a thing in my district."

But Donald did not leave the post the next morning, nor did Corrigal. It had been the district manager's intention to remain only over night. Fort James was a place of bitter memories for him. He had not visited it since that spring nearly thirty years before when he had returned to find the dwelling house in ashes.

But a storm so furious that there could be no thought of travel kept both men at the post and it was three days before they were able to leave. That first morning Corrigal made an inspection. In silence he walked about the buildings, through the trade shop and the warehouse. He examined the books and reports and when he finished he knew that he had never found a post so efficiently managed. Discipline was perfect. Every task was attended to. Equipment was cared for.

He did not say anything that expressed surprise or pleasure. This was not due to a petty desire to prove the truth of his theories, but rather to an inherent sense of justice which made him unwilling to hasten by an unwise word of praise what he believed was inevitable downfall. Nor was he wholly without a sense of regret that one who possessed in such abundance the qualities of a good fur trader was doomed to ultimate failure by a circumstance over which he had no control and the results of which he could not conquer.

This sense of regret deepened as the storm continued and they became, despite the hostility each felt in the other, two storm-bound men, alone in a vast wilderness. It was inevitable that they turn to other topics than the affairs of the post. The second afternoon when Donald returned from the trade shop he found Corrigal glancing through the well worn books on the shelves.

"Did you ever go to school?" the district manager asked.

"No. Mrs. Layard taught me to read and write and guided me in my first reading."

"I never suspected her tastes were so extensive."

"Philip Collinge, the Keewatin manager at Whitefish, introduced me to many things."

"Collinge!" Corrigal exclaimed, partly in surprise and yet with a contemptuous tone that aroused Donald. "I thought he had forgotten he ever was a white man."

Donald started forward angrily but before he could utter the hot defense that arose to his lips Corrigal said:

"Something queer about him, isn't there? University man, too, I've heard, and yet he went to pieces."

"It's not that. It's only that he is more decent than most men would be in his place."

"What do you mean? Isn't it rather that he shouldn't be in his place at all?"

"I'll grant that. Philip was never made for fur land. He really belongs at Oxford but his father, who is an earl, would rather have had a failure at a distance than a plain pedagogue at home and packed him off to Canada. Now——"

Donald paused, wondering just how much of his friend's history he should tell this stranger.

"Now?" Corrigal prompted, less interested in Collinge's history than in the new view he was getting of Donald.

"Now they'd like to have him back. The earl sent word by me when I was in England two years ago that the slate was wiped clean and that they wanted him to come home."

"And he didn't go?"

"Hardly. He's not the sort to abandon responsibilities."

"But his staying is all so useless. His post is next door to failure and Millington says the mother is bringing up his boys like little savages."

"He doesn't make that an excuse," Donald defended warmly. "Other white men have. They skip out, shed all responsibility. It takes a real man to stick and that is why Collinge isn't back in England now."

"You think he should stay here?" Corrigal asked.

"The man who doesn't is a coward."

All the bitterness of the past months was in Donald's voice. It had been so unexpected. Neither had seen where the conversation was carrying them. A month before Donald would not have believed he could arraign and judge his unknown father before this coldly impersonal superior.

The district manager studied Donald for a moment. His lips parted as if he were about to speak and then he turned suddenly to the books before them.

Many years before Corrigal had discovered that work could not fill all his time, could not press back all the thoughts that kept crowding to the surface, and he had turned to reading. That same savage determination which had carried him to success in the fur trade made him one of the most widely read men in the service. In Donald's library several times he ran across books of authors who were his favorites. In a short time he was discussing them without a thought of the strained relations that had been developing and the next night he talked as he never had before, abandoning himself to the only thing that shared his devotion to the Hudson's Bay.

Just as Corrigal forgot himself and the demands of the company, so did Donald forget the injustice of which he believed he was a victim. They became two lonely men together, reveling in the mutual love for books they had discovered, hungry for the stimulus of each other's observations.

Not always did they agree. John Corrigal had the narrowness of the self-taught, while Donald's perceptions had been incited and broadened in his association with Philip. Often the district manager found himself bested in an argument, his own ready mind outflanked by the lightning attacks of the other. But he lowered his point gallantly and by his silence and absorbed attention acknowledged his surrender.

Books led to other things, philosophical discussion, bits of psychology and reminiscences and at last, under the spell of this strange fellowship, Corrigal spoke for the first time of the fact that he had once been post manager at Fort James. He mentioned it incidentally, without thinking, and the next instant his manner changed. He hesitated and his glance wandered to a window.

"I think the storm will break to-night," he said. "I hope so. I have enjoyed my stay here, Norton, but I had intended to remain but one night."

He was silent for a moment and when he went on his voice was low and trembled slightly.

"It was not easy coming back, even after all these years. I was very happy at Fort James until——It was while manager here that I married. I brought my bride here. Two years afterward I went away to visit an outpost. When I got back the dwelling house had burned. My wife, helpless in bed, and my baby boy had been burned to death.

"I left before spring, on the rotting ice. I couldn't stay. I tried but I couldn't. I let everything go to smash. It's the only time I ever failed the Hudson's Bay but I simply couldn't stand it here, with that black heap of ruins and what had been found in them.

"But I have made it up to the company. I have tried to think of nothing but my work. I know men call me hard and cold. Perhaps I am. I don't intend to be. I only know that something went out of me that day that has never come back and that it has been only through work, through burying myself in the service of the company, that I have escaped madness."

Donald did not comment. There was nothing he could say. He knew that Corrigal had suddenly bared his soul, had exposed his life tragedy, and that he—he of a despised race—had been permitted to see the havoc that had been wrought.

He felt that he had come very close to this man, and that the moment was one that could never be repeated. For an instant he was tempted to make the most of the intimacy—to tell his own story, his hopes and his desires and how they had been blasted. He even was tempted to burst forth with the truth about the fur raids, for he had gathered some evidence against Millington, but his better judgment restrained him.

As Donald sat there in silence, Corrigal picked up a book and began talking about it. His voice was normal. The moment when the spirits of these two might have come together on a common ground of understanding had passed. The next morning Corrigal was on his way before daylight.

CHAPTER XII

DONALD BUILDS A DEFENSE

Although Donald had failed to take advantage of the withdrawal of that hardened shell which had grown around the soul of John Corrigal, when the man and not the servant of the great company had been revealed, the visit of the district manager had helped him nevertheless, for it had shown him the way out.

Since his return from Fort Bruce Donald had been making a terrific struggle to effect a readjustment with life. Alone, crushed by the solitude, facing a future of ostracism and prejudice, he had often been on the verge of giving up the fight. So far as Janet was concerned, he had already reached a conclusion. From the moment he had read Evelyn's decision in her face that afternoon at Fort Bruce he had been hopeless.

That Janet might care, that she might be willing to disregard parental opinion, that love might sweep her past all obstacles, did not occur to him. In Donald's mind the whole question had resolved itself into a matter of race, not of individuals. He saw only a huge, unsurmountable barrier of fear, of blind, unjust, unreasoning prejudice, and he saw himself outside this barrier, the predestined and helpless victim of the situation, doomed to forego forever that which his heart most desired.

Now with this example of Corrigal—his life wiped clean of everything that was dear to him—who still had struggled on, filling the empty space with thoughts of the great company, making it mate and child and life itself to him, Donald saw that he could fight back his own brooding, devouring bitterness by using the energizing tonic of achievement as a weapon. Even Corrigal's lack of faith in men of mixed blood acted as a spur and he determined to prove that inherent impulses and desires count more than race.

He had sensed, too, that Corrigal's attitude toward him was not due to personal animosity but to a business policy and he felt certain that he could compel an admission of his ability and, in one field at least, could make his fasting dream come true. It was a task he owed that lonely boy who had come from Nee-tah-wee-gan's wigwam and had proclaimed so passionately to Merton Layard that he felt all white.

Yet Donald grasped most eagerly at the flimsiest straw of all. In that one moment of Corrigal's self-revelation he had glimpsed the possibility of a certain kinship of spirit. They were two lonely souls, destined to go on to the end without hope of happiness, and while Donald could not analyze his emotions he felt drawn to this man in an irresistible manner, sensing that somewhere was a common plane of understanding.

While Donald was lifted from despondency by this vague, spiritual force he was not left wholly without hatred. He was young and instinctively he sought to personify an emotion, to find an individual to represent the abstract thing, and that individual became Dale Millington. It was Millington who had tried to bar the way, who had gone to Corrigal with the story of Nee-tah-wee-gan and who, he strongly suspected, had had something to do with Evelyn Layard's sudden change of heart. Now it was Millington who attempted to discredit him as a fur man.

The Englishman's raids on his territory brought exultation rather than fear. Millington's very eagerness to accomplish his purpose was his greatest weakness, and Donald, seeing not only the opportunity to establish himself with the district manager but to discredit Millington, plunged confidently into the task of obtaining evidence.

He succeeded as he knew he would succeed. He lay hidden in a wigwam while a Whitefish Lake tripper bargained with the hunter. He heard a price forty per cent above the real value offered for fur. He heard the hunter, carefully coached, draw damaging admissions from Millington's employe, and among other pieces of fur which he saw change hands was one silver gray fox pelt that had been marked for identification.

Savagely exultant in his victory, Donald pressed the Fort James opposition harder than ever. All his knowledge of the Indian character and of the fur game, all the methods he had used in the past and new ones of his own devising, were employed against the Keewatin Company and in addition he brought to his task a fierceness and an aggressiveness he had never used before. That spirit which had carried him from his fasting wigwam swelled to a sterner and more compelling influence of his life.

Despite all he could do, however, the last bit of fur received in June failed to bring the Fort James total up to the usual mark. Millington had won more than Donald had been able to get from an already greatly weakened opposition. The final report showed a falling off slightly greater than the previous year.

This did not disturb Donald. He knew that in Corrigal's mind it would make Millington's offense the greater, and when at last he started for Fort Bruce he was confident he could prove his point even before a prejudiced tribunal. There was the marked fur which would be found in the Whitefish Lake bales. In a Fort James York boat crew were three hunters who had sold fur to a Whitefish Lake tripper and would testify to it.

To make his proof still more convincing, Donald went out of his way to stop at Whitefish Lake. Millington had already departed for Fort Bruce and it was an easy matter to loosen the tongue of the tripper who had made the raids. The man had been threatened with dismissal on a trumped-up charge and then had been kept on provided he would get fur from Fort James hunters and keep his mouth shut about it.

Philip Collinge was not at the Keewatin post but he had left a letter on the chance that Donald would come that way. In it was a brief account of Nee-tah-wee-gan's sudden departure from Whitefish Lake as soon as the ice went out.

"I haven't any proof," Philip wrote, "but all the gossip among the employes is to the effect that Millington drove her away. It is known that he was in the habit of visiting her quite often in her cabin and several times they were heard quarreling.

"I got in touch with Nee-tah-wee-gan before she left but she wouldn't talk. She always hated me, you know. Where she went, I have no idea. Some of the employes at the Bay saw her paddle away early one morning. Perhaps she went to Fort James and you know all about it ere this."

Donald gave little heed to this information. He ascribed Nee-tah-wee-gan's departure to Millington's general campaign against him and resumed his journey to Fort Bruce, arriving late one night. He went at once to "Bachelors' Hall" and to bed.

The next morning he was warmly greeted by the post managers and apprentice clerks. Millington was there but he offered nothing except a curt, "How are you, Norton?" and then turned to Sandy Hay.

"The Keewatin Company is on its last legs at Whitefish Lake," he said loudly. "Collinge won't be there long and I doubt if the company keeps up the post after another winter. My report shows the biggest business ever done, and let me tell you something, Sandy. If you want to get along well with John Corrigal, show an increase every year. It's all he thinks about."

"You mean you are getting more fur than Norton did when he was there?" Sandy demanded.

"It ran close to five thousand dollars more last winter."

"Then all I've got to say is that you went outside your territory to get it."

"I'm not a fool," Millington replied easily, though his glance shifted quickly to Donald, who was talking to several clerks. "Corrigal would never stand for a thing like that."

Donald heard but he did not indicate that he had. As soon as he could he left for the district office, taking his reports with him. Corrigal was busy with another post manager when he entered and only shook hands, accepted the reports and said that he would talk later. His manner was cordial though as impersonal as always.

From the district office Donald went at once to the Layard home. He knew he must see them, must see Janet, and he had determined to do so as early as possible and establish at once the basis upon which they could meet during his short stay at Fort Bruce.

He found it easier that he had expected, meeting only Evelyn and Merton, for Janet was not at home. There was a sincerity in their welcome despite most evident signs of strain. But the strain vanished when Donald's manner set them more at ease and Evelyn's eyes lighted as she realized that the crisis had been passed. Merton, man-like, tried to appear normal by plunging into a discussion of fur.

"I ought to warn you," he said after they had talked for a few minutes, "that Corrigal is prejudiced against you. He ascribes it to overconfidence, says that you've gone up too fast and are taking things easy now. He told me that the Fort James fur receipts fell off last year and that your mid-winter reports showed further decline."

"That is right," Donald answered quietly. "The receipts were still lower this year."

Both Merton and Evelyn started. They had come to know Corrigal quite thoroughly in the year he had been at Fort Bruce and immediately they feared the worst.

"I doubt if he'll send you back there," Merton said.

Donald smiled confidently and told them in detail what had happened, of the evidence he had gathered, of the case he would present to Corrigal as soon as his brigade arrived.

"Of course, I won't do it until I have Millington present," he concluded. "I have all the facts. He can't get out of it."

"Good!" Evelyn cried. "That will expose him for exactly what he is. And if I know Corrigal at all he'll not have any mercy for a man who uses the company in such a way."

"Millington has killed himself," Merton agreed. "I haven't——"

He stopped as Janet entered the room.

"Donald!" she exclaimed. "When did you come?"

There was no strain here, no effort to smooth over a crisis. Her eyes, her tense body, her heightened color, everything about her expressed undeniably her joy in seeing Donald and before that joy Donald found his carefully prepared defenses crumpling, discovered that the emotion he believed he had controlled was rising to overwhelm him.

Mechanically he arose and mechanically he held out his hand as she rushed forward to greet him. But when her soft fingers touched his, when he found her so close, her bright, eager face so near his own, all the fight went out of him. More completely than ever he was a victim of Janet's charm.

He tried to speak but no words came. His face flushed and he believed his very soul was exposed to those three. Then he heard Janet's voice, felt her handclasp loosen, understood that she had turned to a chair and sat down.

"You are just in time for the picnic," she said. "You must come. Practically everyone in Fort Bruce is going. Mrs. Jamison of the Methodist Mission arranged it and of course she will want you."

The thought came to Donald that this was one of the things he had determined not to do. He wanted to. He wondered if he could stay away.

"I am sorry," he said, and because he had forced himself to speak his voice was rather hard, "but I must see Corrigal this afternoon."

"Oh, but you will be here a month and there will be plenty of time to talk to him," Janet protested.

"Corrigal likes to do things in a hurry," Donald answered. "He made the appointment when I saw him a few minutes ago."

Janet did not press the matter. There was a coolness in Donald's manner, due to his effort to control himself, which rebuffed her. Her elation vanished.

"Very well," she said, and she turned to her mother. "You are going, aren't you, dear? Mrs. Jamison told me that you and father must come."

The conversation turned to other things. Donald spoke little. He seldom glanced toward Janet. He felt that he could not and as soon as possible he excused himself and went back to "Bachelors' Hall."

CHAPTER XIII

DONALD TASTES DEFEAT

The picnic party, laughing and shouting, a gaily colored procession as it streamed across the great, green clearing, left at eleven o'clock. From a window Donald watched it depart in a fleet of huge freight canoes manned by a score of Indians and half-breeds.

He was still torn with the strain of his visit to the Layard home, the tumult of reawakened emotions, and now with this joyous scene before him and the deserted assembly room of "Bachelors' Hall" at his back there was pictured more vividly than in any of his brooding visions of the winter exactly what life held for him. Janet was there in that gay crowd, and Evelyn and Merton, Sandy Hay and Nicol MacKar and Harry Milner, all the post managers, Millington among them, and all the apprentice clerks and the people of the missions.

Gayety and laughter in their hearts, no black shadows hovering in the background, these people would always parade thus before him while he watched from dark corners. They had accepted him, had made him feel one of them, and then because he had dared to put forth his hand the invisible and unsurmountable barrier had been raised.

It was the moment of his greatest bitterness. Never had Nee-tah-wee-gan's prophecy flashed into his mind with such blinding, scorching significance, never had despair gripped him with such crushing, numbing force. He saw himself an outcast forever, destined to go on through solitary, dismal years without hope, without a future elevated in any way above the despairful present.

For a long time after the picnic party left Donald sat at the window. Mrs. Jamison's social activities had practically depopulated Fort Bruce that afternoon. He even remembered that only the half-breed and Indian employes were left, that like them he was cut off from all close association with what he had once believed was his own.

This thought remained with him throughout luncheon and afterwards as he again sat at the window and looked across the great enclosure, waiting until he saw John Corrigal walking from the dwelling house to his office.

At once Donald recalled their three days together at Fort James the previous winter, how he had caught a glimpse of the lonely soul of this man, and there came to him again that feeling of a kinship of spirit. Here, he knew, was one who had fought through to success despite a great and gnawing emptiness and in his desperation and loneliness he longed to talk to him, to derive if possible some shred of inspiration. He arose and walked quickly to the district office.

Corrigal was seated at his desk and he looked up in surprise when he saw Donald enter.

"I thought everyone had gone for the day," he said. "But I wanted to see you, Norton. I have just read your reports."

It was not what Donald had come for. The anguish in his own heart cried out for something that he felt this man could give.

"You have fallen off more this year than last," Corrigal continued. "What's the reason?"

"I can't tell you until——" Donald began.

"Can't tell me!" Corrigal interrupted sharply. "Do you mean to say that this has been going on for two years and you haven't stopped it or found out who is doing it?"

"I have known from the first who was doing it but——" Donald began.

"What! And you have let the company lose ten thousand dollars' worth of fur because you haven't acted?"

Donald was about to retort that the company had lost nothing, but he saw that Corrigal's sharp questions and his own short answers were leading in the wrong direction. For a moment he was silent as he considered what he should do. He had wanted to have Millington present when he made his charges and presented his proof. It was not only fair but it would be more conclusive. Further, his brigade had not arrived and his witnesses were with it.

But that momentary silence was fatal. When Corrigal left Fort James the previous winter he had decided that he would not act in Donald's case until he had learned how the fur raids were handled. He had been amazed by what he had seen of Donald's competency but his policy in regard to men of mixed blood had not been changed.

After leaving Fort James he had written to Millington, telling him what was happening and instructing him to keep a sharp watch on Collinge and report anything that indicated the sending of trippers outside the territory. Millington, quick to see his opportunity, had made a convincing and detailed statement of raids by Philip's trippers and as soon as Corrigal had glanced over the Fort James statements he knew how he would act. For him the matter had been settled automatically.

Thus, while his decision had already been reached, a sense of fairness had demanded that Donald be permitted to explain. But the young man's answers to questions, which he construed as being evasive, and now his silence, served only to confirm Corrigal's opinion.

"Norton!" he exclaimed with sudden passion, "you've sold out the Hudson's Bay! To help this squaw man, this weakling who isn't able to handle even his own private affairs, you've let him raid your territory, get fur that should go to the company and demoralize faithful hunters.

"It's the most astounding thing I ever heard of. What happened while you were at Whitefish Lake, I don't know. I do know what has been happening at Fort James for the last two years. It's nothing less than theft. The company has done everything for you, and if there were an ounce of gratitude or of decency in you, you could not have done this."

Donald forgot Millington and his own defense, forgot the bitterness and the anguish that had sent him to Corrigal's office. He knew only that after years of faithful service he had been accused of disloyalty to the Hudson's Bay Company—to the one thing in the world to which he could cling—and he was conscious of nothing except a consuming anger. He strode forward to the desk and leaned across it.

"You lie!" he cried. "No man can say that to me."

"Never mind the heroics," Corrigal said coldly. "They don't count. Nothing counts but the fur receipts and protection of the company's interests. I am satisfied that you have failed in both."

Donald recognized instantly what he faced—what he had faced since Corrigal's coming. Proof of Millington's duplicity became a minor matter. He felt that this man had planned from the first to oust him because of a prejudice.

"That's not what counts!" he cried savagely. "The only thing that counts with you is the question of my parentage."

Corrigal straightened in his chair.

"That will do!" he shouted. "I have been fair with you. I gave you a chance to prove yourself and you haven't done it. You are relieved of the managership of Fort James and Millington will take your place. He will end the difficulty there without trouble and without delay.

"And you can start to Winnipeg at once. I will give you a letter to the commissioner. He will send you to whichever district he sees fit, if he retains you in the service. That is all."

For a moment Donald was too stunned to speak or move. Gradually he understood that he had been deposed as a post manager in the Fort Bruce district, that he was to go out to Winnipeg under a cloud, that, discredited and distrusted, he would be sent to some lonely, distant spot, perhaps far down the Mackenzie River, among strange people, among strange Indians whose language and ways he did not know.

His thoughts flashed back to the time when he had talked to Merton Layard across the counter in the Kenogami trade shop, to the dream that had come to him in his fasting wigwam, to the prophecy Nee-tah-wee-gan had uttered. They swept on through the years of struggle and growing success, to the wonderful expanding years with Philip, to the coming of Janet.

Donald knew he had been successful, that he had been a faithful, efficient servant of the Hudson's Bay. He never had denied that Nee-tah-wee-gan was his mother, had never tried to hide that fact, and yet now, even when the Layards and Corrigal had turned against him, when he knew defeat was due solely to the blind prejudice of these three, he was more certain than ever that he was all white. He felt it. In that moment the thing he had dreamed became real.

Courage returned in a rushing flood. It brought coolness and an understanding of the situation. He even found time to extract a grim humor from it, for he was confident that once he had presented his case to Corrigal he would be reinstated at Fort James and his integrity and efficiency established. He remembered, too, how he had bested the district manager during those three storm-bound days and he knew he could do so again.

"Am I to understand that you are throwing me out of this district?" he asked quietly.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I've told you. You have been more than negligent. You have defrauded the company to help a free trader—this renegade friend of yours."

The contempt in Corrigal's tone threw Donald off his balance and drove him to passionate revolt.

"You know that's a lie!" he cried. "You know it is only an excuse. You know you are not capable of fairness. You know I can explain when my brigade gets in and I have the man who really is to blame here to face me. You know one of your idols will fall when I do explain. But most of all you are trying to ruin me for the simple reason that my mother's name isn't Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Brown or Mrs. Mac-something-or-other but just plain Nee-tah-wee-gan."

Corrigal had started to rise from his chair, his face white with anger, but at the mention of that last name he sank back and stared. Donald, gathering himself for a fresh onslaught, for his rage had been released at last, was about to rush on when Corrigal spoke.

"Nee-tah-wee-gan?"

He said it slowly as if a sudden thought, vague but compelling, had come to him. Donald saw the change in expression and his own thoughts rushed back to his boyhood in Pe-tah-bo's wigwam. He remembered how the hunter had often joked Nee-tah-wee-gan about his unknown father, he remembered the names mentioned and suddenly it occurred to him that among them was that of Corrigal.

"Yes!" he cried. "Nee-tah-wee-gan! You knew her here at Fort Bruce. Thirty years or more ago, before I was——"

He stopped. Anger had driven him to what he had said, blindly and heedlessly, and then his own words became revealing.

"So it was you!"

He could not speak above a whisper, so astounded was he by the thought, and then a rage more compelling than any he had ever known swept over him.

"You!" he cried hoarsely. "You, the man who has no faith in a half-breed! You, the righteous servant of the Hudson's Bay! You, who would kick a man to hell because his mother was a squaw, and all the time it was you, you who are responsible, you who are my father!"

The very ferocity of Donald's attack had driven Corrigal back but the last words brought him to his feet.

"That is not true!" he shouted. "I knew the Indian would show in you sometime. It always does. But you can't beat me that way. You can't blackmail me into keeping you. I'm not your father and you can't make anyone believe——"

He faltered in the last four words and then stopped, for he saw what he faced. Corrigal had always been a fighter, but in Donald's charge he recognized something he could never fight, something that would rise against him like a thick mist, elusive and unescapable, and his voice had betrayed his fear.

Donald instantly accepted it as an admission.

"Don't make a mistake, Corrigal," he retorted contemptuously. "No one will ever hear of it through me. Do you think I would boast that I am your son? Do you think I would take any pride in claiming you as a father? I'm only thankful it isn't known. Though Nee-tah-wee-gan is my mother, I never made an excuse or tried to evade the fact. I saw that I had to forget parentage and stand on my own two feet. I felt white and I considered myself so.

"And I won out. Duncan Mactavish knew I was a faithful servant of the company. Others knew it. I know I am a good post manager. My record proves it. And until this moment I have gone through life without shame or regret. But to claim you as a father! You, a hypocrite, a liar, a coward! You——"

He stopped, choked by anger, and in that moment of blind passion he thought only of vengeance.

"I know what you are now!" he rushed on. "You've fooled the north but you won't much longer. If I never do anything else so long as I live I'll show fur land exactly what you are. I haven't anything else to do—nothing else to live for. You are responsible for my being born. You have no one else to blame for the manner in which I am going to make you pay."

He turned abruptly and rushed from the office. Once outside he started across to "Bachelors' Hall" but a dry, cackling chuckle stopped him. He whirled to see Nee-tah-wee-gan huddled against the building.

Donald started back toward her. He had been certain Corrigal was his father and then the very desire that it be not true compelled the question he had never asked.

"Who was my father?" he demanded in Ojibwa.

Nee-tah-wee-gan stared inscrutably and he turned away.

"Did you think it was the 'big trader'?" she called after him.

"Do you mean it was Corrigal?"

Her black eyes glittered and then a cracked and twisted smile spread over her ugly face. With a sweeping gesture she drew her shawl over her head. Donald saw her shoulders shake and then, sick, beaten, he stumbled blindly toward "Bachelors' Hall."

He had gone only a little way when he heard the familiar hiss: "Keen nish-e-na-be!"

CHAPTER XIV

A FIGHT TO THE FINISH

When Dale Millington reached Whitefish Lake in his second year he felt certain that his campaign against Donald was about to be successfully concluded. Before the ice had gone the next spring he had satisfied himself that Nee-tah-wee-gan would never reveal her secret. For weeks after she had told her story he had hounded her in an effort to learn what bit of proof she depended upon. With that in his possession he would have been safe, but repeated intrigues against the vengeful nature of the old woman had convinced him she would keep silent. Even when the ice had gone and she had fled from his persecution he had no fear.

In other ways Millington felt the gods had been good to him. In Corrigal's order that he watch Collinge he had seen the opportunity to cap this whole plot with a master stroke. As soon as he arrived at Fort Bruce he told the district manager a carefully built-up story and in Corrigal's attitude and expression he had read victory. He was confident his raids on Fort James territory could not be proved against him and that as soon as Donald arrived he would be shifted to another district.

As for Janet, he was content to wait until Donald's case was settled. He believed the Layards were unalterably opposed to her marriage to a man who had been bred in a wigwam and he felt certain that the girl's own interest in Donald had been due largely to sympathy and the dramatic manner in which he had risen to the best post in the district. Millington was satisfied that all this would vanish when Donald had been discredited and sent away.

Further, when Corrigal read the Englishman's reports and discovered that Whitefish Lake had set another high record he did not hide his pleasure in the fact. This gave Millington an added sense of security and his consequent high spirits added to his social facility. He was particularly agreeable to Mrs. Layard and the women of the missions, being careful not to pay noticeable attention to Janet, and before Donald arrived Millington had made himself popular throughout the post.

When the picnic party returned late in the afternoon and the news soon spread that Donald had been removed from Fort James and ordered to report to the commissioner at Winnipeg, Millington smiled his satisfaction. An accountant in the district office had heard Corrigal and Donald in a heated argument and though he did not know what had been said he had been instructed to issue an order to Donald for his salary to date.

"Bachelors' Hall" apparently was deserted when a dozen post managers and apprentice clerks entered it after the picnic, talking of Donald's fate.

"Poor Norton," Nicol MacKar said as he sat down at the long table and filled his pipe. "He came out of a wigwam, pulled himself up by his own efforts and made a success of it. It isn't square that he should have a thing like this happen to him."

"Square!" sneered Millington, who was elated by his victory. "Why not? He's a half-breed, isn't he? And he'd begun to show it. Like an Indian, he went slack when he got somewhere. The business of Fort James had been dropping steadily and Corrigal had to protect himself and his district."

"Donald may have had a half-breed mother but he is all white," MacKar declared warmly. "Corrigal is carrying this pet prejudice of his too far."

"Corrigal has had experience with them before and he knows what he is doing," Millington answered. "You've lived in the north long enough to know the truth of the old saying that it's easy for a white man to become an Indian but impossible for an Indian to become a white man."

"Donald Norton came as near doing the impossible as anyone ever did," Sandy Hay broke into the discussion. "I've known him a long time and he's always been pure white."

Millington laughed. He was sitting on the table, one leg swinging free, and he threw back his head to give expression to his mirth.

"Pure white on top," he said, "but the red's showed through at last."

Suddenly his laugh faded. He saw the group facing him had stiffened and that glances were directed past him to the rear of the hall. He turned to find Donald standing in the door of his bedroom.

"I won't ask you to repeat that, Millington, because I've heard every word you said since you came in."

Donald came forward slowly until he faced the Englishman.

"Nor am I going to ask you to take back what you have said," he continued. "You are a liar and a crook and an apology from you is as worthless as your accusation."

"Don't go too far, Norton!" Millington cried savagely as he stood up.

"I'm going far enough to finish this," Donald retorted, and now anger showed in his voice. "First, I'm going to tell you that I have known for two winters what you have been doing at Whitefish Lake and that at last I got the proof. I was going to show you up for the sneak you are but I won't now. You needn't fear me on that score.

"As for my being white, I have always believed that I am a white man and until to-day I have been proud that I felt so. But if being white means that I have to be so cruel and unreasonable and unjust as Corrigal, or as cowardly as you, I'm glad I'm not. I would rather be classed with any half-breed I ever saw than with a blackguard like you."

Millington's face had become white, first with fear of what might happen to his plans and then with rage. But he was three inches taller than Donald and at least twenty pounds heavier and he did not doubt for a moment but that he could crush his adversary.

"You dirty Indian dog!" he cried furiously.

Donald sprang across the ten feet between them, but the post managers and apprentice clerks closed in. Donald fought like a trapped wolf, but weight and numbers were too much for him.

"Let me go!" he cried. "You haven't any right to stop me. He's driven me out of the service and he's got to pay for it. Let me go!"

"Easy, lad," Nicol MacKar whispered. "There's no use in getting nasty."

In a frenzy Donald wrenched himself free.

"No use!" he shouted. "I'm through with you all. White! By God, if you men are white I'm glad I'm not! I've been a fool for years making myself believe I was, trying to be one of you because I thought you were square and decent. And as for Millington——!"

He charged again and one fist reached the Englishman's face before the crowd closed in. The men bore him back, struggling and snarling. Millington, beside himself with anger, sprang forward to attack his helpless adversary.

"Here!" Sandy Hay bellowed as he locked his arms around him. "None of that!"

"Let me at him!" Millington cried as he fought to free himself.

But Sandy, huge and with a clever hold, restrained him.

"Look here, Nicol," he called. "These two are bound to have it out. Let's let 'em do it—but not here."

"That's right," MacKar agreed. "There's that spot over at the edge of the clearing where we'll be to ourselves. Get the gloves, one of you lads, and bring water and some towels."

The apprentice clerks sprang to obey his orders and the post managers, quick to get the idea, began to convey to the infuriated pair that they would be allowed to fight it out to a finish. Donald immediately regained his self-possession.

"All right," he said as his muscles relaxed, "all I want is an even chance."

Merton Layard entered the door at that moment but no one heeded him. Layard had just heard of Corrigal's action and had hurried to "Bachelors' Hall" to see Donald. One glance at Millington and he knew what had happened.

"Will you be in my corner, Sandy?" Millington asked. Hay nodded curt assent.

"I'll be in yours, lad," Nicol MacKar said to Donald.

"I don't want you," Donald retorted. "I'll get a half-breed."

He started toward the door but Merton stopped him.

"Look here," he whispered. "I don't know what's happened but don't be foolish. I'll be your second."

Donald glanced at him angrily. That afternoon he had turned against the whole cruel, unjust race of which he felt himself to be a victim and now in the rage which dominated him he forgot even the years in which he had looked upon Merton Layard almost as a father.

"You don't want to soil your hands on a half-breed," he answered bitterly.

"Donald! Get hold of yourself. Be fair. You know I've never held that against you."

Donald's mind turned instantly to that afternoon a year before when he had gone to talk to Evelyn. He believed Layard must have been aware of it and yet he had never said anything to indicate that his own stand was different. But as he was about to flare out with a reminder of the change in the Layard attitude he realized that to do so would bring Janet's name into the matter.

"All right," he said dully as he turned away, "do as you wish."

The men scattered and walked across the clearing in small groups. A number of half-breed children from the employes' quarters saw them and followed, only to be driven back. When the two principals, their seconds and the post managers and apprentice clerks were gathered they had the small, secluded opening in the spruce to themselves.

"Regular three-minute rounds with minute rests?" Sandy asked as he walked up to Donald and Merton, who stood alone.

Donald nodded and unbuttoned his shirt.

"All right," Sandy said. "Nicol will hold the watch."

Donald stripped to the waist and held out his hands while the gloves were laced on.

"He's a lot bigger, lad," Merton whispered. "Be careful."

Donald made no comment and Merton glanced up at his face, expecting to see signs of uneasiness. Instead he found himself looking into eyes that made him shiver. He said nothing more as he completed the arrangements.

"Ready?" Nicol asked.

Donald nodded and stepped forward to face Millington.

"Go!" came the signal.

Despite his superior weight and height, Millington was no match for the boxing skill Donald had acquired in his six years with Philip Collinge at Whitefish Lake. The Englishman rushed time and again, as if to smother his smaller adversary with swinging blows and sheer force, but not once did he land effectively.

Donald, suddenly cool, never forgetting the plan he had formed as he walked across the clearing, ducked, side-stepped, leaped lightly in and away again, and all the time—smash—smash—smash—with the regularity of a machine, his gloved fists shot out and found their mark. Before the first round was over Millington's face had been cut open in two places, one eye was nearly closed and blood was streaming from his nose.

But Millington was not injured. Rather, the light, slashing blows had aroused him and had given him the impression that Donald could not hit harder. The minute's rest sent him back fresh and determined to land one of his crushing swings.

In the second round Donald contented himself with pecking away at the closed eye and puffed nose. Stung to fury, Millington rushed like a bull, swinging his long arms in a shower of aimless blows that left him wide open to Donald's unerring straight-arm jabs. The Englishman was young and strong and in good condition and he was willing to stake everything on winning with one effective punch.

But when he failed, when Donald danced away or darted inside the terrific swings to stab at the closed eye, Millington's rage and exasperation carried him to further lengths. He suddenly set himself and his right fist shot out straight from the waist.

"Rotten!" several men shouted at once. "Foul!" "A dirty trick!"

They closed in suddenly as if expecting Donald would wilt from the effects of the blow but only a few had seen him twist. Millington's glove had glanced from a hip. Then MacKar shouted, "Time!"

Donald immediately turned away but Millington did not stop. He sprang forward, swinging for Donald's head from behind. Merton shouted a warning and Donald ducked. The next moment Sandy Hay had grasped his principal from behind.

"Fight fair or I quit you!" the angry Scotchman shouted. "Do that again and you'll have to fight me when this is over."

He led Millington back to his corner and though he washed the blood from his face and body he did it roughly and with disgust.

Until now Donald had not spoken. Millington had cursed and roared as he rushed but when the third round began Donald went forward with a sneer.

"White!" he exclaimed as his left caught the battered nose again. "You white! If you are I'm glad I'm not."

He feinted, danced back and then sprang in and jabbed Millington on his closed eye.

"I may not be white but you're not either!" he jeered. "You're yellow. Inside and out. A dirty yellow. You're crooked. A sneak. You're a yellow dog. No Indian would let you hang around his camp."

With each remark a glove shot home, until Millington's face was raw and the blood streamed down his chest. Yet not once did Donald touch his opponent's left eye. It was still open. The man could see, could continue his bull-like rushes.

Then Millington began to curse. Donald's taunts drove him to a frenzy and he used all the vile names spawned in the London slums. The smile with which Donald had begun the round vanished. With each insult a glove smacked against Millington's mouth until his lips were puffed and blood streamed from them.

When the round was half over Donald suddenly ceased dancing away. He met a rush with both feet planted firmly and for the first time he left Millington's face alone. With infighting of the sort that is deadly in its effectiveness he shot blow after blow into Millington's ribs.

For a moment they stood there, swapping punches with complete abandon, and then like lightning Donald sprang away and back again. His right shot straight from the shoulder and cut Millington's left eyebrow from end to end.

Blood streamed into the Englishman's one good eye and blinded him. The attack on his body had already sapped his strength and he stood there, swaying unsteadily, his arms half raised.

Donald studied him coolly, carefully measuring the distance. Slowly he poised himself and then Millington, as if sensing what was coming, covered his head with his arms and cowered away.

"Let him have it!" several men shouted. "Finish him off!"

Donald stared at Millington. He had planned that final blow. Everything else had been preliminary, carefully gauged. He had saved his strength, had tested out his man, and he knew an uppercut to an unprotected jaw would furnish a glorious, satisfying end.

But as Millington stood there, swaying, whimpering and cringing, Donald's hands dropped to his side.

"White!" he exclaimed with utter contempt and turned away.

CHAPTER XV

A BITTER DAY FOR CORRIGAL

Everyone in Fort Bruce knew of the fight in detail before night, just as it knew, too, that Corrigal had deposed Donald as a post manager and ordered him to report to the commissioner at Winnipeg. No one talked of anything else and everywhere opinion was the same.

"I was Millington's second and I'm ashamed of it," Sandy Hay declared to the group in "Bachelors' Hall" that night. "He was dirty and he was yellow, just as Norton said he was."

Sandy knew very well Millington lay in his bed within earshot but he had already told the Englishman exactly what he thought of him while washing the blood from his face and body and helping him to dress.

"And Donald was as white as any man ever was," Nicol MacKar announced with a defiant glare about the room.

"Well, rather," drawled Harry Milner of Lynx Head Falls. "He never said a word when Millington fouled him twice. Kept on fighting as clean as a thoroughbred."

"I'm only sorry he didn't land that last one when he was ready to," Sandy said. "He quit too soon to suit me."

"He was too decent to do it," Nicol protested.

"No," Milner objected, "you're wrong there. I was watching his face. He waited from the first for that blow. Purposely he left Millington's left eye open while he marked him up. Then at the last he weakened him with those body punches but he didn't knock him out because he was disgusted. I was watching his face. I saw it. He didn't hit him for the same reason he wouldn't hit a yellow dog that had turned tail."

Only Corrigal remained aloof from the discussion that raged throughout Fort Bruce that evening. He lived in the dwelling house with the Layards. After dinner he asked Layard for the details of the fight and then went up to his room to read, as was his custom.

Janet retired soon afterward, pleading that the sun on the water that afternoon had given her a headache.

"What did Corrigal say when you told him of the fight?" Evelyn asked when she and her husband were alone.

"Nothing. He didn't ask a question or make a comment."

"Did you tell him how Donald acted, how cleanly he fought?"

"I laid it on thick and he only grunted and turned away."

"He's carrying this senseless prejudice too far!" Evelyn cried angrily. "You should go to him, Merton. You should show him how unjust he has been. After hearing what Millington has been doing for two winters it is despicable for him to decide against Donald and humble him so."

"I don't think he knows anything about Millington's raids on Donald's hunters."

"But surely Donald told him."

"That's just the point. Donald wouldn't do it without having Millington present, and Millington was gone all afternoon. It was something else—just what I don't know—but I don't think the fur receipts at Fort James caused all the trouble."

"Didn't you talk to Donald?"

"I couldn't, he was in such a rage. It was no time to get his confidence."

"But you will see him in the morning, Merton. You must do something. Donald has gone too far to have this happen to him now."

"I don't know. I'll see." Then he added suddenly, "Have you heard that Nee-tah-wee-gan has come to Fort Bruce?"

"Nee-tah-wee-gan!" she repeated. "What has she to do with it?"

"Everything, of course. One of the men said he saw an old woman camping alone down the lake shore. Said she was a stranger and wouldn't talk to him. That sounds like Nee-tah-wee-gan and I'd like to see her. I'd make the old hag talk if I had to choke her."

A note of anger, almost of fury, had crept into Merton's voice and Evelyn stared at him.

"Merton!" she whispered. "You don't mean——"

"I don't know," he interrupted. "Years ago I heard things and I've been wondering——"

They looked at each other for a moment.

"What a terrible, terrible thing!" Evelyn cried.

"Oh, I don't know that it's true. It's just a guess, but——"

"Merton, you're keeping something back! You do know!"

He shook his head. For twenty-five years she had lived in lonely posts with this man and she understood his every mood and every phase thereof. Yet while she felt certain that he was withholding something she knew nothing would induce him to speak until he was ready.

For a long time Evelyn was silent and then she arose. Out of the inextricable mess into which the affairs of those she loved best had been plunged she had emerged with a resolve.

"Merton," she said quietly, "I am going to find out if what you are thinking is true."

"Don't be foolish," he interrupted quickly. "I have nothing——"

"You have something or you would never suspect it. I am going to learn the truth and if it is as you suspect, Corrigal can't remain here. I don't care if he sends us to the worst post in the district. I won't live in the same house with him."

"Wait until I have talked with Donald in the morning," Merton said.

But when Fort Bruce wakened Donald was gone. No one had seen him go. He had not bidden anyone good-by. He had not left a message. It was not until mid-forenoon that it was learned he had departed at dawn in a canoe with two Indians. But even the Indians' women could not tell in which direction they had gone.

As soon as Merton had satisfied himself that Donald had left Fort Bruce he went at once to the office of the district manager.

"Corrigal," he began abruptly, "I may be breaking a confidence but I've got to tell you something. In the first place, Norton has disappeared, has gone without a word to anyone."

"I sent him to Winnipeg."

"But you didn't tell him to leave in such a manner."

"No, though I'm not surprised that he did. I had to remove him from Fort James for inefficiency, and worse. He couldn't stay and face the music. I knew the Indian would come out. It always does."

"You know nothing about it!" Merton shouted angrily. "He left because you drove him out."

Corrigal looked at the Fort Bruce manager more in amazement than resentment.

"Listen to me, Merton," he said. "I understand how you feel. You gave the boy his chance but you might have known it was useless—that something like this would happen."

"I knew him well enough to know he would be as fair as he has been. Nee-tah-wee-gan may be his mother but Donald is white clear through. He showed yesterday that he is whiter than your pet, Millington, and if you had given him any sort of chance he would have shown you just how big a crook Millington is."

Corrigal was aroused at last.

"I won't listen to any more of that, Layard!" he exclaimed. "I'm here to run this district to the best of my ability and judgment and in my judgment Norton was going backward as a post manager. Any man who is part Indian will do that if he goes up too fast. I didn't trust him and I have noticed, too, that where this thing touches you personally you take the same stand I do. You wouldn't let him marry your daughter."

"He's never asked to marry her!" Merton retorted with sudden passion. "And as far as his heritage is concerned, I would rather trust the Indian blood than the white. His father is the one who has all this to answer for."

Corrigal glanced up quickly and in his startled expression Merton believed he read what he had hinted to Evelyn.

As for Corrigal, he believed instantly that Donald had gone to Merton with the accusation he had made the day before.

"So the dirty cur has been telling you that!" he shouted. "It's a lie. He knows it's a lie! If I hear of you repeating this——"

Merton, sickened by what he considered to be a revelation of the truth, turned away.

"You don't have to be afraid I'll do it," he said. "I think too much of Donald to saddle him with that. And as for his telling me, he has never mentioned his father in all the years I have known him. If he has been aware of this, I have not. He has kept his mouth shut and I will too.

"But not because I'm afraid of you, Corrigal. Do you understand that? I'll keep the secret for Donald's sake, not for yours. I'm not afraid of you. You've driven out the best post manager in your district and the commissioner wouldn't like it if he knew why."

"You mean you are going to blackmail me?" Corrigal demanded furiously.

"Blackmail! Listen here." Merton leaned across the desk and in quick, short sentences outlined what had been happening at Fort James during the last two winters—how Millington had raided Donald's territory, how Donald had gathered the proof and was ready to present a perfect case.

"Why didn't he tell me this?" Corrigal demanded.

"You ought to understand that now better than I do," Merton answered. "I only know that Donald is too fair to do it except in Millington's presence and that his brigade and witnesses haven't arrived. I'll tell you another thing. I'm going to get those witnesses in here this afternoon. I see the boats out on the lake now. You send for Millington and conduct the investigation yourself."

He turned abruptly and walked out. A half hour later he was returning from the Indian encampment down the shore as Corrigal left the office and started toward the dwelling house. Merton was about to speak to the district manager when he saw an old Indian woman squatting at the corner of the building. She had lifted her shawl and was looking up at Corrigal.

"Bo' jou', Red Fox," Layard heard her say in Ojibwa, and he recognized Nee-tah-wee-gan's voice.

Corrigal stopped and glanced at her. He had not heard that name since leaving Fort James nearly thirty years before. It had been given to him by the hunters there because of a reddish tweed coat and cap he wore.

"Red Fox does not remember me," she continued with a sneer. "There was a time at Fort Bruce when he did not pass without speaking."

"Who are you?" Corrigal demanded.

"Is your memory so short you have forgotten the time you asked me to be your woman?"

"What nonsense is this?" Corrigal exclaimed.

He turned and saw Layard.

"Tell this woman to keep out of the enclosure," he ordered. "She has no business here."

As he spoke the apprentice clerks came out of the office to go to "Bachelors' Hall" for the noon meal. With them were Sandy Hay, Nicol MacKar and Harry Milner, who had been working on their requisitions.

"It is thirty years since you have seen me," Nee-tah-wee-gan cried angrily, "and you will not give me a word. But you haven't forgotten me. You haven't forgotten the time you walked down the shore with me in the moonlight, that summer soon after you came from Fort James. You haven't forgotten what you said to me."

She had risen to her feet and was confronting Corrigal. When she stopped speaking she threw back her head and laughed, a bitter, hoarse cackle that chilled the men who heard it.

"You haven't forgotten when you said, 'Nee-tah-wee-gan, how would you like to come to Fort James with me and be my woman?' You may say you forget but men only try to forget. You have never forgotten and I have never forgotten, nor do I forget how the white woman came the next day and you could not see me as we passed.

"Oh, you may say you forget but you don't. And I have never forgotten and I will never let you forget."

Corrigal, his face white with anger, turned again to Layard.

"Get this woman out of here!" he cried furiously. "You know we never allow Indians inside the enclosure."

He turned and strode away toward the dwelling house but Nee-tah-wee-gan, aroused to a blind, unreasonable rage, ran after him, shrieking Ojibwa invectives. Her voice carried to every part of the great enclosure and half-breed and Indian employes came running from all directions.

"Here, you men," Corrigal commanded. "Take this woman outside."

Several men grasped Nee-tah-wee-gan by the arms and started to drag her away. She fought, biting and scratching, and in that moment of indignity and humiliation her anger carried her past all restraint. She suddenly ceased struggling and the men relaxed their hold. Instantly she burst free and confronted Corrigal.

"Throw me out!" she shrieked. "You can! You have the power! You have the power to do anything. Only yesterday you threw out a man. You think it amounted to nothing but you will never forget what you did yesterday. The man you threw out was your own son, Wen-dah-ban, the one they call Donald Norton."

The half-breeds, always fearful of the "big trader," rushed forward and grasped her arms.

"Take her out of here!" Corrigal cried, and as they dragged her back he turned and went on toward the dwelling house.

But though the men might remove her they could not stop that shrill voice or repress the vengeful spirit of the Indian woman.

"Your own son!" she shrieked. "Yours! Wen-dah-ban! And you threw him out! Threw out your own son!"

She burst into laughter as she fought and scratched. The great enclosure echoed with her shrieks. Everyone in Fort Bruce rushed into the open and everyone heard.

"Your son! Wen-dah-ban! Donald Norton! He's yours! And you threw him out! Your own son! Yours! Yours! Yours!"

Corrigal walked on to the dwelling house without looking back. Evelyn and Janet, attracted by the clamor, had come out onto the verandah and heard what Nee-tah-wee-gan said. As he came up the steps Evelyn sprang forward.

"Is that true?" she demanded. "If it is you cannot enter my home."

Corrigal stopped and looked into her angry eyes.

"No," he said quietly, "it is not true."

Evelyn's eyes were the first to waver. She felt somehow that the man spoke the truth. She was furious with herself for feeling so and yet she knew she had received a distinct impression of sincerity. Corrigal waited a moment and then went on into the house.

"Please tell Merton to come to my room," he said.

"Send that woman away from Fort Bruce," the district manager began at once when Layard appeared, "and hereafter keep the Indians outside the enclosure."

"That's all right," Merton answered hotly. "I'll do it. But that doesn't end it with me. I want you to know that I believe what Nee-tah-wee-gan said."

"Believe her! The woman's mad!"

"But how about the thing I surprised you with this morning? I didn't intend to make such a charge, though I'll admit I did have a faint suspicion before—a suspicion for which I had no basis other than a vague memory. But you thought I had made such a charge and you answered it at once. You were on the defensive. And from what you said I understand that Donald knows the same thing." "You mean you don't believe me?" Corrigal asked.

Layard did not answer. He stood there watching the district manager's face, knowing full well his silence was more effective than anything he could say.

Yet there was no retreat in Corrigal's attitude. He stared steadily and fearlessly at the other and then he said, "Will you please bring your wife and daughter here? I want to say something to all of you."

Layard hesitated. Firmly as he believed what Nee-tah-wee-gan had shouted in her fury, he was impressed by the sudden change in Corrigal's manner. The man was no longer angry, but calm and in deadly earnest.

"Don't be afraid," Corrigal continued quietly. "There is nothing that Janet can't hear. And it is only to your family that I will speak."

CHAPTER XVI

FATE SAVES A CROOK

Layard went in search of his wife and daughter and when all three had entered his room Corrigal arranged chairs for them and began at once to speak.

"You know what happened out there a few minutes ago," he said. "An old Indian woman, Nee-tah-wee-gan by name, was waiting for me outside the office. In the presence of a number of clerks and post managers she made the charge that I am the father of her son, Donald Norton.

"Yesterday Norton made the same charge in my office. I am satisfied that he never suspected such a thing before and though his statement was like a thunderbolt to me I believe he was as greatly stunned by what he considered a revelation.

"That is all the evidence against me—a man's sudden suspicion and a woman's accusation, but against such evidence I can do nothing. By mid-winter all the north country will hear it, and all the north country will believe. I could harness the wind more easily than suppress or even slightly discredit this thing and I will make no attempt to do so."

He paused and looked at each of the three in turn.

"Only to you will I tell my story," he continued slowly. "For a year I have lived in your home and I feel that I owe it to you. As for myself, I do not care, but I do value your good opinion and I wish to remain here.

"I know I am considered hard and ruthless, that it is believed I live only for the Hudson's Bay. It is true, the last of it. The Hudson's Bay has been everything to me for thirty years, wife, family, religion, my whole life, and because I have made it so, because I had to—to—to forget."

Emotion had crept into his voice and it wavered slightly at the end. All fur land knew what had driven Corrigal out of the Fort Bruce district so long ago but this was the first time any of the three had heard him speak of it. When he began again he was calm but it was easily seen that he achieved calmness at great effort.

"I am the father of one child only," he said, "and he is dead. Merton remembers me when I was a young post manager. During my apprenticeship and in the first years that followed I was absorbed in the Hudson's Bay and the life of a fur trader. It was all sheer romance to me then, a great adventure, and I lived only for the one thing, with the one thought.

"Then when I was twenty-three I suddenly discovered that I had grown up. The romance began to fade enough to permit me to think things out. I was at Fort James then and for the first time a trading post seemed lonely. I came to Fort Bruce in the summer and here I saw a half-breed girl, Ojibwa and French. She was pretty. Her voice was soft. She lived in the mission and she was above the average. Her name was Nee-tah-wee-gan, which means in Ojibwa 'growing ripe.'

"You have spent your lives in the north and all of you know what the loneliness of the long winters does to the white men who come here. Since fur land began it has been the same story, inevitable and inescapable. I'll grant it is a terrible thing and spawns countless tragedies but it is nevertheless a fact. And I, young and unthinking, gnawed by the solitude, was ready to be a victim.

"I say I didn't know, that I didn't think. I didn't. I talked to Nee-tah-wee-gan, laughed with her, and one night in the moonlight when I saw her go down the shore alone I followed her. When I found her I put my arms around her and kissed her and suddenly I knew that I could not go back to another long winter without her. I asked her if she would like to go to Fort James with me. She was in a transport of joy and she hardly more than said 'yes' before she ran back to the mission to tell her friends.

"You know how it is with the Indian woman. It is the easy life in the dwelling house, the servants and the prestige, that she wants. Nee-tah-wee-gan believed she had won them. But I am not defending myself. I would have taken her except that——"

He paused for a moment and each of his three listeners saw the effort with which he got hold of himself.

"The next day a canoe arrived from York Factory. In it was a white woman, a girl who had come to Fort Bruce as governess for the post manager's children. Two weeks after she arrived we were married in the mission and went away to Fort James together.

"I can't tell you the rest," and his voice broke. "When she died, she and our infant son, something in me died."

He had been looking at the floor and for a moment he continued to do so. When at last he glanced up Evelyn's and Janet's eyes were wet.

"You believe me?" he asked, and for the first time in thirty years there was a pleading note in John Corrigal's voice.

But no one spoke. Layard's face was hard. Corrigal looked from one to another.

"Good God!" he cried. "I wish it were true! Don't you see? If I had a son! If I had anyone! For more than half my life I've lived alone. People say I'm hard but it's only a mask. I had to hide my loneliness. I had to forget."

In the last year Evelyn had penetrated farther behind that mask than even Corrigal suspected. She felt that he was telling the truth and his own suffering moved her.

"I believe you," she said simply and held out her hand.

Corrigal grasped it eagerly. He tried to speak but could only mutter brokenly, and then he looked at Layard. The post manager did not hesitate. He, too, had been moved by this revelation of a hard man's soul, but when Corrigal turned to Janet she drew away.

The girl was aflame with eagerness. She seemed to have reacted to the story in only one way.

"Then you will call Donald back! You will keep him on at Fort James!" she cried.

"Call him back!" Corrigal repeated.

"What else can you do? You didn't give him a chance. You were unfair."

The district manager was silent. There came to him a picture of the infuriated young man who had leaned across the desk and defied him—who had promised to make him pay.

"I am going to prove to you before Millington that you were wrong," Layard broke in upon his thoughts.

"But don't you see what will happen if I do?" Corrigal protested. "I am responsible for the company's success in this district."

"Then call back the best post manager you have," Janet interrupted.

"But don't you see? If I do it will be construed that what Nee-tah-wee-gan charged is the truth and that I am favoring him because of it."

"If it is because you don't trust him and are afraid he will take advantage of the situation——" Layard began, when Janet stepped forward.

"As for trusting him," she cried furiously, "mixed race or not, I would believe him before I would believe you. Mother and father may accept your story if they wish. I will not."

Evelyn laid a restraining hand on her daughter's arm but Janet shook it off.

"You! You, too!" she accused. "A year ago when he came to talk to you, you drove him away!"

She whirled back upon Corrigal. Rage ruled her but she was not hysterical. Her eyes were dry, her head was high, her body tense with resolve.

"You talk of what people will think and say and you try to hide behind what you call your duty to the company. You have always forced your way. You have never heeded what happened to others. You have posed as a loyal servant of the Hudson's Bay.

"But I know you. It's nothing but vanity—a false, empty pride. At heart you're guilty. You know it. You haven't hidden from sorrow but from remorse. And now to save that hollow shell you've made of yourself you are willing to ruin your own son—the man for whom you alone are responsible."

She glared at Corrigal with such utter contempt that his eyes fell. Then she turned and walked from the room.

The three were silent for a moment and then Corrigal whispered, "Good God! Is it that way with her?"

"But you will change your mind," Layard urged quickly.

"You must!" Evelyn pleaded. "Don't you see that you are ruining a man's life?"

It was evident that Corrigal was wavering and she pressed the advantage.

"Donald has been like a son to me."

The district manager's reaction was instantaneous.

"That's not a reason!" he exclaimed. "You are putting this whole thing on a basis of sentiment. But I notice that when it affected you in another way you acted differently. You wouldn't accept him as a son-in-law."

Evelyn drew back with an expression of loathing.

"You are contemptible!" she cried. "And as for sentiment, what else makes the Hudson's Bay live? There never can be any success without sentiment. And you! You in your blindness and hardness and false vanity! You didn't have the strength to lift yourself above tragedy and sorrow. It is better to be a sentimentalist than a hypocrite.

"As for Donald, I would be glad to have him for a son-in-law. I have only one objection to him. I don't care if Nee-tah-wee-gan is his mother. You may be his father!"

Like Janet, she turned abruptly and left the room. Layard followed.

That afternoon Corrigal had quarters fixed up in the rear of the district office and moved into them. Thereafter he took his meals in "Bachelors' Hall" with the apprentice clerks and post managers. This move was the one thing needed to confirm the belief of all fur land that Nee-tah-wee-gan had shouted the truth that day. Everyone knew the relationship between the Layards and Donald Norton and they took Corrigal's removal from the dwelling house as proof that the Layards believed the old Indian woman and refused to permit the district manager to remain in their home.

But neither from the Layards nor from Corrigal did anyone ever obtain a shred of direct information. Corrigal never denied Nee-tah-wee-gan's story or made any reference to it. The Layards conducted their lives exactly as before so far as anyone could see and Janet, whom all watched for some sign of sorrow, maintained a front impervious to the most curious inspection.

Millington alone served to keep Donald's dramatic departure from Fort Bruce alive for the people of fur land. Nee-tah-wee-gan and her little tent had disappeared the next morning and no one heard of her again that summer. But the young Englishman with his bruised and swollen face was forced to remain for two weeks.

That first afternoon Corrigal listened to the evidence which Layard presented in the form of direct statements by Fort James hunters.

"Never mind getting out that marked fox skin," Corrigal said, when the Indians had finished. "I've heard enough. What have you to say, Millington?"

"Nothing," was the surly answer.

"Neither have I!" Corrigal snapped. "If there were anyone I could put in your place I'd do it. But with Norton gone I can't make another change this late in the season. Go on to Fort James for this winter."

Layard was on his feet in an instant.

"You let a yellow crook have another chance when he admits he is a crook and you kick out a real man and the best fur trader you have because you think that some day he might possibly fail you!" he cried scornfully.

"That question is dead," Corrigal answered coldly, as he turned to some work on his desk.

"It is not dead!" Layard retorted. "You're saying so can't end it and the fact that you keep Millington on doesn't mean you haven't any real men left in the district. 'Bachelors' Hall' isn't going to take this quietly."

"Luckily, 'Bachelors' Hall' doesn't control the district."

"No, but the success of the district depends upon it," Layard answered. "It's the loyalty of the post managers that has made this district what it is and you, with your unfairness, are killing that loyalty."

"The swashbuckler days are in the past, Layard, and the sooner some of you older men realize that modern business must prevail in the fur trade the better it will be for both you and the company," Corrigal retorted.

Layard did not reply. He knew only too well that no business can disregard the human element, and that when a company scatters a mere handful of men across four thousand miles of wilderness, isolates them in dreary, lonely posts, gives them great power but demands greater things of their manhood and exacts a loyalty unequaled in the history of any other commercial enterprise, it must give much in return if it is to endure.

He went to "Bachelors' Hall" to unburden himself and there he found a practical demonstration of his theory. Nicol MacKar, Sandy Hay and Harry Milner did not spare themselves in voicing opinions of their superior officer when they learned Millington was to go to Fort James to succeed Donald.

"He was with Corrigal in Saskatchewan and he knows something about the old devil," Sandy declared. "It's a fine spirit in which to send a man to a long winter alone. How do we know when we'll get a deal like Norton did?"

"Quiet," some one whispered. "Here's Millington."

"I don't care," the angry Scotchman retorted. "Say, how about it?" as Millington entered. "What have you got on Corrigal that he keeps you on after the way you were shown up this afternoon?"

Millington stopped and peered at him, his eyes glittering through the slits in his swollen face. Corrigal had not let him down easily. No sooner had Layard left the office than the district manager turned loose his wrath. Demoralization of the company's trade by one of its own servants was high crime in his eyes and there was the added pressure of recent events, none of which he was able to relieve.

The young Englishman, friendless now, bitter in his defeat, humiliated at every turn, was venomous.

"Guess you know the truth of that story about Norton being his son," Sandy sneered. "That's where you get your hold on him, eh?"

The Scotchman's contempt no longer stung Millington but he was still in a blind fury because of Corrigal's denunciation.

"Of course I knew it," he retorted. "I knew it long before Norton did. And more than that, I have proof. Do you suppose I've let Nee-tah-wee-gan hang around Whitefish Lake these last two years for nothing? I knew Corrigal was his father."

"You lie!" Layard cried as he sprang forward. "Nee-tah-wee-gan never talked until to-day. She wouldn't."

Millington's crafty mind saw his advantage.

"Of course she never talked to you or to anyone else," he retorted. "You didn't know how to make her. But she talked to me—and a bottle of Scotch."

Instantly Millington regretted what he had said. As one man the post managers crowded nearer. Sandy Hay, sputtering in his wrath, thrust his face close to the Englishman's battered countenance.

"Get out of here, damn you!" he shouted. "You're worse than anything Norton or any of the rest of us ever said about you. Go and heal up that face so I can give it another treatment. To take a poor old Indian woman who's been mad with hate for thirty years and get her drunk so you might hear a bit of dirty gossip you could use to——"

He turned as if to restrain himself from giving Millington a second thrashing and the object of his wrath hurried away to hide himself away in his room.

"And with that dirty taste in our mouths we've got to go back to a year of slaving," Nicol MacKar said.

"It makes me want to loaf on the job," Milner declared.

"Yes," Sandy agreed, "to hell with the Hudson's Bay if it's come to this!"

No one resented the sacrilege. Such statements are common wherever two or more servants of the great company are gathered. Men relieve themselves of grievances, generally fancied, in wrathful denunciations which are not unlike the outbursts of ten-year-old boys against the imagined tyrannies of a teacher. Yet those same men would turn with the defensive fury of zealots at criticism by an outsider.

Until the post managers departed for their distant stations Fort Bruce continued to seethe with discontent and denunciation. Millington was ostracized. Corrigal maintained his lonely, driving life.

Ten days after Donald's departure the two Indians who had taken him away returned. They could tell nothing except that they had paddled the deposed post manager as far as a fishing station on Lake Winnipeg and there had seen him board a tug bound south.

Late in the fall a packet from Winnipeg conveyed the information that Donald had appeared at the offices of the company and had drawn his salary and savings.

Winter came with its first packet from civilization and still there was no news of Donald. He had disappeared from the north country.

CHAPTER XVII

A DUEL FOR FUR

In the long months that passed after his departure from Fort Bruce, Donald Norton won through to a greater dominance in the hearts of its people than he had gained while there. The world at large thinks of the Hudson's Bay only as a great monopoly, a giant machine that throttles the north, and of its people as hardened, ruthless minions wholly subservient to dividend-grasping stockholders in London. It grants them only a colorful, adventurous life.

But vast though the scope of the company's operations are, monopolistic though it may have been for two centuries, governed as it has been through a semi-military form of organization, the minds and hearts of its servants have never ceased to be human. Rather the isolation, the loneliness and the sense of camaraderie developed have accentuated the human qualities and have produced an independence of thought and action that falls short of being mutiny only because of a deeply underlying loyalty to an ideal—not to a corporation.

In the first year of the great war the London office, in the grip of panic, issued orders that no "debt" was to be given the hunters, that the method of trading to which the Indians had become accustomed through generations was to end. But every post manager in more than two hundred stations, scattered through four thousand miles of wilderness, stuffed the order into a pigeon hole in his desk and conducted the business of his trade shop as he always had.

Rulers in their provinces, close to the real problems in the gathering of fur, these men thought first of the childlike people they ruled, stiffened their backs beneath the increased burdens the white race is obligated to bear, and remained true to an ideal. They alone saw that if the Hudson's Bay were to maintain its spiritual integrity it must stand as a buffer between the hunters and economic conditions to which they could not adapt themselves.

It has always been this ideal to which these men have remained true and it was thus that Donald Norton, though he had disappeared from the north country and was no longer employed by the company, was still considered a Hudson's Bay man. He was respected the more for his action and the question of his parentage was never brought near the scales of justice.

In the Layard home there was another factor that made of Donald's dismissal a supreme tragedy. Neither Merton nor Evelyn could remain unaware of what had happened to Janet. Even before the girl had been driven to self-revelation when Corrigal told his story, Evelyn had seen what was in her heart.

The day of Donald's arrival, immediately after his one strained visit to the dwelling house and before the departure of the picnic party, Janet had gone to her mother.

"What was the matter with Donald?" she demanded abruptly.

Evelyn was unprepared for such directness and as her startled glance searched the girl's face Janet continued:

"Last summer, the day before he left, he was the same way. I saw him that morning. He had not changed. Later he came to talk to you and when I saw him at noon——"

She was looking steadily at her mother and Evelyn's eyes wavered slightly.

"I think I understand," Janet said. "What did you say to him?"

Evelyn could not force herself to meet her daughter's accusing glance. Janet stared at her for a moment and then burst forth in impassioned accusation.

"You had no right!" she cried. "That was my problem. I would never have failed him. Now he thinks I am like the others."

In the days that followed Evelyn tried repeatedly to talk with Janet of Donald. The girl was no longer bitter or hard but always she refused to discuss the subject. After a time Evelyn ceased her efforts. She knew her daughter had walled off a corner of her heart and had retreated within it.

The first week in January, six months after Donald had disappeared from the north country, Merton came home from the district office one afternoon.

"Corrigal has heard from Donald," he began when he found Evelyn alone in the living room.

"Heard from him?" she repeated as she sprang to her feet.

"Heard of him, I should say. He is working for the Keewatin Company and has started a post at Kenogami. Sandy Hay's winter packet has just arrived and from what Corrigal said I gathered that Donald is raising Ned out there. And Sandy wrote me privately that the situation is really more serious than he has told Corrigal, that Donald, because he knows every Kenogami hunter, is liable to get half the fur this winter."

Layard made no attempt to disguise his elation, but when Evelyn gathered the import of what he was saying her quick mind leaped forward to the true significance of the news that had come from Kenogami.

"It is terrible, Merton," she said, "after all these years!"

"What do you mean?"

"That Donald should be driven to such a thing. All his life he has never known anything except the Hudson's Bay. He has worshiped the company."

"The Hudson's Bay isn't what it used to be."

"You mean Corrigal?"

"Of course. Every man who left Fort Bruce last fall had a bad taste in his mouth. It's hard to be loyal when a man like Corrigal is about all of the company you come in contact with."

"But Hudson's Bay was a passion with Donald."

"I know," Merton said; "still I think he is moved by a greater passion now."

"Hatred?"

"Can you blame him? It was a case of rank injustice. Donald could have remained in the service and have won back a large part of what he lost here. He has it in him and if he had gone to another district he would have established himself in two or three years. Instead, he went straight to Winnipeg and, from the speed with which he worked, he must have gone at once to the Keewatin Company with a plan for a post at Kenogami. With his knowledge of conditions there he would be a valuable man for the opposition and the Keewatin people took immediate advantage of it."

"But he is bound to lose in the end," Evelyn protested. "He may have a brief success but he can't win out that way. The Hudson's Bay is too big for any one man to fight it."

"Donald is fighting Corrigal, not the Hudson's Bay," said Merton. "Nothing could hurt Corrigal more than to have Donald establish a post where the opposition has never gained a foothold before and Donald can do that at Kenogami."

In the following month the Layards discussed the matter several times. While Merton was certain Donald could gain his point, that he could go on to a success sufficient to compel the Hudson's Bay to recognize Corrigal's mistake and take him back into the service, Evelyn was never satisfied with this view of the situation.

Being a woman, she knew Donald far better than did Merton. In the early days of the boy's struggles to shed the odor of the wigwam she had been permitted many glimpses of his soul. The passion, the longing, the fierce endeavor, the intentness of purpose and always the courage—these she had seen and sometimes they had awed her. From the beginning she had watched the development of a love for the Hudson's Bay until it had become part of life itself to the lonely youth.

Without family, without religion, without even a sense of patriotism or of country, Donald had found in the Hudson's Bay the sole outlet for that natural enthusiasm and romance and yearning of all boys. He knew nothing else, had heard of nothing else. So far as he could comprehend, the great company was the universe itself. Since infancy he had heard it called only "that to which we owe thanks."

As the years passed, as he won his first position, as a more mature viewpoint permitted him to see the vast scope of Hudson's Bay activities and influence, his devotion grew until when he had gained complete acceptance at Fort Bruce in the days of Duncan Mactavish's benign leadership it became the ruling factor in his life.

Evelyn Layard had seen this from the beginning. She had watched that devotion to the great company develop in Scotch and English youths, she had seen it attain complete dominance in the lives of many men, and she knew with what anguish of spirit Donald must accept employment with the hated and scorned opposition. Reared in fur land, ignorant of the great world outside, trained from the first for the gathering of pelts, there was nothing for him to do but accept the ignominy.

But a month later Evelyn's convictions received a shock. Word came from Fort James that Donald had appeared there when the Indians gathered on New Year's and that he had made terrific inroads upon Millington. Corrigal left Fort Bruce at once to handle the situation himself. He had been gone only a day when a special packet from Nicol MacKar, now manager at Whitefish Lake, told of Donald's arrival in that territory and of his unusual activity. He did not linger at the Keewatin post with Collinge, but took to the trails with a tripper's outfit, visiting distant wigwams and sending back load upon load of fur. Each flash of news caused a fresh sensation at Fort Bruce.

"Donald is general manager for the Keewatin Company," Merton told Evelyn when he reported the arrival of the last packet. "He only started that new post at Kenogami and then jumped over to Fort James and on to Whitefish."

"Then he'll be at Whitefish Lake when Corrigal stops there on his way to Fort James," Evelyn said, her mind leaping at once to the possibilities for human drama in this new situation.

"Won't Corrigal be wild," Merton chuckled.

"Merton! And you a Hudson's Bay man!"

"I don't care. Corrigal has earned this. Just think what Donald can do. He was raised at Kenogami. He was at Whitefish Lake six years and at Fort James two. He knows every hunter trading at the three posts, knows how many children he has, how he gets along with his wife, how dependable he is. He knows everything necessary to get the fur."

"But he can't make much headway against the Hudson's Bay."

"You're worse than an old trader," Merton laughed. "It takes a woman to become blind in her devotion."

"It isn't that at all. I was thinking how impossible it is for one man, with only the backing of a small company like the Keewatin, to affect so gigantic an enterprise as the Hudson's Bay."

"Oh, he'll not put the company out of business but he will put a big dent in the fur receipts of this district and Corrigal is responsible to the commissioner for a good showing."

"You still think Donald is doing this solely because he hates Corrigal?"

"What else could it be? He has every reason. He believes Corrigal is his father and therefore twice responsible for all that has happened. And it looks as if he would get his revenge. Corrigal won't last long if this continues."

"It is something else," Evelyn protested, "something bigger than revenge."

Merton laughed. He was still exuberant over the news that had come to Fort Bruce that winter. Donald's motive was of comparatively slight importance to him. He was interested chiefly in the fact that Donald was making good, that he was stinging Corrigal in his most tender spot, humbling the pride of this hard, ruthless executive who had come out of the west and disrupted the morale of an entire district.

Merton was no less loyal to the Hudson's Bay because he was willing to see it lose money and prestige, if only the success of his young friend were achieved. The attitude of those men who have spent a lifetime in the service of the great company is a peculiar thing. All-pervading though the spirit of that service may be, lonely men must find something by which they may personify it and because of the very camaraderie of isolation they have chosen each other and their immediate superiors.

It has always been true. The history of the great company is filled with incidents of revolt—not against the company itself but against executives. Grievances have been carried through to the directors themselves in far-away London and always the men have stuck together. There is the one classic incident of the inspector who was discharged by the chief factor because he had reported adversely on a popular man's methods of conducting his post.

All the Fort Bruce district felt as did Merton Layard. From the first Donald had been popular and his fight with Millington had cemented the allegiance of his fellow post managers. Now they saw him only as the victim of an injustice wholly out of place in fur land. No one was negligent in his duty that Donald might have a better opportunity for success. Their peculiar code forbade that, but they retained the right to wish him well and, with the exception of Millington, every post manager in the district was secretly exultant over the successful manner in which Donald had begun his attack.

When Donald prodded them they chuckled. They did not consider that it meant a financial loss to the company. They only knew that with each prod Corrigal squirmed.

But if Corrigal squirmed no one saw him do so. He was constantly on the trail between Whitefish Lake, Fort James and Kenogami. Since his arrival at Fort Bruce the post managers had known him as a cold, hard, relentless superior—driving, scheming, urging and always, they believed, covertly threatening.

With the first report of Donald's activities he became a different man. He was more grim, more relentless, and he drove harder than before, but with fire and feeling. Once he had been a general far back of the lines, issuing orders, planning campaigns. Now he burst through the front rank and led the charge and the very manner in which he did it began to have an effect. Before the winter was over he had whipped the entire district into fighting trim.

CHAPTER XVIII

JANET BARES HER HEART

Spring came and rotting trails cut off Fort Bruce from its world. The ice on the great lakes was blackening, the snow was becoming drab, the north stood forth in all its ugliness, dreary and spent after the long battle with winter.

The people of the north, too, were resting. Fur had loosened in the skins of animals, travel was difficult and dangerous. Hunters lay in their wigwams. Post managers sat in empty trade shops.

Corrigal waited impatiently in Fort Bruce. For all he could do, the battle was ended. In early June hundreds of Indians would arrive at distant posts with the larger part of their winter's hunt. What share of it went to the Hudson's Bay and what to the Keewatin Company would not be known until the arrival of the brigades in July. Corrigal could do nothing except depend on his post managers to conclude the struggle as best they could.

Although impatient, the district manager was confident. He knew Donald had made serious inroads yet he believed it was only a flare. It was incomprehensible to him that the great company could be defeated so suddenly and so easily. For generations the Indians had known the Hudson's Bay and its protective influence. The crooked dealings of free traders and their callousness toward the hunters' welfare had served to cement an allegiance which had been fostered for so long.

Corrigal's instinctive attitude was not unlike that of a religious zealot. He believed the company to be supreme, possessed of inherent rights. He was modern in his methods but only this attack was required to arouse the ancient pride and faith in the light of which Donald's action became an effort doomed to failure because it was a desecration.

As an executive in a responsible position Corrigal was colder, more analytical, and he believed in the success of his own efforts. He controlled a gigantic machine and had directed it in a crushing onslaught. He knew in the beginning he had not succeeded but at the end of three months on the trails he believed he had turned the tide.

There were other outcomes of the struggle he tried to ignore. For thirty years he had withdrawn from human contacts. He had made himself hard and uncompromising and he had been content because it was his wish. Now he discovered that men were withdrawing from him, were withholding themselves, offering only a hard, indifferent exterior. Bitterness came in sudden flashes and the loneliness against which he had fought crowded forward in his mind.

Since he had left the dwelling house nine months before, he had never mentioned Donald to any of the Layards. He seldom saw Evelyn or Janet. He talked often to Merton but always on matters of business and even after Donald's sudden reappearance the young man's name was not brought up.

Yet in the long wait for the fur brigades when each was eager for news and none could be had it was inevitable that the subject should crop out.

"It wouldn't surprise me at all if we had opposition here next year," Merton said when he handed in his April report. "We ought to get ready for it now."

"Opposition here?" Corrigal asked. "What do you mean?"

Fort Bruce, though comparatively easy of access to civilization, had always conducted a successful defense and for many years no attempt had been made there by a free trader.

"You don't imagine for a moment that after his success this winter Norton is going leave Fort Bruce alone?" Merton demanded.

"I have thought of that," Corrigal answered slowly, "but I don't think he'll do it. He's too wise to extend himself so rapidly. It would be suicide."

Merton stared in amazement. He had pictured Corrigal's wrath if Donald's name were mentioned.

"Then you will admit that he is a good fur trader?" he asked.

"There's no doubt about it," was the ready reply. "He's more than that. He's an exceptional man."

"And you let him go! You drove him to this!" The exclamation was involuntary but Merton did not regret it.

"I would do it again," Corrigal answered coldly. "Norton has shown how little the company meant to him, has proved the point I made. The Indian in him has come out. Don't you suppose I understand? It's revenge he wants. He hates me. He believes I am his father. Nee-tah-wee-gan must have told him. He holds me responsible, not only for removing him from Fort James but for his having been born."

That had been Merton's view at the beginning of the winter but Evelyn's ideas and his own more sober reflection had weakened his faith in it. Corrigal's statement was all that was needed to put him in opposition.

"Did it occur to you that he might be only trying to prove that you are wrong, that you made a mistake?" he demanded. "It is not revenge. Donald hasn't such a petty ambition."

"I've seen too many half-breeds react to just such a situation," Corrigal answered calmly. "Norton is only running true to form. He'd rather stick a knife in a man's back than meet him face to face. He thinks he's doing that to me now."

Layard leaped to his feet and strode to the door. He was too angry to speak for a moment and when at last the words did come he cast all restraint to the winds.

"Ask Millington if he's afraid to stand up to a man!" he shouted. "There's no fairness or justice in you. If there were you would be proud of the record he has made. Even Philip Collinge, the man you despise, has done better by his sons. At least he has never denied their parentage."

Corrigal's face became white and he moistened his lips before he spoke.

"I'll overlook that this time, Layard, because I know what Norton has meant to you," he said slowly and with a most evident effort at self-control. "But I don't expect to have to listen to it again. I've not denied anything that was true and I will not allow you or anyone else to repeat this charge against me. I can pardon Norton. It is natural that he should believe what his mother told him. I objected only to the way he tried to use it."

June came and with the opening of navigation from the south a new bombshell burst at Fort Bruce. Building materials and men arrived from Winnipeg and began the erection of warehouses, a dwelling house and an office less than a mile down the shore from the Hudson's Bay. Before the first boat was unloaded everyone knew the Keewatin Company was establishing headquarters there and Donald Norton's activities took on a new significance.

Donald himself did not appear until after all the fur brigades had arrived. Although he immediately took up quarters in the new buildings the Hudson's Bay people never saw him. They knew he was there. The fur land telegraph relayed quickly a report of his daily habits, but that was all.

In that first week after his arrival Donald's status began to change. A year before he had left Fort Bruce with the sympathy of practically everyone in the district. In mid-winter he had burst upon them like a meteor and, in secret, everyone wished him success in his fierce attack upon Corrigal, as his activities had been construed.

But with the coming of the fur brigades and the gathering of the post managers in July and the knowledge that the Keewatin Company, always a weak, despised opposition that had merely furnished a little zest in the battle for pelts, had made serious inroads upon the Hudson's Bay, the servants of the great company suddenly awakened to the fact that they had a real fight on their hands. And they rallied to the support of the Hudson's Bay as they would never rally to Corrigal's call.

When Millington, Sandy Hay and Nicol MacKar, who had been shifted back to Whitefish Lake, compared notes there was even more consternation than had followed Corrigal's bitter tirade after the final reports were in.

"Near as I can make out, the lad's been at two places at once most of the winter," Sandy declared. "He must fly from one post to another."

"I don't mind that," MacKar said, "but there's something more. Collinge was down and out. Millington had about finished him. And then Donald comes along and shoots something into his veins that makes a new man of him."

"Anyone would think to hear you talk that he was a superman," Millington said disgustedly. "The explanation is easy. Norton has been at all three posts where the Keewatin Company suddenly came to life. He knows each Indian and all about him."

"You can bet they know him, too!" Sandy declared. "Any Indian who ever knew Donald is his friend. But that's not the whole explanation. He's a fur trader, that lad is—such a one as hasn't been in this district in many a long day."

"He's done the work of three men this winter," Nicol said, "and Corrigal's going to hear from the commissioner before the summer is over."

"Corrigal!" Sandy snorted. "It's the rest of us that will have to be on the watch as well. Donald isn't sitting down there in his new office just watching the waves out on the lake. He's hatching something worse than ever for next winter."

"It's Corrigal's fault," Nicol insisted. "If he had been square there wouldn't have been a mess like this."

"But that's done for and gone," Sandy said soberly. "The point is, things are going to smash and we, the post managers, are going to get caught. We're the ones who buy the fur. When Donald broke loose he had my sympathy. Now he doesn't need it. I'm going to sympathize with myself. This fight was none of my making but I'm the one that's getting squeezed, and you lads, too. The thing for us to do is to remember that, after all, it's the Hudson's Bay we're working for."

Sandy's opinion became that of all Fort Bruce. Whenever a post manager walked across the great enclosure his eyes turned down the shore to the Keewatin buildings. He wondered what was happening there. The Hudson's Bay men knew Corrigal was not idle, that spies were at work, that the underground ways of fur land were trod by busy feet, but the very fact that so little information was forthcoming added to the suspense.

Tons and tons of Keewatin supplies arrived from the south and were loaded into York boats and sent away. Canoes came and went, bearing messages and reports. Half a hundred Indians labored with the freight. Collinge came from Whitefish Lake, remained two days and departed. The new Kenogami manager arrived, and the man from Fort James, and they, too, left after a brief stay.

These were facts easily observed or learned. They were significant of the coming winter and they meant much but they aroused little interest or comment. The silent, lonely figure down the lake shore had become all-dominant in Fort Bruce and it was what was going on in the mind of that solitary, unseen opponent that occupied men's thoughts.

They believed they understood that mind. They pictured it as a high-geared, efficient machine, motivated by a consuming desire for revenge. They ascribed to it qualities unknown in fur land, qualities engendered in the heat of bitter human drama. They felt that no cold business campaign could have achieved what Donald Norton did, that only in the fervor of a crusade or in the venom of hatred was to be found an actuating impulse for so destructive an onslaught.

The very fact that they knew so little, that Donald was never seen, inflamed their imaginations. Pictures of him became distorted, warped by their remembrance of the last time they had seen him, when he had turned upon their race. He became a dread thing rather than a personality and they saw themselves drawn into the vortex by the very power and ruthlessness of his bitter warfare against Corrigal.

Only two persons seemed unmindful of Norton's presence. One was Corrigal, the other Janet Layard. Corrigal continued his driving, ruthless sway. If anything he was a little softer. The somberness faded from his eyes and often they lighted with the fire of battle. His post managers began to see that he was deriving a certain satisfaction from the conflict.

Janet never spoke of Donald, even after his arrival at Fort Bruce. For all Evelyn could see, the girl did not know he was there. It had been Evelyn's intention to go to Donald at the first opportunity and tell him frankly that her primary, instinctive reaction no longer held sway, but as the days passed and she watched her daughter closely the doubts came. The real Janet had never come out of that walled-in corner of her heart and the mother began to wonder just how deeply the tragedy had struck.

One night when Janet had gone to her room Evelyn was driven to discussing her problem with Merton, never dreaming that at that moment the girl was hurrying down the shore to the Keewatin buildings.

It was not the first time she had done so. Soon after Donald's arrival she had stolen away one night and crept close to a lighted window in the new office. For several minutes she had watched the young man at the desk. He was bent over a ledger and for a time she could not see his face. Then he looked up and after one glimpse the girl turned and fled in the darkness.

This night she stopped for only a moment outside the window. When she saw that Donald was alone she went at once to the door and knocked. Without waiting she lifted the latch and entered.

Once inside she hesitated. On that previous night she had been shocked by what she believed were his drawn, weary features. Now she saw that distance and the light had deceived her. He still appeared drawn and weary but there were other lines, hard and determined, and his eyes glowed with a fierce light that frightened her.

So much a part of him had this expression become—and she saw this, too—he stared at her for several moments before there was any change whatever. Even when he softened she could not escape the impression of hardness. Yet the situation was such that neither could escape its significance or resort to subterfuge.

"Donald," she began at once, "why haven't you come to see me?"

"I couldn't."

"Corrigal doesn't govern me!" she exclaimed fiercely.

"I don't mean Corrigal. I was thinking only of myself."

"But what about me?"

He studied her for a moment in amazement.

"Janet!" he breathed.

She came toward him. Her lips were parted slightly, her face was flushed and her eyes told more plainly than any words what was in her heart.

Never had he seen her more adorable. Two years of abnegation, of struggle against desire, of longing and of bitterness, all vanished. He was conscious only that she had come to him, that she was there, his, that her own love was so great it had scorned custom and public opinion, had risked defeat and ignominy, had driven her past everything to lay bare her heart before him.

The very glory and courage of it was blinding. Slowly he arose from his chair to meet her.

"I never knew, never dreamed——" he whispered.

"I knew you didn't," she answered softly. "You thought I had turned against you like all the rest, that what they said made a difference with me. It was only fair that I should come and tell you."

She was close to him now and he stood facing her. A sweep of his arms and——But that meant little to Donald. He had always worshiped from a distance and now the moment was too great to permit thought even of taking her hands in his.

He stood there, transported by the wonder of it. Janet saw the charm and gentleness unfold. She knew the Donald of two years ago was returning. All the hardness and intensity were gone. She was about to cry out with the joy of it when he dropped back into his chair as if he had been struck.

"Janet," he said hoarsely, "you are wonderful—to come here like this. But—but we've got to understand each other."

"Understand!" she cried. "We do, now!"

"Only so far. I didn't understand you until a moment ago. You—oh, you're so much finer, so much more wonderful even than I had dreamed!"

"It was the only way—to come and tell you."

He ignored her remark.

"All the time I had been confident that you didn't care, that it made no difference to you, and I was glad."

"Glad!" she interrupted.

Again he did not seem to hear and Janet realized that he was driving himself to say what was in his mind.

"That was the one thing I was thankful for," he continued painfully. "You were unhurt. Your life was free. And now! Don't you see? It can't be! It can't! It can't!"

For a moment her anguish blinded her to the import of his words. She had never seen such misery in human eyes and with a little cry of pity she started forward.

"Don't!" he begged as he drew away. "It can't be, Janet! I'm not—not all——"

"I don't care who your father or mother were!" she cried. "It is you that I know, that I care about, and no one else."

"But don't you see?" he protested. "Oh, Janet! You are making this so hard for me."

"You mean my mother!" she exclaimed with sudden understanding. "I know you went to her two years ago."

Deliberately he turned away and stared at the wall. For a moment she stood there waiting and then as she was about to break forth in passionate protest he spoke.

His voice was hard and yet hollow and dreary and dead. It was the voice of a man who exerts every ounce of will power to force out each word.

"I wasn't thinking of your mother," he began, "but of mine. Nee-tah-wee-gan is my mother and I am part Indian. That is one fact we can't get around. I am part Indian and because I am, I alone know what it means.

"Once I thought I was white. When I was a boy and it was time for me to go into the bush and fast I dreamed that I was white. I believed it then—believed I had only to make myself so.

"When I was older and began to understand things better I still thought there was a chance. I believed I could make myself all white in spite of my mother. That is what I strove to do. It's what I believed could be done. For years I thought I had succeeded, and then I discovered that I never could succeed."

He paused for a moment and leaned forward, still staring away from her.

"Corrigal did this to me," he continued. "Not last summer but thirty years ago, before I was born. I can imagine no worse crime than he committed then."

"But you are making him pay!" Janet cried fiercely. "You can make him, Donald. You are going to drive him out of the district."

"Pay," he repeated dully. "That's not the question. I haven't cared to try. And it would be so futile. You can't make a murderer pay by sticking a pin in him. All I can do is to avoid the same crime."

"Same crime!"

He wheeled to face her.

"Don't you see that I can never marry? That I can never have children? That I can never do to another what he did to me? Don't you see that I can't drag you down to ostracism with me? Oh, Janet! It's all so hopeless. There isn't any escape. We've got to face it, you and I, and I had believed it was only my fight."

"Donald! You're mad! It's different. It's not the same question."

"There is no difference," he answered. "Nee-tah-wee-gan is my mother. She would be the grandmother of my children and they would have Indian blood in their veins. They would be damned from the beginning, forever, as I have been."

Suddenly he had become cold and hard and Janet sensed that his purpose was unalterable. Despair seized her, but even as she struggled against it he arose from his chair, stepped past her and opened the door.

"We are only making it harder," he said as he stood aside.

Something in his voice, so broken and so hopeless, so pleading, galvanized her to a last stand. Then she looked at him. His head was bowed and he was trembling as if from a fever. Broken and beaten, crushed and twisted, his suffering stabbed her.

Yet the very picture he presented was the strongest proof he offered, not only of the case he had advanced but of his unalterable purpose. If he could continue to fight through that, nothing could move him.

Still she would not give him up. She stood there, white and rigid. For a time neither moved. Then Donald spoke, and still he did not look at her.

"Good-by," he said, and there was a slight pleading inclination of his head toward the door.

Blinded now by the hot tears, trembling in sudden weakness, she swayed past him. Even when she sobbed he did not move. After she had stumbled out into the darkness he closed the door quickly, but softly, reverently, and with a groan.

CHAPTER XIX

AGAINST GREAT ODDS

Two days after his interview with Janet, Donald disappeared from Fort Bruce. He went in the night and it was thirty-six hours before his absence was discovered. Immediately the tension in the Hudson's Bay increased. Corrigal rushed his post managers back to their stations and each man was resolved to fight.

Yet the old spirit of battle of the Hudson's Bay was lacking. That spirit had always been arrogant, confident, sometimes supercilious, and often it had carried the great company to victory through the sheer belief of its servants that Hudson's Bay was unconquerable.

Now there was a new attitude. It was not alone that the Keewatin Company had made serious inroads at three posts. It was no longer the whirlwind campaign Donald had waged or his recognized ability as a fur man. It was not the unexpected that was feared in the coming winter. Rather it was the spirit that Donald himself had introduced into the fight for pelts.

Men's minds persisted in going back to the battle with Millington, to the charges that Nee-tah-wee-gan had screamed across the great enclosure, to Corrigal's grim silence, to the Layards' reticence and to the lonely figure in the new buildings down the shore. This last perhaps more than anything else influenced them. There was something ominous in Donald's intensity, in his silence and in his long hours of toil, but still more in what they believed was seething within his brain.

For no one doubted but that Donald's attack was actuated solely by hatred of Corrigal and a desire for revenge. They pictured the first as bitter and all-consuming, the second as a blazing, implacable, driving force of such intensity that even the mighty Hudson's Bay would feel its impact. There was something sinister in it, something unreal, and the very fact that each man sympathized with Donald, although perhaps unconsciously, heightened the impression.

No one knew whether this aspect of the situation affected Corrigal. Though his men found him more approachable, none accused him of seeking favor in his last resort. His back was to the wall—for no district manager survives two unsuccessful years—and yet he seemed to look forward to the winter with eagerness.

"He's fooled us," said Nicol MacKar the night before his departure. "He's made us think he cares about nothing except the company and it's the fight that gets him. He's been a different man since this happened."

"He made me think of a horse going to the post in the Derby when I talked to him this afternoon," said Harry Milner. "Why, the old chap was actually champing his bit and rearing on his hind legs. I fancy he's a regular sport after all and likes a little competition."

"Yes, and maybe it's something else," Sandy Hay declared. "Who is the one person a man can take a licking from and smile?"

"What do you mean?" Nicol demanded.

"Only that the old hag, Nee-tah-wee-gan, told the truth a year ago."

"Corrigal never did deny it," suggested Milner.

"Nor has Donald ever boasted of it," Sandy added. "There's blood in this fight, lads, and it's Nicol and Millington and me that are going to get spattered."

Before the lakes and rivers froze over that fall John Corrigal left Fort Bruce. Special messengers traveling in fast canoes had brought the news he expected. Donald had not extended his activities. He had not built new posts but would concentrate on Whitefish Lake, Fort James and Kenogami, the three places with which he was thoroughly familiar. Accordingly Corrigal had departed at once to be on the firing line at the beginning of the winter.

At Whitefish Lake he found that Donald had shifted Philip Collinge to Fort James and that a French Canadian, Joe Barrere, had taken his place.

"I don't understand that," Corrigal pondered. "Millington had Collinge thoroughly licked here at Whitefish."

"Yes, and Norton has always licked Millington," MacKar answered. "This winter he'll do it again. It's at Fort James that you can look for trouble. Donald has more than one iron in the fire."

"You mean he hates Millington as well as me?"

"I don't know as Donald hates him exactly. A man doesn't hate a snake, still he gets a strange sort of pleasure out of killing one."

Nicol apparently had ignored Corrigal's first reference to the personal relations between the district manager and Donald, but he watched closely to see what effect his statement had.

"I imagine he classes me with Millington," Corrigal said.

"I'm not in the lad's confidence. I haven't seen him since the day of that fight at Fort Bruce. He set himself up against the whole white race then."

"That's the Indian in him," insisted Corrigal.

"Maybe, but the Indian or something else, you couldn't blame him. I'd have run amuck myself," declared Nicol.

"You mean that he didn't have a square deal?"

"Do you think he did?"

Nicol had been in the service as long as Corrigal and he was thoroughly of the old school. He had no fear of the district manager and he waited calmly for what he believed would be an outburst. But apparently Corrigal was unruffled.

"I'd do the same thing again," he said quietly. "I believe I was right. Was Norton here this fall?"

"Yes, for a week. Then he went on to Fort James."

"Suppose he won a lot of hunters?"

"I don't know whether it was Donald or the Frenchman. Barrere is an uncanny brute. He doesn't seem to do much. For a time when the hunters were outfitting I couldn't see that he did anything but sit in the sun and tell them stories. He can talk Ojibwa better than I can talk English and he had the whole band laughing."

"I suppose he talked those hunters into taking 'debt' from him?"

"He did and I don't know how he did it. I was talking to them myself all the time and I thought I'd lined up about all we lost last winter. But he got them and a few more."

Corrigal went on to Fort James. Millington had glowing reports—so glowing the district manager spent a day going over the books to verify them. They showed that the Hudson's Bay was regaining lost ground. When Corrigal learned that Donald had gone to Kenogami he hurried there, finishing the long journey on the new ice. He found Sandy Hay in much the same plight as Nicol MacKar.

"You've got to face the situation," Sandy declared after his discouraging report. "When it comes to straight trading, Norton's got us licked. He knows every hunter at the three posts and they know him and believe in him. They'll trust him in anything. The only move that will win is to boost prices for fur."

This was the unfailing weapon of the Hudson's Bay. More than one free trader, limited in the scope of his operations by slight capital, had fallen before the vast resources of the great company. In a way it was an acknowledgment of defeat, this swinging of the heavy bludgeon, and Sandy had expected that his suggestion would arouse Corrigal's anger. But the district manager continued to stare out of the window.

"Norton has gained such headway," he said at last, "that that method, if made effective, will wipe out the profits of the entire district for two years at least."

Sandy whistled.

"Then there's only one thing to do," he said. "You will have to take him back."

Corrigal's unruffled manner, which had perplexed Sandy, vanished instantly.

"Take him back!" he shouted. "Take a man into the service who has done what he has to the company? The Hudson's Bay means nothing to him—nothing does but his desire for revenge. He's a half-breed run amuck because I pulled the props of sentiment out from under him. No, I won't surrender."

All the pride of the great company was Corrigal's. He seemed even to have forgotten that last scene when Donald had scorned him.

"We've got a stiff fight here," he continued more mildly, "but Norton will burn himself up. He can't last. Even if he does we can whip him. We've got to, Sandy. Do you hear? The Hudson's Bay never lost a fight like this. It can't."

There was a desperate note in his voice and Sandy realized that Corrigal was driven, not by fear of a personal defeat, but by the thought of the great company being forced to make terms, stooping to recognize the strength of a vengeful opponent.

"No," the district manager concluded after a moment, "we won't take him back. The Hudson's Bay doesn't give in so easily. It crushes a man like Norton, and it's going to do that now."

Thus with the first snow and the first ice Corrigal began to fight as he never had before. He drew on every resource, his long experience, his knowledge of Indian character and the driving power that had always won for him in the past. He thought only of Kenogami, Fort James and Whitefish Lake. He wore out dogs and half-breed drivers, traveling from one post to another. He spent sleepless nights in devising ways to thwart and trick the opposition. He drove the post managers as ceaselessly as he drove himself.

His efforts began to have an effect. For a time the decision hung in the balance and then the strong tide that had set in toward the Keewatin Company the previous winter began to ebb. Slowly but surely all three of the embattled Hudson's Bay posts gained headway.

In the middle of December a messenger came through with a letter from the commissioner in Winnipeg. It was a short letter—amazingly short for one that had required such effort and hardship in its passage through more than a thousand miles of wilderness. Tersely it instructed the district manager: "Get that man Norton back into the service without delay."

Corrigal smiled grimly when he read it, thrust it into a pocket and redoubled his efforts. Suddenly, as if Donald himself had known of the arrival of the order, that young man seemed to attack all along the line. There was something demoniacal in the fury with which he forced the fight and there was something uncanny about the manner in which he met every move with a counter thrust.

Norton was everywhere, seemingly, at once. If Corrigal made the journey between two posts in three days, he made it in two. If Corrigal slipped away secretly he arrived at his destination only to find Donald there ahead of him. If he devised some clever scheme to win hunters he discovered that Donald had already put it into practice.

Corrigal knew Donald was not paying higher prices for fur or selling goods for less than the Hudson's Bay—a fact which only stung the more because he sensed in it a reflection of his own secret determination to fight the thing out man to man, to make it a test of individual ability and not of the resources of the two companies. He forgot the letter in his pocket and plunged anew into the struggle, not only with renewed energy but with a zest he had never known before and which he could not have explained.

Yet he found himself baffled at every turn. He saw Philip Collinge, who had been down and out, a failure, suddenly develop into more than a match for the wily Millington. He saw Joe Barrere, once an itinerant free trader with nothing back of him, continue his easy, laughing, story-telling way and reap a rich harvest of pelts. He saw Sandy Hay, steady, reliable, often brilliant, struggling almost helplessly in the presence of the unknown Jack Harlan, a young fellow Donald had brought from Winnipeg to run the Kenogami post.

The previous winter the Hudson's Bay post managers had sensed the unusual in the conflict, had glimpsed Donald's fanatical driving force and had been awed by it. Now, as Corrigal hurried from post to post, as his spy system uncovered new and constantly distressing facts, as the ledgers and monthly statements stamped "true" upon rumor after rumor, the cumulative effect was inevitable.

Gradually, for all fur land is under the influence of the dreary, brooding, spirit-filled north, Corrigal's viewpoint began to be tinged by the common conception of Donald. He tried to throw off this new thought, to convince himself that no such force could win, and he started on a swift round of the three posts. After a conference with Nicol MacKar he jumped back to Fort James.

"You want to remember I'm fighting two men, not one," Millington said when he had finished his report. "I don't know what has happened to Collinge. When I saw him last at Whitefish Lake he was done for. Now he's a moose."

Corrigal did not comment. Millington babbled on:

"And Norton! I don't know what he's doing at Kenogami and Whitefish but it can't be a great deal because he spends so much time here. Early as it is, I know he has made two trips this winter and each time he has come in with a toboggan load of fur. He's going right out among the hunters, leaving Collinge to run the post. And Collinge does it."

Corrigal went on to Kenogami. He made a quick trip of it, for he found a freshly broken trail, a fact that impressed upon him through each of the one hundred and fifty miles that Donald was just ahead. As he sat in his cariole, wrapped snugly while a half-breed driver sped at the rear, it seemed that he had been doing nothing else since the first ice but follow, that the young man he had not seen since their last interview at Fort Bruce a year and a half before was always just ahead, always arriving somewhere first, always striking the first blow.

At Kenogami Sandy Hay was as blunt as Millington had been.

"I could handle Harlan," he declared. "Left alone, Jack couldn't dent us here. But Norton's on his tail all the time. He makes another man of him. Donald himself is really running the post. He's district manager, post manager and tripper besides. He got in here yesterday afternoon and this morning at four o'clock he was off again, out in the bush, talking to the hunters, buying their fur. He'll be back here in a few days with a toboggan piled high."

Corrigal said nothing. He had gotten the point. Not only had his adversary outgeneraled him but he had worked far harder. He had succeeded in instilling a fighting spirit in his men. These were the facts—facts that had been impressed upon him time and again since the winter began. In addition there was the other side of it—something vindictive, something of the supernatural.

Corrigal remained at Kenogami three days. He knew he had come to the point where he must at least compromise. Fighter though he was, victor though he always had been, he began to see that the situation was getting beyond him. He had believed that if he swung all the mighty power of the Hudson's Bay into line he could crush this young upstart, but there was a bad year behind him, the letter from the commissioner in his pocket, and the memory of that last interview with Donald.

He started back to Fort James. Not only had he seen that Donald was concentrating on Millington but he had begun to suspect the young Englishman. Something wasn't right at Fort James, though he had been unable to get a hint as to what it was.

The first night out from Kenogami he camped late, but even later, when he was smoking his after-supper pipe beside the fire, the dogs began to growl and soon he heard the tinkle of bells. A few moments later a team dashed out of the darkness and instantly bedlam broke loose.

In the confusion Corrigal waited anxiously. He suspected at once that new orders were being rushed through from Winnipeg and he feared what they might be. But as the drivers hurried to quiet their snarling animals, a figure strode into the firelight and he recognized Norton.

"Oh!" Donald exclaimed when he saw Corrigal, "I expected to find my own team here waiting for me."

He stared at the older man for an instant and then turned back toward the trail. Corrigal did not speak. He knew that he should. He wanted to. But even as he groped for an opening he heard Donald's sharp command and the strange team dashed past the camp and on towards Kenogami. Donald was running ahead, his driver at the rear, and the toboggan was high and bulging with fur.

Few things have a stronger effect on a Hudson's Bay man than the sight of fur in the hands of the opposition, yet in that moment the thing that impressed Corrigal most was the appearance of Donald himself.

He had stood there in the firelight, his parka hood thrown back, his head high, his chest extended by his exertions on the trail. His face had hardened instantly when he saw Corrigal but it was not drawn by weariness. The black shadows and the red light had brought it out, heightening the effect of the strong features and giving an impression of force and will that could not be subdued.

For a long time that night Donald's face haunted Corrigal. He had expected to see hate and cunning, exultation and contempt. He had been confident that when they did meet there would be a sneer, even a taunt, perhaps vilification. Instead there had been only dignity, quiet confidence and undeniable strength. There had been no desire to remain and revel in victory. Only a quick explanation and immediate departure.

This impression remained with Corrigal the next day as he sped on toward Fort James. At daylight when he stopped for breakfast his dogs again began to growl and he heard the tinkle of sleigh bells. A moment later a team of magnificent huskies, dogs undoubtedly imported from the far north, dashed past. Running ahead of them was Donald.

It was a little thing, being passed by another dog team, and yet in that instant it pictured clearly for Corrigal what the entire winter would be like. Late the night before Donald had been speeding toward Kenogami with a big load of fur. Now he was traveling swiftly toward Fort James. He had met his own team, sent on the harvest of pelts and was off to a new post and fresh conquests.

Corrigal leaped to his feet.

"Oh, Norton!" he called, bellowing above the clamor of the dogs.

Donald halted and looked back. Corrigal went forward until he was out of hearing of the drivers and then beckoned Donald to him.

It had been Corrigal's impulse in that first moment to capitulate but as the younger man walked up, alert, confident and wholly at ease, his own pride and that inherent pride of the great company forbade. The cold, hard mask he had always worn dropped into place.

"It's about time we got together," he began.

Donald did not speak. He only waited and his very silence made Corrigal's task more difficult.

"The commissioner has written me to ask you to come back to the company," the Hudson's Bay man continued.

"In your district?" Donald asked quietly.

"Yes."

Donald remained silent.

"Well?" Corrigal demanded at last.

"Of course the commissioner knows why I left the service?"

"Not unless you told him when you were in Winnipeg."

"I had nothing to tell him."

For a moment neither man spoke. It was evident that Donald was waiting, yet there was not a trace of arrogance in his manner. Corrigal, who had been prepared for something wholly different, could not adjust himself to conditions which he had never believed possible.

He had pictured a savage desire for revenge, an overconfident bearing, a sneering, bitter, venomous expression. Instead he found a dignity equal to his own, a complete absence of rancor and contempt and, more than anything else, he sensed a purpose so powerful it ignored any personal issue. Nothing that had happened, Donald's undeniable success, his dashing, sweeping campaign or the fire and vigor of his attack, had impressed Corrigal so much as the young man's appearance.

Outwardly calm, the mask still in place, the district manager stood there trying to find a way out of a perplexing situation. In that moment he saw what he must do but his pride did not succumb easily. While he struggled Donald spoke.

"I don't believe we can get together, Corrigal," he said as he turned away.

He walked back to his dog team, sat down on the partly loaded toboggan and was off. He did it quietly and simply, without any show of defiance. Corrigal stood still, staring after him until he was out of sight around a bend in the trail.

CHAPTER XX

SUPERSTITION LENDS A HAND

When Donald reached Fort James the next afternoon he knew as soon as he entered the trade shop that something had happened. Philip greeted him warmly, asked how affairs were progressing at Kenogami, and yet Donald sensed at once that he was troubled.

In their long years of close association a bond of sincere devotion had grown between these two, a bond strengthened by the similar tragedies that clouded their lives. The very thing which had cut off Donald from the world he desired had bound Philip to exile, and because the case of each was hopeless there had grown from this common isolation not only devotion but understanding and the clairvoyance of true sympathy.

"What's the matter?" Donald demanded when he had removed his trail clothing.

Philip did not hesitate, for he recognized better than his friend, perhaps, the keenness of the intuitive sense.

"Nee-tah-wee-gan is here," he said.

"Nee-tah-wee-gan!" Donald repeated in amazement.

He had not seen or heard of her since that day she had been waiting for him outside Corrigal's office at Fort Bruce. But the fact that interested him most was that she had come to Fort James. She had not followed him there from Whitefish Lake four years before and he had often wondered at the terror she had exhibited when he told her he was going to the larger post.

"It is strange she should come now," he said. "I couldn't understand it but she has never been here since——You know, I was born here and she went to Kenogami soon after."

Philip nodded. He had heard the story of the tragedy that befell Corrigal in the days when he was post manager at Fort James. He knew of Nee-tah-wee-gan's outburst at Fort Bruce.

"I haven't seen her," he said, "though she has been here a week. She is living in an old cabin over at the Bay."

"At the Bay!" Donald repeated, and instantly he was alert.

"Yes. She appeared suddenly and Millington has been grumbling about her being a nuisance. But that's surface talk only. I happened to discover that he brought her here and is giving her rations."

Donald did not comment, nor did Philip. The Englishman understood what might be behind this action on Millington's part and inwardly he was seething because Donald's personal problem had been brought into his struggle against the Hudson's Bay at this time.

All the north country had its opinion of what had caused Donald's furious attack upon the old company but Philip alone knew what Evelyn Layard had guessed—that the rage which had prompted his defiance of Corrigal in that last interview in Fort Bruce had quickly subsided, that Donald had returned to the north with the Keewatin Company, not to gain revenge, not because of hatred of Corrigal, not to humble the Hudson's Bay, but to prove that in spite of his parentage he could be as white as any man in fur land.

Philip knew that Donald was seeking to prove his own integrity of character and that he had adopted the only way open to him. Now, in Nee-tah-wee-gan's appearance at a crucial time, he saw an attempt to undermine Donald's morale and suddenly it occurred to him that Corrigal, not Millington, might be behind it.

"When a man will take such a step to win—" he burst forth.

Donald looked up quickly. He had transferred Philip to Fort James more to help his friend than to further his own interests, for there, face to face again with Millington, Philip would have the tonic of success over a man who had once humbled him.

"You ought to know that Millington will take any sort of despicable action to win," Donald said. "It doesn't surprise me in the least. Only he's not going to win out. We'll get to the bottom of this as soon as possible. I'll get in touch with the Bay to-night."

Philip, seeing that Donald had not connected Corrigal with the matter in any way, was about to state his suspicions when Donald continued.

"Corrigal will get in after dark and that will make it easier for me to learn something over there. I saw him on the trail yesterday morning."

"You mean you talked to him?"

"Yes."

"What did he have to say?"

"You know," Donald answered slowly. "I felt rather sorry for him."

"Sorry!" Philip exclaimed.

"In a way. I got his viewpoint. The commissioner has ordered him to get me back into the service. It is the easiest way out for the Hudson's Bay, of course, and the hardest for Corrigal."

"What did he tell you?"

"He suggested that it was time we got together. I waited for the only thing he can say to me and—he didn't say it."

"You don't mean about——?"

"All I ever want from Corrigal is what is due me," Donald interrupted harshly, "an admission that he made a mistake when he kicked me out."

"He'll never admit that."

"I'm not so sure. I'm beginning to get a new idea of him. He has a lot of pride, of course, his own and the pride the Hudson's Bay gives a man. He's got to be licked before he'll see that he is wrong."

"But you're licking him! Every day!"

"Only because he's made a straight fight of it. He could have crushed us last winter simply by raising the price of fur. He had that weapon but he didn't use it."

"The commissioner wouldn't let him."

"He could have done it and let the commissioner know afterward. No, Corrigal started with the idea he could lick me by straight trading. He didn't and that put him on his mettle. He's out to prove he was right, just as I am, and he's going to risk everything to do it."

"But my dear fellow!" Philip protested. "You said you felt sorry for him. What is there in all this that can arouse compassion?"

"I got a glimpse of Corrigal once, the real Corrigal, here at Fort James. You remember that his wife and baby died when the dwelling house burned thirty years ago. It was the first time he had been back and it loosened him up. He talked more than he intended and I could see what made him what he is.

"I've had another view of him since I left the Hudson's Bay, too. He's a fur man. He can fight. I thought for a while this fall he had us going. And he's worked. Old as he is, he's been traveling all the time. I honestly think he'd kill himself rather than see the company fail in his district."

"Pig-headed zealot!" Philip exclaimed.

"That's because you've never been one and don't know what it is," Donald said with a wistful note that puzzled his friend. "It's all he has, the Hudson's Bay. It's all he lives for. Its pride is his. If the company can't win this fight on even terms it will be a defeat he will feel far more than anything else that could happen. To raise prices would be an admission of defeat. That's why he hasn't done it."

Philip jumped to his feet and strode across the room, but even the sudden physical exertion was not sufficient outlet for his wrath.

"You're too damned decent!" he cried. "After what Corrigal has done to you! After——"

"Phil!"

"After all he's responsible for! Of course he's a Hudson's Bay zealot. He's deluded himself to salve his conscience. He wants to see you licked to get you out of his way, out of his sight. He wants to forget you again, make himself believe that he's——"

"Don't, Phil," Donald interrupted. "I used to feel pretty strongly on that subject myself. I did all last year. It's what started me, it's why I told Corrigal I would make him pay. And I intended to."

He had started confidently, his voice steady, but it broke and Philip whirled from the window to look at him.

"And then I began to understand some things," Donald said slowly. "I don't blame Corrigal now, for anything. I don't blame any man. Unless—well, unless a fellow has an object lesson directly before him, unless he knows exactly what may happen, all the misery he may be responsible for, it's so easy—so easy to——"

He broke off, staring straight before him. His face was gray and drawn and Philip, remembering Janet and the change that had come to Donald after his departure from Fort Bruce a few months before, understood.

But understanding brought no solution. He saw his friend sitting there, only a few feet away, and yet doomed forever to ostracism. He saw him going on through life, lonely, hopeless, his fate immitigable.

Yet there shone against the blackness of this future the greatness of Donald's spirit. Philip marveled at it, and in that moment his admiration and his love soared to new heights, but as he strove for some expression of them Donald turned to him.

"What else is Millington doing?" he asked with his habitual briskness. "It's about time he cut loose with something really crooked."

"You mean he can't stay straight?"

"Yes, and I've picked up a few facts."

Philip was relieved that they were back on normal ground for he had the Englishman's distrust of emotional situations.

"That's one place where you don't waste sympathy," he laughed. "We certainly have gotten into him."

"That's why I'm expecting something," Donald said. "I wouldn't be surprised but that Corrigal is suspicious of Millington, too. I've learned positively that earlier in the winter Corrigal was satisfied with the way things were going here at Fort James."

"But that is just when we were getting in our best work."

"Exactly. It means only one thing. Millington fixed his books and monthly statements."

"But he can't make them come out right next spring."

"He can if he gets a lot of fur in the meantime."

"But if he doesn't?"

"Millington is up against it hard and he knows it. He was sent back here a year ago only because it was too late for Corrigal to get anyone else after I left. This year Corrigal couldn't afford to put in a new man with such a fight on. He had to keep Millington and Millington knows this is his last chance to make good."

"But what can he do now? We've got nearly half the hunters lined up solidly and between your trips and those the men have made we've already bought a lot of fur."

"It is not going to be anything ordinary, or any feeble effort," Donald assured him. "I'll get busy on it to-night."

Donald's sources of information at each of the three posts where he was pressing the Hudson's Bay so hard were exceptional. He not only knew each hunter and each employe of the great company but he had retained his influence over them despite the fact that he was with the opposition. His thorough knowledge of the Ojibwa character and language made it possible for him to learn nearly everything that was going on in the rival posts without arousing suspicion.

That night he did not return to the dwelling house until late.

"Learn anything?" Philip asked when he entered.

"Yes, but I don't know what to make of it. A Hudson's Bay tripper brought Nee-tah-wee-gan here a week ago. I couldn't find out where she came from but the man left without a trade outfit and was gone seven days."

"That means Millington sent for her, as I said."

"Of course. He brought her here and he's giving her rations and a cabin to live in, though he grumbles about it and makes threats to turn her out."

Philip was silent for a few moments.

"You think she means mischief for you?" he asked.

"There's no doubt about it. Nee-tah-wee-gan wouldn't hesitate to do anything to harm me. But I can't imagine what it can be. She did everything possible years ago."

The next morning Philip learned that Corrigal had arrived the night before and had gone on to Whitefish Lake before dawn.

"The thing I have been afraid of has come," he declared when he told Donald of the district manager's activities. "He's making a quick round of the three posts, dropping the word that fur prices are to go up when the hunters are in at New Year's."

"No," Donald answered confidently, "I don't think so. He wouldn't take so drastic a step right now without carrying out the commissioner's orders to get me back. Besides, Corrigal isn't going to fight me that way yet. He still feels that he is going to beat me. No, it's not Corrigal I'm watching but Millington."

He spent the day in an effort to get information but without result. Hunters had already begun to arrive and the Indian houses of the Hudson's Bay and the Keewatin Company were filling up. All the men brought toboggans piled high with pelts and when that fur was traded, when the Indians returned to their distant camps, the first half of the winter's battle would be decided. Success or failure was only three days distant.

Donald was fully alive to the situation but, though he mingled with the hunters and learned that he would hold the advantage he had already gained, he was uneasy. The hunters to whom the Keewatin Company had issued "debt" signified their intention of meeting the obligation. Many of those who received "debt" from the Hudson's Bay declared that they would trade only a part of their fur with Millington.

"I tell you, we've got Millington right!" Philip declared. "Cheer up! He can't do anything now."

"He's got something up his sleeve," Donald answered. "He's not lying down and taking this. I know he's ready to spring something but I can't find out what it is."

"What could it be? There's nothing he can do at this late hour. We never had so many hunters staying here. And they say they're going to trade with us," argued Philip.

But Donald refused to be assured. He prowled about the post, talking to hunters and employes, and that night after dark he again went down the shore to the Hudson's Bay. It was a risky proceeding, not that there was any personal danger, but it imperiled his underground lines of communication. If Millington saw him talking to a Hudson's Bay employe that man would cease instantly to be a source of information. Yet he was so certain the situation was serious he dared to do it. His sensitive intuition foretold trouble.

But he returned with only disconnected bits of gossip. Millington had spent the entire evening in the dwelling house, reading, an indication of confidence or of carelessness. Nee-tah-wee-gan had hardly stepped outside her cabin since her arrival and she had not spoken to any of the employes. A few of the older ones remembered her but when they had made advances she covered her head with her shawl and turned away.

"They say she does nothing but sit in her cabin and weep," Donald told Philip. "I don't understand that. I never knew her to shed tears but they tell me it's almost like a death wail."

Donald had learned, too, that Millington was preparing for a big feast the next day, one to which all the Keewatin Indians were invited.

"That's the regular New Year's affair, only he is a day ahead with it," Philip said. "But the one we have planned for the next day will be a jolly sight better."

"I think," Donald said absently as he stared past his friend, "that it is at the feast that Millington is going to spring his surprise. We've got to be ready."

At noon the next day the Keewatin post was depopulated. Every hunter had gone to the Hudson's Bay. Indian-like, they took all they could get, whether from the company they had deserted or the one to which they had given their allegiance.

After luncheon Donald and Philip went into the warm living room for an uninterrupted afternoon with the books and reports. They knew that so long as free food and free tobacco held out at the Bay not a hunter would come near them, and that there was nothing they could do to learn what Millington was planning or to prevent it.

It was thus that they did not see the Indians return before dark, long before they were expected. The men did not come straggling back but hurried along in a compact group. Once inside the Keewatin Indian house they gathered their fur, loaded their toboggans and departed for the Hudson's Bay post.

Philip's wife saw them from a window. Quite leisurely she finished the task at hand and then went into the living room and told what she had seen. Donald and Philip hurried outside just in time to see the last of the hunters disappear in the thick spruce on a point between the two posts.

Donald ran at once to the Indian house. It was empty. He went to the employes' cabins and the trade shop but found only startled and wondering men and women. No one could give an explanation of what had happened and he returned to the dwelling house.

"Millington must have offered a price for fur that took them off their feet," Philip said.

"It's something else," Donald answered. "They never would have reacted that way. But I can't find out until after dark. We can't send anyone over there and I can't go myself when I'd be seen. But I'm going to get into that Hudson's Bay Indian house to-night and learn what has frightened those hunters."

"Frightened them?" Philip questioned in astonishment.

"Of course. Nothing except fear could have made those men pack up and leave in a body as they did. Who is that coming?"

A woman was hurrying along the trail from the Hudson's Bay and he started at once to meet her. He recognized her as the wife of one of the trippers but when he halted she only glanced at him and went on.

"What has happened over at the Bay?" Donald asked.

She stopped, glanced at him fearfully for an instant and then hurried on. Donald called after her but she did not even turn. She ran to her cabin, entered and slammed the door.

Donald was mystified. She was a woman with whom he had often laughed and joked and upon whom he had always depended for information. Now she was terrorized in his presence.

"Go over to Joe's cabin and see his wife," he said to Philip when he returned to the dwelling house. "She's afraid of me and won't talk. Find out the reason and also what happened over at the Bay."

Philip was gone half an hour and when at last he entered the living room he stood in the open door staring at Donald for a moment.

"You were right," he said at last. "And it was Nee-tah-wee-gan. Why does she hate you so?"

"What are you driving at?"

"She's determined to ruin you!" Philip exclaimed. "She's playing into Millington's hands and she couldn't be doing it blindly. I've known all the time she was not to be trusted. I've always recognized something peculiar there and now it's come out."

"Get down to facts," Donald interrupted. "What has she done?"

"She has told all those hunters that you are a windigo, an evil spirit, a cannibal, and that you are liable to eat one of them at any moment."

Donald seemed to be stunned, as by a blow. He lifted one hand as if in protest. His lips opened but no words came. His eyes were like those of a hunted, wounded animal.

"Look here, old chap!" Philip cried. "Don't take it that way. There's no reason to be afraid of such a story."

"Afraid!" Donald repeated dully. "I'm not afraid. There's nothing to be afraid of. I'm done for."

"Why, man, what's happened? I never knew you to buckle under like this. You're not done for. The hunters will never believe it."

"Believe it!" Donald exclaimed harshly. "They won't believe anything else. I see the whole thing now. Do you think Millington and Nee-tah-wee-gan haven't planned this well? Do you suppose she doesn't know Ojibwas and their superstitions and fears? What did you find out?"

"Joe's wife says Nee-tah-wee-gan went to the feast this noon and told the hunters she had just come from Kenogami. She said you had cheated Pe-tah-bo, her husband, and that he had conjured you so that you are now a windigo. She said——"

"Go on," Donald commanded when Philip hesitated.

"She said you killed and ate a hunter at Kenogami and that you will do the same here."

"And her weeping and wailing since she came, that was part of it," Donald said bitterly. "She felt that she had lost her son. She did not want to tell this thing about him. She waited a week and then she saw that she must protect her own people."

Philip started at his friend's divination of the facts.

"That's exactly as Joe's wife reported it," he said. "But don't you see, Donald? That's not going to be believed. Everyone knows Nee-tah-wee-gan, how she hated and persecuted you. No one will believe her."

"Nee-tah-wee-gan hasn't been here for thirty years and they don't know her or how she feels toward me," Donald interrupted. "And never belittle a windigo story. You think you know Indians because you buy their fur but not one fur trader in a hundred ever really knows an Indian.

"But I know them. For fourteen years I lived in a wigwam. I know their superstitions and fears and beliefs because they were once mine. I know exactly what is going on in the minds of those hunters now and I know what the mere sight of me would do to them."

"But it's all nonsense, this windigo theory," urged Philip.

"It's not nonsense and it's not a theory. When those hunters were children their mothers frightened them with windigo stories. When they grew up they were taught that one man may conjure another—make a windigo of him. And it's not a theory because there have been windigos—men or women who have become deranged mentally and have killed and eaten their own people. There was an instance of it here at Fort James less than twenty years ago."

"But Donald!" Philip protested. "You can't be wrecked by an absurdity."

"I'm wrecked now. Those hunters are throwing their fur at Millington's head, taking any price he offers, and at daylight they'll be running in panic to their camps."

"Look here!" Philip cried in sudden inspiration. "You know that an Indian believes no Indian medicine will touch a white man, that they can't conjure a white man."

"Exactly," Donald agreed, and the bitterness of his tone wrenched his friend's heart. "And what am I? An Indian! What a fool I've been! I thought I could make myself white. I tried. I felt once that I had succeeded and when the first blow came I refused to see it and kept on.

"But it's been blow after blow until this. Now it's the end. I wish to God I'd never had that fasting dream. I wish I'd never left Pe-tah-bo's camp.

"Don't you see? All these years I've thought I had hitched my wagon to a star and that star was only a spark flying out of the smoke hole of a wigwam."

CHAPTER XXI

MILLINGTON'S PLOT FAILS

The early darkness of mid-winter in the north had come while the two talked. After Donald's last despairing outburst both were silent. Philip could see the dim outline of his friend's body, slumped down in a chair and in that moment it was as expressive of utter defeat as his words had been.

In the past it had always been Norton who led, who furnished the defiance and the faith, who refused to admit failure. Unwittingly Philip had come to depend upon Donald for encouragement and inspiration and now he felt everything slipping. He did not even grasp at straws. He had complete faith in Donald's knowledge of fur land, had seen him battle against what appeared to be greater odds, and now when the young man saw no way out the other accepted his view for the moment.

Yet Philip was an Englishman. England's foes have always complained that the British are so blunt-witted they never know when they are whipped. Philip's own defeats had not brought this quality to the surface but now his friend's agony aroused the bulldog in him. He straightened in his chair and clenched his fists.

Meanwhile, down the shore, past the point of thick spruce behind which the Hudson's Bay post was so cleverly situated, Millington was talking to the hunters in the crowded Indian house.

"I know nothing of what Nee-tah-wee-gan has told you," he said. "I had not heard it before. But she has just come from Kenogami and what she says must be true for she says it of her own son. A mother would not say her son is a windigo if he were not."

"In the morning we will leave," a hunter said. "If I stay here and am eaten by a windigo my wife and children will starve in the bush."

"I know how you feel," Millington sympathized, "and if you wish to go back to your hunting camp I will help you. There is no need to take chances. Let me see your fur and I will grade it for you now."

The man brought his bundles of pelts to the light before the open stove door and dumped them at the trader's feet. Millington bent over them eagerly, sorting the pieces and laying them in piles.

He knew his chance had come. The panic-stricken hunters, anxious to get away, would accept any valuation he placed on the fur. In a few hours he would gather enough at a ridiculously low price to permit him to offset the false entries in his books.

But as he worked the crowd of hunters began to move uneasily.

"I have known Donald Norton for four winters and I have always thought of him as a white man," a bolder one declared. "He never seemed like an Indian."

"I cannot believe he is a windigo," another offered. "He has always acted like a white man. Perhaps an Indian could not conjure one who is so nearly white."

"Don't forget that Nee-tah-wee-gan is his mother," Millington interrupted. "And she, his own mother, declares he killed and ate a man at Kenogami only ten days ago."

"Perhaps Nee-tah-wee-gan lied," a voice came from the darkness behind the stove.

The presence of so many hunters and the comparative safety of the warm, crowded building was beginning to have an effect.

"She talks like an evil old woman," another said.

Millington straightened from the bales of fur.

"Listen to me," he commanded. "I am a white man but for many years I have been a trader and have heard stories of windigos until I, too, have come to know about these evil spirits. I am sorry for old Nee-tah-wee-gan. For a week before she told her people she sat in her cabin and wailed as if someone were dead. It was because her heart was sad, because she knew her son had died, that his spirit had gone from his body and a windigo had come to take its place.

"Yet she did not speak. Although she knew he had killed and eaten a man at Kenogami she still hoped that it might not be true. She wanted her son back. She loved him.

"But when you came to the post, when she saw so many of her own people gathered here, and Norton came, she could not keep silent any longer. She knew she must speak, that she must save you from this evil spirit.

"I think she was wise. She did what she should have done. But I cannot see my hunters suffer. As it was her duty to speak, so it is my duty to protect you. You know Norton is part white. Because he is, there is a medicine that will keep him away from here. It is a strong medicine and I can use it. So long as you remain at the Hudson's Bay you will be safe."

He turned again to the fur, added some figures on a piece of paper and then in a low tone announced the total to the hunter.

The man drew back with an exclamation of surprise. It was far below what he knew was being paid for fur.

"Kah-win!" he cried. "That is not fair!"

"It is all I can pay," Millington replied. "I have just received word that the people who buy fur are very poor. Their hunt has not been good and food is scarce. I cannot pay more when there is no one who will pay me so much."

The hunter began to gather up his pelts.

"Give me your fur now," Millington continued, "and in the morning you can have your goods and go to your hunting camp. Then you will be safe, many days' travel from the windigo."

Millington held out his hands and the hunter, divided between disappointment in the price and his fear of the danger which menaced him, gave up his pelts and retreated to the darkness behind the stove.

The trader hid his elation with difficulty. The scheme was working out exactly as he had planned.

"Is there anyone else who wishes to sell his fur now so that he can leave early in the morning?" he asked.

No one came forward but the discussion of the windigo broke out afresh. The low price had brought doubts and increased the desire of the hunters to question the truth of the story.

"I hunt a long way from here," a man said. "Near me is a hunter who trades at Kenogami. I talked to him only a week ago and he had just seen a man from the post. If he had heard of the windigo he would have told me."

"But Nee-tah-wee-gan has come from Kenogami," Millington said.

"She has been here a week," the man answered quickly. "She must have spent many days on the trail for she is old and a woman."

Others offered opinions and comments. Several spoke at once and the excitement grew. Men began to murmur to each other in the darkness. Millington, listening, judging the temper and the thoughts of the Indians, saw that they were slipping from his grasp.

But he no longer attempted to argue. He had planned for such action on their part and he smiled as he kicked the stove door shut and the room became dark except for a faint red glow near the hearth. A moment later the outer door opened and he was gone.

The hunters gave no heed to this. Some grew more vehement in their declarations that Donald was not a windigo. The more timid became silent. For half an hour the discussion absorbed their attention and the more they talked the less became their fear. One man even laughed in derision.

"The fire!" another cried. "It is hungry for wood. Some one bring it."

An Indian arose and went outside to the pile of fuel, leaving the door open. He had barely stepped across the threshold when a shriek pierced the stillness of the great clearing about the post.

It was sharp and quick and it was not a cry of anguish. Fierce and exultant, it came again and the man who had opened the door stood outside shivering with terror.

"The windigo!" an Indian whispered. "It is true."

Immobile, their very souls shaken, the hunters stared through the open door and as they looked across the great white clearing they saw two glowing eyes in the spruce on the point that separated the Hudson's Bay and Keewatin posts.

In that moment sheer terror filled the Indian house. No one moved. No one spoke. There was not a man who did not believe but that Donald, urged by the evil spirit that possessed him, had come to kill.

Numbers meant nothing. Human hands and human weapons were powerless. No medicine could prevail against this monster from the vague land of the savage's untamed demons.

Since infancy all the hunters had heard of this dread fiend. Their mothers had compelled good behavior with it. Their fathers had told strange tales of men who, conjured by an enemy, had become windigos and had wandered through the forest killing and eating their own kind.

In the mind of every Indian there, as clear and distinct as though it had been yesterday, was a picture of a hunter's camp as his friends had found it not many years before, with human bones scattered about, with human flesh in the kettle over the fire and a fiendish old man running and shrieking through the swamps.

Here, only two hundred yards away, was another of these diabolical creatures prowling in the spruce, eyes shooting fire, perhaps with jaws already dripping the blood of a victim at the other post.

Again a shriek pierced the still night air. Again the eyes glowed and moved forward. Hunters cowered back in the corners and watched through the open door in such terror they were barely conscious that it had been darkened for an instant and that a figure had slipped inside. All eyes were still directed toward those two glowing points of fire.

Suddenly the stove door was thrown open, flooding the space in front with a red light, and into that light walked Donald Norton. There was a gasp, a murmur and then the silence of terror. The Indians cowered back in the darkness, huddled together, wholly in the grip of savage, superstitious fear. Before them, only a few feet away, was the man they believed to be a monster, who had come to kill and devour.

For a moment there was not a sound and then the instinct that goes deepest of all—that inherent, ineffaceable desire to live—asserted itself. Contact with other bodies fanned it. The sense of companionship in death aroused the courage of despair.

A few started forward, grasping stove wood, clubbing trade guns, anything that would serve as a weapon.

Donald still stood there confronting them. The light shone full in his face and though he could not see anything in the darkness beyond the stove he turned his head as if looking at each hunter in turn.

But he could sense that movement, that gathering force of resistless, primitive terror, and at the right moment he lifted an arm and pointed to the door.

Outside in the spruce the shrieks continued, the huge eyes still glowed. The hunters hesitated, listened, looked at the flame-visioned monster on the point and then back to the man before them.

As they looked at Donald he grinned. Then he laughed. In the full glare of the red light he threw back his head and laughed—not a laugh of merriment, not of delight, but of ridicule, a biting, sneering, derisive outburst.

When he had laughed he turned and went out. He did not speak. He did not give the hunters a chance to speak. He left them with only the echo of that contemptuous laugh.

The windigo continued to scream out there in the spruce, the two eyes still glowed, but none of the hunters heard or looked. Each was a victim of Donald's clear understanding of the Ojibwa's mind and character. He had not given them an opportunity to cross-question or talk. He had simply stood there and laughed, had stung them as nothing else can sting an Ojibwa, for he had subjected them to ridicule and contempt, had made a mockery of their fear.

He had been gone only a minute when another figure entered and walked into the firelight.

"Did you not see?" Nee-tah-wee-gan began. "Did you not hear? Did I not tell the truth?"

Jeers and laughter drowned her questions. The hunters, released from their terror, crowded about and jostled her, grinning, sneering, openly contemptuous. In a blind rage she turned upon them, striking and shrieking, but they paid no heed.

One had shouted: "The windigo! Let us go and eat the windigo!" The cry was taken up and in a moment the hunters, laughing and talking, were crowding through the door. Once in the open they spread out, each running toward the spruce-covered point and the two glowing eyes, and in a few moments they had reached it and swept through.

Skilled hunters all, they quickly searched the narrow strip of forest and emerged on the other side, near the Keewatin post.

"It was dark and we missed him!" someone shouted. "We will look again." Back they went, more slowly, and when they had returned to the Hudson's Bay side they saw a dark shadow fleeing across the snow-covered clearing.

Silently and running swiftly, they started in pursuit. Their quarry ran straight toward the Indian house and the leading hunters were close enough to see it dash past, around the trade shop and on toward the dwelling house. On they went and the fastest were near enough, when the door was jerked open, to see Millington in the light as he sprang inside.

The hunters went back to the Indian house, where several who had searched more diligently in the spruce were just arriving. One carried a box that had two round openings on one side and a lantern within and another had a horn.

"The windigo!" one cried. "Who wants to eat the windigo?"

The roar of laughter which greeted this was quickly stilled. One of the older men had walked into the light before the open stove and held up his hands.

"Fools!" he shouted. "You laugh because of what you have found, but do you not see what it means? Do you not understand that you have been made like children? Who carried that thing into the forest? Who frightened you with so silly a toy? Who made you believe that Donald Norton was a windigo, Donald Norton whom we have all known and whom we can all trust, who has always spoken the truth and who is our friend?"

He paused for a moment and looked around at the suddenly silent and abashed Indians. He saw that his questions had swayed them and with the Ojibwa's love of words and their effect he launched into his discourse again, his mind inflamed by the power he knew he was exerting.

"Why was this thing done to you?" he demanded. "Why were you men who toil so hard to kill animals and take their pelts, you men who suffer and starve and are frozen through the long dark winters, why were you told that Donald Norton, our friend, is a windigo? It was to rob you of the fur for which you have worked so hard, to make you bring it to a liar, that he might pay what he pleases.

"And who was that man? Who would gain if you believed Donald Norton is a windigo? Who is it that we have always known is full of tricks and deceit? Who has made of you a joke and the object of laughter in all the wigwams for many winters to come?"

"Millington!" one of the hunters growled angrily. "I saw him when he ran into his house after I had chased him all the way from the forest."

"Millington!" cried another. "He carried this box into the spruce and tried to frighten us because we did not sell our fur as did Esh-quan-dam."

In a moment the Indian house was in an uproar and it was with difficulty that the first speaker was able to make himself heard. When order was restored he said:

"Now we know who is our friend and who would do us harm, know who it is that wishes to frighten us with this story of a windigo and then rob us of our winter's hunt. Are we going to let such a one go unpunished?"

Immediately Esh-quan-dam, the hunter who had sold his fur to Millington, was on his feet. "No!" he shouted. "I listened to this tale of a windigo and I was frightened. I had worked hard since the fall and had brought in many skins with which to buy things for my family. Now with the price he has given me we cannot live until spring. I shall have to leave my traps and hunt meat. This is how he cheated me because he knew I was frightened. Come! Let us leave the house of this robber and go to the house of one who is our friend. There we can talk of what we must do."

His fellow Indians began immediately to act upon his suggestion, loading their toboggans with pelts and equipment and streaming across the clearing, through the spruce and on to the Keewatin post.

Philip Collinge saw the dark line against the snow and met them at the Keewatin Indian house. A fire was burning and he had provided rations for all. But he did not ask questions or speak of what had happened nor did Donald appear. When all the Indians were inside he went back to the dwelling house.

"It jolly well worked!" he cried when he entered the living room. "They're back here to a man, all those who got 'debt' from the Hudson's Bay as well as our own Indians.

"Every man of them has brought his fur. They're too mad to talk or else they feel ashamed. Anyway, I cleared out. They acted as though they were going to hold a pow-wow and I thought their resolutions of censure might be more drastic if I didn't appear to be interested."

Donald did not comment. There was no elation in his manner and his eyes were dull and listless as he stared straight before him.

"Look here, old chap!" Philip exclaimed. "Pull yourself together. You've crawled out of the tightest hole I ever saw a man in. Give us a grin."

"Oh, I got out of that," Donald answered bitterly. "Luck and a pretty good knowledge of the fur game did it. I knew, of course, that Millington and Nee-tah-wee-gan had started the story between them and I guessed Millington might resurrect that old trick to make the story good. He overreached himself there, gave me the one chance, and it was easy to slip into the Indian house and laugh at those hunters while the fake windigo was howling out in the spruce.

"But," and he straightened in his chair and faced Philip, "don't you see where I stand? Don't you see what I'm up against all the time? I thought I could act like a white man, think like one, feel like one, and that I could be one. But no one will let me. No one will forget. No one will give me credit for anything except my parentage.

"So what's the use of going on? Why pretend? Why slave for something I can never have? I have failed to make the white people accept me. Now I have failed with the Indians themselves. They would have laughed at a report that you had turned windigo. They know a white man can't become one. But me! They believed it instantly. Sixteen years of effort to make myself white has made no impression on them."

"Here!" Philip commanded sternly. "Stop that! You have won. You've practically ruined the Hudson's Bay here at Fort James. Millington is done for. When Corrigal hears of it he'll kick him out. And Corrigal himself is done for. There'll be no stopping you from now on."

"There'll be no stopping my getting a little fur," Donald agreed harshly, "but what good will that do me if I have to go through life with everyone pointing his finger at me, everyone saying, 'He's an Indian,' when I turn my back?"

Donald sank back into his chair.

"Oh, I'm through," he said in a flat, empty voice. "There's nothing left for me but to go back to a wigwam. I'd rather be an out-and-out Indian than keep on trying to fool myself, working for something I can never have."

The agony in that voice and attitude held Philip dumb. He wanted to cry out in passionate protest. His affection mounted to new heights and demanded that he save his friend and yet he felt he could do nothing, that blow after blow had driven Donald back and down until only the wigwam remained.

He saw in that moment the turning point in the younger man's life. His fasting dream, his ceaseless efforts, his beliefs and ambition, all had come to nothing. In the crucial battle his parentage had won. It had forbidden him love, had driven him out of the Hudson's Bay, had denied him any close contact with his fellows. Now, in the reaction of the Indians, it had placed him irrevocably beyond the last hope.

Thus, in the lowest depths of despair, when he most needed help, Donald must depend upon himself alone. He must save himself or the courage and the youth through which Philip had lived again must die forever. Whether he would fight his way out, whether he would find something to take the place of his fasting dream, of the belief that he was white and the desire to prove it, could rest with no one else.

Philip would have sacrificed anything for his friend and yet he knew he could not talk away that insuperable wall, the barrier which had disclosed itself in the past but which now rose so high and so forbidding before Donald's eyes.

"Don't you see?" Donald cried in a final outburst of bitterness, "Millington couldn't beat me. Corrigal, the biggest of them all, couldn't do it. But Nee-tah-wee-gan, my own mother, she did. She waited thirty years for her chance and then she struck."

Philip turned away, sickened by this sight of a soul crushed by the ruthless power of inevitable fate. Then the door was flung open and one of the half-breed employes burst into the room.

"The hunters go back to the Bay!" he shouted.

"Back to the Bay!" Philip repeated in amazement.

"Yes. They talk, then they take their guns and go."

"What's this?" Donald cried as he sprang from his chair.

"Those Indians they take their guns and they say they going to burn down the Hudson's Bay. They say Millington he a bad man. He cheat them and they don't want him here any more. They going to show him what they think and burn down his place."

Donald started toward the door but Philip leaped in front and turned his back upon it.

"Where are you going?" he demanded.

"To stop that! Of course!"

"Are you mad? Millington brought this upon himself. He deserves anything they may do."

"But they'll do it."

"So much the better. That's the Hudson's Bay business, not yours."

Donald stared at Philip for a moment. His eyes were no longer dull.

"They can't do it!" he cried. "They must not burn Fort James!"

"They can if they want to. And it will be the making of you and the Keewatin Company."

"But to burn Fort James! Why, Phil, that was my post once. I've never forgotten the day old Duncan Mactavish told me——"

"Yes," Philip interrupted fiercely, "and have you forgotten how you left it, what Corrigal did to you, what they all did?"

Donald did not answer. His eyes were still glowing and he stood there, tense, alert, eager.

"The score's wiped clean," Philip rushed on. "You don't owe the Hudson's Bay anything."

"Perhaps not," and the passion was gone from Donald's voice. "No one ever owes the Hudson's Bay anything. It always demands, always takes. You never worked for it, Phil. You don't know. You never knew old Duncan Mactavish. You haven't any idea what it means to be a servant of the great company, to know that——"

He faltered, overcome by a complete realization of what the Hudson's Bay really had meant to him for so long, of what it could still mean when everything else had failed.

"Don't be a fool," Philip protested as he spread his arms across the door.

But Donald was gone. He had turned and run out through the kitchen.

CHAPTER XXII

THE REAL MAN WINS

When Millington gained the shelter of the dwelling house after his disastrous attempt to play windigo he dropped into a chair, spent physically after his run through the snow and in a panic because of the sudden collapse of his plans.

It was not a question of momentary success, he knew, but of his whole career in fur land. Failure that night meant failure in everything. Donald and Philip had wrought such havoc at Fort James that Millington, trying desperately to regain his standing with Corrigal, had resorted to doctored monthly statements, fictitious entries and many minor tricks against the Indians themselves in the matter of "debt" and fur purchases, in an effort to make a good showing. He had counted on some turn of events to make it possible, with increased business, to balance his books before spring.

When his losses had continued and Corrigal began to spend much time going over the reports and books, Millington knew the situation was desperate and he planned the windigo story. The trick was not new. It had been employed elsewhere with success and with Nee-tah-wee-gan as a confederate he did not see how he could fail.

But he had failed, so suddenly and so unaccountably that he was stunned. And there had been something menacing in the swift pursuit of the hunters. He was not certain whether they had recognized him. If they had! He sprang to his feet in terror, for he knew how their superstitious fears would be converted to blind, savage fury.

He hurried to the kitchen and sent the cook for one of the half-breed employes. When the man came he was instructed to keep a careful watch from behind a warehouse and report at once if anything happened.

When the man had gone Millington returned to his chair beside the stove. He found himself listening for any sound. He tried to concentrate on some plan that would pacify the Indians, perhaps turn the fiasco into victory.

A step on the verandah startled him and he sprang to his feet. It was the soft pad of a moccasin and he believed the hunters were coming. The door was opened, someone was in the hall. Not a man at the post ever dared enter the dwelling house thus. Then the hall door was thrown back and Corrigal entered the living room.

"Why—why, I thought you were at Whitefish Lake," Millington stammered.

So great were his astonishment and sudden fear he could not hide them. Corrigal eyed him for a moment and then said:

"I changed my mind. What's happening here?"

"Happening? Nothing. That is, nothing unusual."

"Many hunters in for New Year's?"

"Not a great many. I gave a big feast this noon."

"But what is Norton doing?"

"That is what I would like to know. So far as I can learn he hasn't done a thing, which makes me sure he is busy. In fact, from one or two things that happened late this afternoon, I think he's ready to pull off a coup of some sort but I can't get an inkling as to what it is."

Millington appeared more at ease but only at great effort. Corrigal was staring at him with that disturbing, vacant expression of a man giving only a small part of his attention to what he sees or hears. Corrigal's attitude was hypnotizing in its effect on Millington and neither man was conscious that some one had entered the room until they heard a low inhalation of breath and glanced up to see Nee-tah-wee-gan in the dining room doorway.

She was glaring at Millington and did not seem to be aware of Corrigal's presence.

"You fool!" she cried in Ojibwa. "You have ruined everything—your plan and mine."

"Get out of here!" Millington shouted angrily. "I told you to keep away. I can't be bothered with you."

It was a bluff pure and simple, a disowning of any collusion, but Corrigal did not seem to have heard.

"What's this?" he demanded. "What plans have been ruined? What is she doing here? What does this mean, Millington?"

His voice aroused Nee-tah-wee-gan to fury. She turned upon the district manager, choking and sputtering, but before the words could come a half-breed burst in at the front door.

"Those Indians, they coming back!" he cried. "All of them. They coming from the Keewatin post and they bring their guns."

"What's happened here, Millington?" Corrigal demanded. "You can't fool me any longer. What is it?"

For a moment the post manager did not answer. Panic induced by the fact that disaster was close at hand kept him from thinking clearly.

"There is nothing——" he began, only to be cut short by a shrill yell outside.

Corrigal ran out through the door and in the starlight he saw a dark mass coming around the corner of the trade shop. Yells and whoops broke the stillness of the winter night and, fur land veteran though he was, they brought fear to the district manager.

The cause he had not been able to learn but that mob of at least fifty hunters, that concerted movement of men bred through centuries to individual action, meant only that the savage nature of the Indians had been aroused. And, once aroused, he knew it could end only in destruction.

Though understanding perfectly well what he faced, for when the blind rage of an Ojibwa is unleashed it means that the repressed savagery of many generations holds sway, Corrigal ran forward, unarmed and single-handed, to meet the Indians. It was not alone personal courage, for in an instant he had grasped the situation. Disaster not only for himself but for the great company to which he had devoted his life was imminent.

"What does this mean?" he shouted in Ojibwa as he reached the gate in the picket fence that surrounded the dwelling house. "I am the 'big trader.'"

The Indians crowded up to the fence and recognized him. The word was passed back that it was Corrigal but there was no lessening of their savage determination.

"It makes no difference who you are!" one of them shouted. "Millington has lied to us. He has cheated us and tried to make fools of us so that he could cheat us more."

There were cries of encouragement and the crowd moved closer. Corrigal, still blocking the way, was thinking rapidly. He had been given no facts to explain the attack but he believed he understood. There was only one man in all the north country who had sufficient influence and knowledge of the Indian character to arouse them to such action.

"You are like children!" he shouted, trying to overawe them with his anger. "The great company has never tried to cheat or lied to its hunters. But because Donald Norton, who hates the Hudson's Bay and is trying to make you hate it, has told you so, you have believed him. It is he who has lied and has tried to trick you."

"Donald Norton has not spoken to us," an Indian answered, "and a man cannot lie without words. He has always been our friend but this other, this man you have sent to buy our fur, he is a liar and a cheat and he must suffer."

There was no need now for Corrigal to simulate anger. He knew Millington had blundered in some way, probably had played into his adversary's hands, and he believed Donald had taken advantage of the credulity of the Indians, working upon the racial hatred that lay just beneath the surface friendship and unleashing a whirlwind of violence.

In that moment Corrigal looked upon Donald as a renegade, as a man neither of one race nor the other. He saw him as one who, failing to gain a place with the white people, had gone to the red, not to become one of them but to employ untutored minds and savage natures in avenging the hurt to his own vanity, to destroy the peace which a mere handful of men had brought to four thousand miles of wilderness. The thought drove Corrigal to fresh anger.

"Get out!" he shouted, shaking his fists in the faces of the hunters. "Go back to the Indian house where you belong. In the morning I will hear your troubles. Do you want me to bring the police and have them take you all away? Go back and think of what the great company has always done for you and in the morning I may forget the foolishness this man has——"

An angry roar drowned his words as the Indians pressed forward.

"Burn the liar's house!" one of them cried. "Drive him out! Let him starve!"

Frantically now, Corrigal strove to still the roar of the mob but he could barely hear his own voice. And then with a rush the hunters swept through the gate, shoved him to one side and surged on toward the dwelling house.

"Fire! Fire!" they shouted. "Burn out the dog! Burn all his houses!"

Corrigal ran around the mob but before he could pass it he saw a dark figure dash across to the verandah. He believed it was an Indian swifter than the others and then he saw the man throw open the door and turn so that the light from the living room revealed him to the on-rushing horde. It was Donald Norton.

Maddened and bent on destruction though the Indians were, they stopped when they recognized him. The yelling ceased but they crowded close to the verandah railing and as the light shone on their dark, savage faces Corrigal saw that their lust for vengeance was as strong as ever.

He started forward but when Donald saw someone approaching along the wall he whirled fiercely.

"Go back there!" he commanded. "Stand outside with the others. How dare you place an angry foot within the home of 'that to which we owe thanks'?"

Corrigal hesitated. He was confident the Keewatin man was at the bottom of the uprising, that he had started something which, like a brush fire, had been whipped into undreamed of peril, but a quality in Donald's voice and his use of the Ojibwa name for the Hudson's Bay made him pause. Moreover, he was certain Donald did not recognize him.

"Go back," Donald repeated when the figure did not move from the wall. "Get out there with the others while I talk to you."

Without a word Corrigal slipped back to the outskirts of the group. Whatever Donald may have done in inciting the Indians against the company, the district manager understood that he meant to check it. And Corrigal knew that Donald alone could do it.

The free trader still confronted the Indians. Slowly and calmly he surveyed the angry faces in the dim light from the open door and then just as the leaders were about to break forth he began to speak.

"Each of you has caught a lynx in a trap," he said. "You know how the big cat spits and claws and tries to bite. And yet none of you ever became angry when the lynx did that. You knew that the lynx faced the end, that it was to die, that it could no longer roam the forest and gorge on rabbits.

"You killed the lynx, not because you were angry but because you wanted its fur so that you could bring it to the trader and get blankets and tea and powder, so that you would not starve and freeze.

"As the lynx fights to keep its life and as you hunt to keep yourselves and your families from starving, so Millington buys your fur. It is all the same, although each does it in a different way. When Millington found that you were bringing your fur to me and not to him he saw how he would starve. He was like the lynx when it is caught in a trap. He was like you when you are starving and want meat. He tried in the only way he could to make you bring your fur to him. He was starving, starving for fur, and he tried to make you think——"

"But he cheated us!" a hunter cried. "He lied!"

"He tried to make fools of us!" another shouted.

"Stop!" Donald commanded. "Have you forgotten the ways of the council? Have you grown so unfair you will not let one of your own people say what is in his heart? Wait! I have not finished."

Again he surveyed the angry faces.

"I am one of you," he began again. "Nee-tah-wee-gan is my mother. For half my life I lived in a wigwam. I was a hunter. Now I work for the white man, buy fur for him, but he calls me an Indian and you know that I am of your people.

"It is because I am one of you and because I have worked so long for the white man that I understand some things better than you do. You came here to-night to burn down these houses because you believed Millington had tricked you and you thought that in doing so you would revenge yourselves on him. You thought they were his houses and that his goods were in them.

"But you are wrong. Millington is only a servant. He owns nothing here. The houses and all that is in them belong not to him but to the Hudson's Bay, to 'that to which we owe thanks.' If you burn them it will not be Millington who suffers but the great company.

"I know Millington tricked you. He tried to fool you because his foot was in a trap. He told you I was a windigo, or he had a poor old woman, my mother, whose mind is filled only with hate, tell you so. And you believed and would still believe if he had not been so clumsy with his trick.

"I know, too, that because he thought you were frightened he offered you little for your fur, knowing that you would wish to return quickly to your hunting grounds.

"But Millington is not the Hudson's Bay. He is only one small, lying white man working for the great company. And you know and your fathers knew, and their fathers before them, that the men of the Hudson's Bay are your friends, that they do not trick and cheat you.

"The older of you remember Corrigal, the 'big trader,' when he was here thirty years ago and you know he would never trick or cheat you. When he learns what Millington has done he will kick him out and give you an honest trader in his place.

"There is another thing. The Hudson's Bay Company has filled these buildings with goods for your comfort, with things that will keep you from starving. It has not only goods for one year but, for fear the ship would be wrecked and you, its people, would suffer, it has always a year's supply stored in the post.

"Always the great company does these things for you. Always it watches and works that its people need not suffer. It never sleeps for fear something will happen to you.

"And you! What do you do? When the company makes one small mistake, when it places a liar and a thief here, you become as children and strike, not at the one who injured you, but at 'that to which we owe thanks.' Are you men or are you infants?"

Donald talked on for half an hour. Several times the hunters interrupted angrily but always he silenced them. Single-handed, without force or any threats of force, he stood there facing fifty Indians swayed by murderous fury.

Corrigal, listening and watching from the outskirts of the group, marveled at the skillful manner in which Norton was gaining control over the feverish minds of the savages. He had seen many white men try to talk to Indians but here was a born leader, a man with a complete understanding of the Ojibwa heart and mind.

With infinite patience and amazing skill, with a finesse that was beautiful and sure, Donald gradually turned the ferocity of the Indians to quiet channels. He never let them talk, never let them arouse themselves or each other, and in the end he led them away, laughing over a story he had told.

Corrigal stood aside as they passed. He knew the danger was over, that the miracle of this man's cleverness had averted a catastrophe, but he was not thinking of these things.

From Donald's speech he had learned the origin of the revolt and he had seen, too, how easily the free trader could have remained at home and allowed the Indians to carry out the destruction their rage demanded.

Donald's impassioned description of the great company and the place it held with them had been adroit but Corrigal had caught something more than adroitness. Incomprehensible as it seemed, incredible as he would have pronounced it an hour before, the Hudson's Bay man knew Donald's oratory had sprung from his heart and not from his head, that in pleading for the company Donald had not been actuated by policy or by fear but by a devotion to and by a love for the very thing he was fighting.

It was something that touched the grim nature of the district manager as nothing had for thirty years. He saw that here was another who loved the Hudson's Bay as he did, that here was allegiance greater than his own, for it persisted even after all hope was dead. And, more than that, in the awe and passion of the moment Corrigal felt a certain inexplicable kinship for this other lonely, hopeless soul. Unconsciously he started forward and he ran on until he had reached the head of the procession of Indians, where Donald walked.

"Oh, Norton!" he called.

Donald stopped in surprise and when the district manager drew him to one side he asked, "Where did you come from? I didn't know you were at Fort James."

"I just got here, when these hunters arrived. But will you come back later? I—I want to talk to you."

Donald hesitated. There was a note in Corrigal's voice he had never heard before.

"All right," he said at last. "I'll take these men over and quiet them down for the night. But I want Millington to be there."

"Yes. We'll be in the dwelling house."

When Donald returned he found the two Hudson's Bay men in the living room. Corrigal arose and placed a chair for him.

"Norton," he said, "Millington denies some of the things you said to the hunters out there. He charges you with having stirred them up against him."

"Is that what you got me over here for?" Donald demanded angrily.

"No. I believe you. A man does not talk as you did unless he speaks the truth. But why did you want Millington here when you came?"

"I wanted you to know the facts in this affair and I felt certain he would lie to you."

"Then there is no need for his remaining here. Millington, I want to talk to Norton alone."

"If you won't take my word against that of a half——" Millington began furiously, but Donald had sprung to his feet and started forward.

"None of that!" Corrigal shouted as he sprang between.

He pushed Millington out into the hall and closed the door but when he turned back he did not speak. For a full minute he paced back and forth. His hands were clenched behind him and his eyes were on the floor. Donald, watching him in amazement, sensed that the man was in the throes of a terrific struggle.

Then the pacing suddenly ceased and Corrigal stood in front of Donald.

"Norton," he said huskily, "you have been as fair and as clean and—and as white as any man I know. When the big test came you met it like any—like any other white man. I understand what has happened here and I think I understand why you came over here and saved this post. With perfect right you could have remained at home and let the Indians do as they pleased."

Donald, dumfounded by what he heard, did not speak but Corrigal seemed oblivious of his silence and again paced back and forth.

"There are some things I want to tell you," he said at last. "First of all, I want you back in the Hudson's Bay. I don't mean that you should just come back and take a post and go on as before. I want to do more than that. I want to right the wrong I have done. I want you to know that I——"

He broke off and turned to Donald.

"But first of all there is something else that you must understand, that you must believe. It is absolutely untrue what Nee-tah-wee-gan has charged. I am not your father but—I had a boy once. He died right where this house stands. He would have been thirty years old now. Before he came I dreamed of what he might be—a servant of the company.

"For thirty years I have been unable to forget him. He has been with me all that time, in my mind, growing, working, developing. But only in my mind until to-night—out there on the verandah. When I heard you talk to those Indians, when I saw you win out single-handed, when I knew how you felt, what was in your heart, you were to me at that moment as I have wished my boy might have become.

"I could not say more than that to any man but I say it that you may know I was wrong, unjust. I want to make that up to you. I want—don't you see? I am not your father but—but I wish I were."

Tears were in Donald's eyes. Once before, in that same room, he had been given a glimpse of this man's soul. During the winter he had caught flashes of him, had begun to sense that Corrigal not only struggled under a terrific handicap but that there was something big and fair in him.

But now, with the background of long years of yearning, of the hardening, blighting effects of a desperate effort to forget, he saw the man as he really was. And because his own fate was as hopeless, because he felt the kinship of emptiness, he struggled to express himself. Yet he could only hold out his hand and grip Corrigal's with fierce passion.

"You will come back?" the district manager asked.

Donald's heart leaped. He saw in this man's offer the one way out for himself, an escape from that crushing despondency which had seized him when he heard the windigo story. He had believed everything was gone, that he had been driven back to a wigwam, but here was the Hudson's Bay, holding out its hand.

"Yes," he said, "I want—but—but I can't do it this winter. You see——"

Corrigal threw an arm across the other's shoulders.

"I understand that," he hastened to say. "There's a promise, of course, a contract. But next year?"

"Yes, next year. I want to. The Hudson's Bay—well, I never knew anything else, never expected to. It wasn't until after I left it that I knew what it meant to me, what it——"

"I understand that, boy," Corrigal interrupted quickly when he saw Donald struggling with his emotions. "I know why you saved this post to-night. The Hudson's Bay is home, religion, family—everything—to a man who knows it and——"

Donald's face had become gray with pain and Corrigal stopped in amazement.

"And has nothing else in the world, or hope for anything else," the young man finished for him in an unsteady voice.

He turned and walked out of the room and Corrigal, because he understood and was thinking of Janet Layard, was silent as he went.

CHAPTER XXIII

NEE-TAH-WEE-GAN'S PROOF

When Corrigal pushed Millington into the hall and closed the door the Fort James manager realized that his career with the Hudson's Bay was at an end. Yet even in that moment of defeat his mind began searching for something that might again place the advantage in his hands. He stormed across the hall, opened the door of his bedroom and slammed it shut. Then, walking softly, he went back to the door Corrigal had just closed.

The silence mystified him. There was no sound of voices in the living room and he could not hear the district manager's moccasin-clad feet as he paced back and forth.

At last Corrigal began to speak. Straining breathlessly, Millington listened to his surrender, to the confession of his mistake and to the agony of a strong man's heart as he told of his infant son and what he had hoped for him.

Yet Millington only grinned. Out of that halting, fervid declaration, "I am not your father but—but I wish I were," there had come to him an idea. He waited a few minutes, listening, and then slipped down the hall to the kitchen and out into the winter night.

Millington had had a two-fold purpose in getting Nee-tah-wee-gan to aid him in the windigo plan. He had heard early in the winter that she was living in the bush a hundred miles west of Fort James and when Donald pressed him hard and he had resorted to false entries to mislead Corrigal he had sent for her.

But while he saw how she could lend truth to the report that Donald had become a windigo, his real purpose had been to discover, if possible, what proof she had of the story she had told him two years before. He had tried to get it then, to destroy it, and his persistence had driven Nee-tah-wee-gan away. Now he wanted it more than ever, for with it in his possession he believed he could make a trade with Corrigal.

Once outside he hurried past the warehouse to the old cabin in which Nee-tah-wee-gan lived. He found her squatting on the floor beside a little stove.

"We were both fools," he began. "We may as well leave. We can never win now."

"Why?" she demanded in quick alarm.

"You have always wanted to see Norton driven out of the service, crushed by his own father?"

"Yes! Yes! And when that time comes I——"

"It will never come," he interrupted harshly. "They are holding a love feast over in the dwelling house. The 'big trader' said he is not Norton's father and Norton believed him."

"It is a lie!" Nee-tah-wee-gan shrieked. "He is Wen-dah-ban's father! I have the proof!"

"You couldn't prove anything to them now. Corrigal has asked Norton to come back to the Hudson's Bay and Norton will do it. He is stronger than ever before and he and his father are good friends."

The effect of his statement was exactly as he had expected. Nee-tah-wee-gan was stunned. All the life seemed to have gone out of her. The eyes that had always blazed were dull. Her thin, bent body appeared to wither and sink into a ridiculously small heap on the floor.

"Your thirty years of hate have all gone for nothing," he taunted.

Instantly she was aroused to such a fury as Millington had never seen before. He shrank before its white-hot malignancy as if she were some terrible monster. He even forgot why he had come, what he had wished to learn.

"Fool!" she cried. "Do you think I cannot still win, that I cannot make them both suffer until they die?"

"You can't," he declared. "They're friends now, the best of friends, and in a few years Norton himself will be the 'big trader.'"

"Yes, but Wen-dah-ban will always think he is an Indian and everyone else will always think so. He can never marry the white girl at Fort Bruce. People will always point their fingers at him when he turns his back and say, 'He is an Indian.'"

"Don't deceive yourself. Norton may as well be all white now for all you can do to him. Corrigal is his friend and Corrigal is the 'big chief.' No, you and I are beaten, Nee-tah-wee-gan."

The old woman did not speak for a moment and then she looked up cunningly.

"And you say Wen-dah-ban will marry the white girl at Fort Bruce?"

Millington saw she was trying to bait him.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"That is not the way of a brave man. You say Wen-dah-ban cannot be driven back to a wigwam. Are you going to let him live to win the white girl and become the 'big trader'?"

Millington knew her suggestion was pure folly. Even if he had the courage he saw that he could never accomplish it and escape. The whole north would be at his heels in an instant. But in her words he saw the way to the thing he must have.

"Perhaps it could be done," he said thoughtfully as he stared at the floor.

"The trails are silent and Wen-dah-ban walks alone. I am a poor old woman, weak from many years, but you are young and strong and hate Wen-dah-ban as I hate him."

"You want me to kill him?"

"To want is one thing and to do is another. Will you, or are you afraid?"

Millington looked down into her evil old eyes. He knew she was seeking to make a bargain.

"I am not afraid," he declared, "not if it wins me what I am seeking. I want to make the 'big trader' suffer."

"You hate John Corrigal?" and there was a savage exultation in her voice. "Then do as I am asking."

"But I am not a fool. What if I did kill Norton, to-night? If he is not Corrigal's son, if you cannot prove your story to the 'big trader,' then I have accomplished nothing."

"The story is true."

"Bah! Your hate has made you believe it."

"Long hating has made me wise. I saw the way when you thought we were beaten. When you have killed Wen-dah-ban, when he is dead and there is no hope, I will go to John Corrigal and tell him—tell him it is his own son he has lost. Then he will suffer. It is for that I have waited."

"You think Corrigal will believe?" he sneered.

"But you believe."

"No. It is a silly story. I'm through with it."

He turned as if disgusted and put his hand on the latch.

"But if I prove it to you," Nee-tah-wee-gan cried, and there was despair in her voice.

"You have no proof!" he retorted.

"Look, white man."

He saw her fumbling at her throat, reaching for something in her waist. She found it but did not withdraw her hand, and she looked up searchingly.

"You will kill Wen-dah-ban?"

"If I know your story is true."

She opened her hand and disclosed a small leather bag suspended by a thong around her neck. Her claw-like fingers tore it open and pulled out a tiny gold ring.

"That was on Wen-dah-ban's finger," she said. "It has the white woman's name inside. It was hers when she was a baby. I took it off Wen-dah-ban's finger and ever since it has been in this bag. I have only to show it to Corrigal and he will know I speak the truth."

Millington leaned forward as she held up the circlet of gold. He knew it was proof, an indisputable bit of evidence. With it in his possession he could save himself from Corrigal's wrath, could make terms that would insure his retention in the Hudson's Bay service.

Slowly he leaned farther forward, staring at the ring, and when he believed he was close enough his right hand shot out and closed over Nee-tah-wee-gan's.

Instantly she became a raging fury. A shrill scream burst from her lips and she fought to keep the ring. Millington, straining to wrench it from her, struck her in the face. Nee-tah-wee-gan's grip did not loosen and as he used both hands to seize the prize she struggled to her knees. The next moment her teeth bit into the flesh of his right hand until they met.

Millington jerked free with an oath and as he sprang back the woman got to her feet and retreated to a table. He saw her reaching toward a shelf and then she charged with a long butcher knife. He opened the door and fled.

CHAPTER XXIV

NEE-TAH-WEE-GAN DIES

Donald had been gone half an hour when Millington returned to the dwelling house.

"Have a team ready to start for Fort Bruce early in the morning," Corrigal said as soon as he entered the living room.

"You mean I am no longer manager here?"

"Certainly. Those hunters would have burned the post and perhaps have killed you if it hadn't been for Norton."

"Yes," Millington retorted savagely, "and if it hadn't been for that one little slip I'd have finished Norton once and for all in this district."

"Only a fool would try such a trick on a man like him," Corrigal answered coldly. "You should have known you couldn't do it. He has enough influence over those hunters to make them walk on their hands the rest of the winter. But I don't want you here after daylight. While Norton has them calmed down now, they may change their minds."

"And when I get to Fort Bruce?"

Millington asked the question deliberately. He had been stung by Corrigal's contempt but most of all he wanted to make his trade, to sell Nee-tah-wee-gan's story for retention in the company's service, to save himself from disgrace.

"You can count on going right through to Winnipeg," Corrigal answered quickly. "I put up with your crookedness at Whitefish Lake because I thought it would be a lesson to you and that you would go straight. But I've been watching you closely this winter and I know how you've doctored your statements to make a showing. That's why I came back to-night. I was sure you would do something like this."

"I suppose you'll write a letter to the commissioner?" Millington insinuated.

Corrigal did not deign to answer and, squirming under the contempt of the district manager's glance, Millington rushed on.

"You do that to me and you'll regret it as long as you live!" he exclaimed savagely. "I've been talking to Nee-tah-wee-gan to-night. I've learned something, something I can prove, something that touches you and Norton. And if you send me out, if you blacken me before the commissioner——"

Corrigal leaped from his chair and across the room.

"Stop that!" he commanded in a tone so deadly Millington drew back. "You blackmailing cur! Do you think there is anything in that I don't know? I've let the north country ring with her story and have never denied it but I'll drive you out of the service if you try to use it."

"You're making a mistake," Millington sneered. "My information is something both you and Norton would like to have. And the proof is absolute."

"I've heard enough!" Corrigal cried furiously. "Neither you nor Nee-tah-wee-gan could prove anything to me, or to Norton either."

Millington knew he had to make terms then and there but as he strove to find an opening, some way of hinting at what he knew and yet of holding back its real import until he could exact a promise of immunity, Corrigal spoke again.

"And as for you, you've decided your fate with your threats. Out to Winnipeg you go and I'll write a letter that'll make the north country too hot to hold you."

"It's to your own good to listen," Millington whispered in a shaking voice. "You'll regret——"

Corrigal slapped him in the face with an open hand, slapped him again and again, sending his head rocking from side to side and straightening it when he ducked with a slap under the chin. There was something contemptuously deliberate in the way he did it, something so scornful of retaliation and so patently heedless of resistance it was more humiliating than the blows themselves. For a moment Millington staggered away against a wall and then he leaped clear and ran out of the room.

He did not stop until he had reached Nee-tah-wee-gan's cabin. His mind was inflamed with one thought, to obtain the single bit of evidence the old Indian woman had, to render her wild story valueless and ruin forever the one chance of happiness that lay open to Corrigal and Norton.

Donald he had always hated and since their fight at Fort Bruce he had sought constantly for some means of revenge. Now he hated Corrigal in the same way, for the district manager, with his humiliating open-handed blows, had exposed to Millington himself the raw sore of his physical cowardice—a wound that had never closed since the terrific beating he had received at Fort Bruce. In his blind rage he sought only to make impossible the one thing that would bring joy to these two.

When he peered through the small window of the cabin he saw Nee-tah-wee-gan crouched on the floor before the stove. The room was in darkness except for the thin streak of light that shone from the open draft.

The night was very cold. The post buildings, resting on solid clay, were groaning and cracking as the frost contracted their foundations. Waiting until a sharp sound would drown the lifting of the latch, Millington pushed the door open and leaped inside.

The rush of cold air aroused Nee-tah-wee-gan but not until Millington's hand had been thrust inside her waist and he had grasped the little leather bag that held the ring. He jerked sharply, breaking the worn thong around her neck, but before he could spring clear the old woman had thrown both arms around his legs.

He struggled, but her strength was amazing. She not only continued to hold his feet together but to pull herself upward, clasping him around the thighs, while with sharp, furious snaps of her jaws she drove her teeth into his legs.

Writhing with pain, beating her head with his fists, Millington tried desperately but in vain to free himself. Then he slipped the leather bag into a pocket and reached for her throat with both hands. As he choked her she became a raging fury, scratching at his face with her nails and clutching his clothing, while he tightened his hands in a death grip.

In a last frenzied effort he summoned all his strength and hurled her from him. He heard her body strike and then all was still. For a moment he stood there trying to restrain his heavy breathing, that he might catch any sound from his victim. When he failed to hear one, when there was no movement, the deathlike calm became an ominous thing. In sudden terror he turned and fled from the cabin without closing the door.

Long before dawn the next morning Millington was on his way to Fort Bruce. He did not see Corrigal again or anyone except the cook and his half-breed drivers. He rode in a cariole, while a second team carried robes and food, and all day he urged men and dogs to a killing pace.

It was after daylight that an Indian child, playing among the employes' cabins, looked through the open door of Nee-tah-wee-gan's home and saw her body in a corner. He ran to tell his mother and in a moment the post was in an uproar. But the employes, before they dared enter, went for Corrigal.

The district manager believed the woman was dead when first he saw her. Blood had dried below a cut on her forehead and she lay in a little heap on the floor beneath the sharp corner of a bunk. He had been told that the door was open and it did not seem possible that she could have lived through the cold night. But when he turned the body over he heard a slight moan and blood gushed from the woman's mouth. With each faint breath the thin red bubbles swelled and burst and he knew a rib had been broken and driven into a lung.

Corrigal had her carried to the warm cabin of one of the employes and then sent a messenger to Donald at the Keewatin post.

Nee-tah-wee-gan was still unconscious when the young man arrived. Corrigal met him beyond the trade shop and told what had happened.

"Millington did it," he concluded. "He was over there while we were talking and when he came back he tried to blackmail me with something Nee-tah-wee-gan had told him. He said it settled the question of your parentage and when he insinuated that I was implicated I cuffed his ears.

"He went out then and I saw him go down to the employes' cabins again. I went to bed before he came back and I did not see him before he left this morning. But he said something to me about proof and I think he returned and quarreled with her. I imagine he knocked her down and she lay there all night with the door open."

"There was something between them," Donald said. "They plotted together against me."

"And probably against me, too," Corrigal added. "But this is a plain case of murder and he must be caught. I'll have a team gotten ready and send out word at once."

"Never mind that," Donald said harshly. "I'll get him. After all, it's my job, no matter what sort of a mother she has been. Where is she?"

Corrigal led him to the door of the cabin and then turned away. Donald found that the Indian women were doing all they could. Nee-tah-wee-gan's hands and feet had been frozen and were being thawed out in cold water. Her waist was torn away, exposing a great bruise on one side and explaining, as Corrigal had surmised, the pink froth on her lips.

Donald stood at the head of the bed for a time. He did not believe she could survive the wounds, the frozen extremities and the exposure of the long winter night and as he looked down at the dark face, lined and twisted and stamped by a lifetime of hate, he wished that she would not recover consciousness, would not waken to the terrible agony that would be hers when the blood began to force its way into the thawed flesh.

All his life Donald had been mystified by the attitude of this woman toward him. Never had he been the object of the soft endearments and proud glances so universal in Indian homes. In his boyhood he had been tolerated. Later he had been persecuted and always his success had brought increased venom.

Yet he himself had seldom become bitter. He had looked upon Nee-tah-wee-gan as his one kin and when he had reached manhood and at last had faced the realities of his hybrid status in the world he realized that she must remain his only kin, the one person to whom he was tied or could hope to be tied.

Now when he saw that she was passing, that henceforth he must swing on through life's orbit, solitary and detached, his spirit cut off from intimate contact with any other spirit, he softened toward this woman who had never shown anything except enmity for him. He felt that she, too, had been lonely, isolated by her inexplicable hatred, and as never before he wondered what could have been at the bottom of it all, what injustice or ironical fate could have so perverted her.

Then the very thing he had dreaded occurred. The excruciating agony of thawing flesh pierced her dulled consciousness and its very intensity compelled recognition by a numbed brain. Her lips parted, pink froth gushed out and Nee-tah-wee-gan moaned and opened her eyes. For a moment she looked at the Indian women beside her and then with a convulsive movement of both hands she clutched at her breast.

"It is gone!" she cried in Ojibwa. "He took it! He took it! The only thing I had in the world!"

The harsh features of the ugly old face were grotesque in their unaccustomed expression of hopelessness and terror.

"Where is he?" she screamed. "Go bring him here! Make him give it back to me."

One of the Indian women explained that Millington had departed early in the morning and, repeating the gossip of a feverishly excited post, she added that he had gone out to Winnipeg, had left the north country forever.

"Forever!" Nee-tah-wee-gan repeated. "Did he see the 'big trader'? Did he talk to him after he had robbed me?"

"I heard the 'big trader' say he had not seen him," was the answer.

Despite her pain, Nee-tah-wee-gan lifted her head and glared at the woman beside her. The terror and the hopelessness were gone and there shone from her eyes a hatred so diabolical that the squaws drew back in alarm.

"Then Corrigal will never know!" she cried. "Some day I was going to tell him when——"

She had caught a glimpse of Donald standing at the head of the bed and as she stopped speaking her eyes blazed with a cruelty and a delight so malignant the young man was appalled.

"Keen nish-e-na-be!" she hissed. "Keen nish-e-na-be! Always you will be an Indian! Never can you be a white man! I told you when you fasted and dreamed. I have told you ever since but you would never listen to me. You did not listen until the parents of the white girl would not let you have her, until Corrigal threw you out of the great company, until even the Indians believed you were a windigo."

She sat up now but her face failed to indicate the agony she must have suffered. It was convulsed by passion, by a hatred so consuming her evil features were twisted into horrible, inhuman shape, while her eyes, unclouded by pain, blazed with a fury so terrible the Indian women retreated across the room.

Then she began to laugh. It was a fearsome thing, so cruel, so fiendishly exultant, so ruthlessly mocking, so expressive of the accumulated venom of a lifetime of hate, and through it sounded the high, shrill note of victory.

The last startled Donald. He recognized in it something new. Nee-tah-wee-gan had always been aggressive in her hate, often exultant, but now he sensed that in death she was triumphant, that even in her going she was able to crown her thirty years of persecution with achievement.

"Nee-tah-wee-gan!" he cried. "Think a moment! You are dying. I never harmed you. Why should you hate me so?"

She stared gloatingly, reveling in the sudden agony of spirit that had come to him.

"Keen nish-e-na-be!" she hissed. "Keen nish-e-na-be! Always you will be an Indian. There is no hope for anything else. Tell your father that. Tell Corrigal I said so. Ask him if he remembers me at Fort Bruce when I was young. Ask him if he regrets the promise he made but did not keep."

She choked and the blood flowed from her mouth but it did not drown the fiendish smile.

"I am going," she whispered as she sank back.

"Tell me!" Donald pleaded. "You must tell me!"

He was frantic in his despair. Corrigal had said the matter of his parentage was connected with Millington's actions.

"What is back of all this?" he cried. "What is there between Corrigal and me?"

There was another flash of that diabolical hatred mingled with the new, blazing light of triumph. The blood welled again to her lips as the venom to her eyes.

"Keen nish-e-na-be!"

And Nee-tah-wee-gan died.

CHAPTER XXV

HATE ENDURES TO DEATH

Bewildered by the inexplicable hatred Nee-tah-wee-gan had carried into eternity, Donald turned and went out of the cabin. He saw Corrigal and walked slowly toward him.

"She died," he said, "died hating me and hating you."

The Hudson's Bay man said nothing.

"All her life she has been that way," Donald continued. "The last thing she said was 'keen nish-e-na-be.' It is what she has said every time she has seen me since I left her wigwam."

"Did she tell you anything about Millington?" Corrigal asked. "Did she say that he was responsible for her death?"

"No, except that he had stolen something from her, a little leather bag she always carried around her neck. She didn't seem to hold anything against him but was glad he had gone. Her hate for you and me left room for nothing else."

"But Millington was responsible. There must have been a struggle if he stole that bag."

"There's no doubt of it."

Donald was aroused by his own words.

"I don't know what made her what she was," he said, "and now I'll never know. But even if she were not my mother I wouldn't let Millington get away with a thing like that. I'm going to catch him."

He turned and walked swiftly away on the trail to the Keewatin post.

Bitter and warping though life had been for him in the last two years, Donald had come through it without resorting to the natural safety valve of strong aversion, save in the case of Millington. In Corrigal, no matter what he had done, there had been an honesty of purpose which Donald had recognized long before the older man's capitulation. In Millington there had been only a selfish, crooked, small and cowardly nature, and Millington had been responsible for bringing about the crisis in Donald's life.

Now in the murder of Nee-tah-wee-gan the suppressed emotions found a vent. Hating him though she had to the end, the old Indian woman had been Donald's sole kin, as he thought. There was no filial devotion. For years he had given her little consideration but when she died he had experienced an unaccountable sense of loneliness, of swinging out into a void, of being a solitary soul wandering through space.

For the first time in his life he felt a savage, vindictive lust, something altogether different from the cool ferocity with which he had battled Millington at Fort Bruce. He believed it was a heritage from that strong, unlimited capacity for hate which had dominated Nee-tah-wee-gan but he did not care. Rather, he spurred it, just as it spurred him in his pursuit.

His team was comparatively fresh and in wonderful condition. His driver was a young half-breed with unbounded pride in his ability on the trail and yet both men and dogs felt the urge of this new quality that possessed their master. From noon until midnight they sped westward without stopping. They were away again long before dawn, racing through the sub-arctic night, giving their best and always being asked for more.

Yet from the story of the trail it was plain that Millington was fleeing at equal speed. The long distances between stops for tea and food told of his fear. The fact that he did not camp until he was sixty miles from Fort James was evidence that he expected pursuit.

After dark of the third day the eager dogs drew up at the Whitefish Lake post of the Hudson's Bay. They believed the end had come, though they were mystified that they should have been driven past the familiar Keewatin post, half a mile behind.

"Did Millington stop here?" Donald asked when Nicol MacKar came to the door of the dwelling house.

"Just long enough to get some dog food this noon. What's happened?"

"I want some dog food, too, a hundred and fifty pounds," Donald said. "And hurry, Nicol."

"You're not going on to-night, man!"

But Donald was running around to the fish house and by the time MacKar had put on his moccasins and followed he was gone.

Millington's eight hour lead had been reduced to five in 150 miles and Donald pushed on as hard as before. He was confident that in the 200 miles that lay between him and Fort Bruce he could cut that lead to victory.

But the next day it began to snow. On a big lake the trail was covered and they could not see the shore. Twice the lead dog, blinded by the stinging blast, lost the snowshoe path and precious time was lost in finding it again.

At last, six days out of Fort James, Donald reached Fort Bruce. His driver was limping from a strained tendon and his dogs were exhausted. Donald himself was in little better shape, but the blind rage that had driven him out onto the trail still possessed him. As at Whitefish Lake, he drove at once to the Hudson's Bay buildings.

The storm was still on and he was plastered with snow. When he burst into the trade shop he strode at once to the counter, for he had seen Merton Layard behind it.

"Where is Millington?" he demanded hoarsely.

The post manager stared in astonishment, but before he could reply a sudden, glad cry came from the other side of the room.

"Donald!"

He turned to see Janet rushing toward him, her arms outstretched.

"Donald!" she repeated. "You are safe. You——"

He had not expected to find Janet in the trade shop. She seldom visited it and as he saw her just a foot away, her eyes glowing with happiness, he could only stare helplessly. It had been part of his life's plan that he would never be so close to her again, never make it necessary for him to struggle as he had the previous summer in his office down the shore.

Now he found himself plunged again into the battle. Her loveliness, her nearness, the eyes that told more than words, all were enveloping him with a soft, smothering, numbing aura of herself. He felt as if he were drugged and though he fought to speak, even to move, he found himself helpless.

"We were so afraid!" she cried. "We knew something terrible had happened, and we knew you were out there somewhere."

Donald tore his eyes from her and looked at Merton.

"She means Millington," the father said. "He arrived two hours ago, got a fresh team and was off in fifteen minutes."

Merton's statement aroused Donald.

"Two hours," he repeated. "He had eight at Fort James."

"And you are after him!" Merton cried. "I thought so. At first he said he was taking out a message for Corrigal and then just as he was ready to leave I got suspicious. He seemed desperate. If the two men from the Mounted hadn't been away I would have had them hold him. As it was, I tried to do it but he jumped into the cariole and drove away. Later, when I told Janet, she——"

"I want a man and a fresh team," Donald interrupted. "Mine are done for."

"You are, too, boy. You can't go on like this, and in such a storm."

"I've got to. Get me a team quick. And your best man. I've got to catch him."

"But Donald!" Janet cried fearfully. "What has he done? He's dangerous. Father says he has a rifle in his cariole."

He risked a glance at her and then whirled back to Merton.

"Millington killed my mother," he said in a low voice.

Merton leaped over the counter and ran out the door. "I'll have a team here in ten minutes," he shouted back.

Donald started after him but Janet sprang to his side.

"You'll be careful!" she cried. "He's dangerous. I knew something terrible had happened. You will be careful?"

He had to steel himself against her and he was worn by the long days and nights on the trail.

"Why?" he demanded gruffly.

She shrank back as if he had struck her and instantly all the fight went out of him.

"Janet!" he groaned. "I didn't mean it! I had to do it to—to——"

He could not finish and suddenly he threw open the door and ran out into the storm.

That night he did not stop until he had caught up with Millington. And Millington, who had made camp, was waiting for him. The dogs warned him of Donald's approach and he slipped back parallel to the trail, with his rifle ready.

But Donald was riding and his fresh driver was running ahead of the dogs and drew the shot. Donald immediately rolled off the toboggan and crawled into the brush beside the trail. The half-breed, in accordance with Donald's previous instructions, dropped into the snow, the bullet having passed through the hood of his parka, and the dogs piled up beside him.

Donald lay perfectly quiet, hidden by the thick spruce saplings. Soon Millington came creeping forward, his rifle ready. For a time he waited within ten feet of Donald. There was no sound except the whining and snarling of the dogs and at last Millington started toward the trail. He heard Donald's rush but turned only in time to present his jaw to a crushing blow.

Before he recovered consciousness he had been dragged to his own camp site and Donald had explained to his driver the crime for which the fleeing manager was wanted and had enlisted his aid in taking him back to the Mounted Police at Fort Bruce.

When at last Millington opened his eyes and sat up on the boughs spread before the fire he found himself facing three silent men. He studied the half-breeds for a moment and understood that they were hostile and could not be counted on to help him escape.

Then he glanced furtively at Donald, who sat staring into the fire. His face, drawn and deeply lined by the week of terrific toil, was like that of some grim, avenging spirit, and Millington, still dazed by the blow and by his sudden capture, sank back in despair.

In silence the four ate their supper. When the dishes had been put away the prisoner turned to his captor.

"I'd like to talk to you alone," he whispered.

"You can't say anything I care to listen to," Donald answered.

"What are you going to do with me?"

"Take you back to Fort Bruce and turn you over to the Mounted."

Millington drew back in sudden fear.

"Then——?" he gasped.

"Yes," Donald said harshly. "She died before I left that morning."

"You can't prove anything!" Millington cried wildly.

"We can easily, even without the evidence you carried away with you—the thing you stole."

For a long time the prisoner did not speak again. He knew he faced the end, that once he was returned to Fort Bruce there would be no hope. He had failed once with Corrigal but with Donald it might be different, for Donald's need was greater. The only chance lay in buying his freedom now, and he was thankful he had not obeyed his first impulse to throw away the ring.

Yet he doubted whether he had the price. He believed that in the end Nee-tah-wee-gan had talked and that Donald knew the truth, but when he remembered the old woman's venom, the hatred that had been so intense and so dominant, he wondered if it had not persisted to the last.

Again, there had been Donald's reference to the thing he had stolen. Nee-tah-wee-gan must have told of that or he would not have known.

Millington saw that he did not know where he stood, that he did not know whether he had anything to offer, and he set himself to the task of finding out.

"Did your mother accuse me?" he asked.

"She said enough and it was easy to see what had happened."

"I had no intention——" Millington faltered. "I never dreamed that—why, I didn't even know she was hurt until you just told me she was dead."

A tightening of the lines in Donald's face was the only answer but Millington, past his first fright, was too intent upon his purpose to care.

"I didn't know you thought so much about your mother that you would chase me like this," he said deliberately.

Donald started up furiously.

"That will do!" he cried. "I'm having enough difficulty keeping my hands off you as it is. Even if she had not been my mother I would have been glad to chase you across Canada."

When he sank back into his place and stared at the fire Millington's eyes lighted with sudden joy and he waited a few minutes before he spoke again.

"Norton," he began so seriously that Donald glanced up in surprise, "the thing that you want most in the world is to be free of your Indian parentage, isn't it?"

Donald sprang from a sitting position. All the pent-up fury of the last two years was unleashed in his attack and he choked Millington until he was nearly unconscious before realizing what he was doing. Then as he drew away and stood above the cringing heap on the spruce boughs, knowing that he wished nothing better than to kill this man, he wondered why he did not.

Always he had been balked, always he had been cheated of the things he wished most, and expression of emotion always would be denied him. He looked ahead through the years to a dreary, endless succession of stifled desires and he wondered why he should go on, why he should not end it all in one great, soul-satisfying orgy of mad, delirious hate.

"I can't be white," he muttered. "I may as well be all red."

He stepped forward and kicked Millington.

"Get up!" he commanded. "I'm going to kill you now."

The man glanced up in terror. Standing there in the light of the big fire, his face distorted by suddenly released passion, Donald presented only one thing. All around stretched the vast, empty forest. Trees cracked in the cold. Far away the ice in a lake boomed and roared beneath the frost. Across the fire, as savage as the surroundings, sat the two half-breeds, their eyes bright with anticipation.

"Norton! Norton!" Millington cried. "For God's sake listen to me!"

He rolled over and crawled to Donald's feet.

"Nee-tah-wee-gan wasn't your mother. You're white, Norton. All white. Listen! You've got to listen. I'm the only one who knows."

CHAPTER XXVI

AT THE END OF THE TRAIL

When Donald reached Fort Bruce with Millington he placed him in charge of the Mounted Police, who had returned, and then went to the Keewatin headquarters down the shore. He did not go near the Layard home but Evelyn drove down as soon as she heard he had returned.

"Donald," she began at once, "this can't go on any longer. Janet is breaking her heart. I know I sent you away once. I have never forgiven myself but I want you to forgive me and I want you to forget your groundless fears."

He turned quickly away and stood at a window with his back to her. Even in those first days of disillusionment he had never held her action against her, recognizing in it the instinctive recoil of a mother from what she felt to be disaster, but now he saw the Evelyn he had always known.

"It is very wonderful of you to come here and say that," he said.

In that moment he was tempted to break forth with his momentous news. Every instinct save that of caution prompted it, though the last two years had destroyed his faith in many things.

That first night after Millington had told his story, Donald had thought only of hurrying back to Fort Bruce and Janet. He had started with that idea but as the miles slipped behind he began to see the possibilities of the situation.

At first he had believed, wholly and without suspicion, and then reflection showed how flimsy was the thread by which his whole future was suspended—Millington's second-hand story, a story as incredible as it was diabolical, and the little gold ring which he carried in his pocket.

In those first moments his mind had swept back through his life and had gathered many bits of circumstantial evidence that supported Nee-tah-wee-gan's actions and her confession. He remembered particularly the manner in which the Indian woman had received the account of his fasting dream, her abject fear when he had spoken of fire, how she had exhibited unmistakable signs of terror upon learning that he was to be the manager at Fort James.

But later when he had sifted all these facts, had built up the case as his heart wished it to be, he realized that it all hung on one thing, on one man's action. Whatever he, Donald, might hope or believe, the matter of his birth would never become an established fact until Corrigal had stamped it with the seal of his own faith. As soon as Donald grasped this he determined that he would not tell the story to anyone until he had talked with Corrigal. He wanted to go to Janet at once. He wondered if he could keep away from her while at Fort Bruce, and yet he saw the cruelty of such an action if Corrigal repudiated Millington's tale.

Even now, when Evelyn Layard had come to him with her double plea, he was tempted more strongly than ever to tell. He felt that he must, that something within him would burst if he did not relieve the pressure, but as he turned toward her he determined to adhere to his original plan.

"It was wonderful of you to come," he repeated. "I—I don't know what to say. I must go to Fort James immediately but I'm coming back this winter and when I do I will talk to you about it."

"But why wait?" Evelyn pleaded.

Again he faltered and then he saw that everything, all he had dreamed of, all that Janet wished, depended on one thing, on the reactions of one man. The need of settling it as quickly as possible became more overwhelmingly imperative than ever.

"Please don't ask," he begged. "There is a reason. I can't tell it now. I left in a hurry. Things are in a mess. I must get right back."

"But Donald! You're in no condition to travel. You're worn out."

"I'll get a chance to rest in the spring," he said with a smile.

Hope had flared again, irrepressible hope, youth's indomitable faith and desire, and Evelyn, seeing the evidences of it, was puzzled.

"Has Corrigal given in?" she demanded. "Will he take you back?"

"Yes," he admitted.

"And you will be with the Hudson's Bay again?"

"Next summer."

"Then why——?"

Evelyn did not finish the sentence. An inspiration had come, one born of the suppressed emotion evident in Donald's manner and of a woman's intuition.

"I don't understand," she faltered. "I only know you are wrong. But you will promise to come to me when you return to Fort Bruce?"

"Yes, I promise."

She went at once to the door and opened it.

"Good-by. I'll be waiting, Donald."

He heard the tinkle of sled bells as she was driven away to the Hudson's Bay but when he was alone he did not go to bed as he should have done, nor did he even sit down. Many hours before dawn the next morning he would be on the trail, eastward bound, facing three hundred and fifty miles of toil and cold and darkness, of aching muscles and frost-scorched lungs. He was in need of rest and yet something drove him to striding back and forth the length of his office.

His thoughts were at the end of that trail, in the living room of the Hudson's Bay at Fort James, in the presence of a cold, sorrow-hardened man, a man whose inner nature he had glimpsed on two occasions and to whose racked soul he must penetrate again.

So preoccupied was he the sound of sled bells did not impress themselves until the door was thrown open and Janet entered.

"Donald!" she cried. "Mother said you wished to see me, that you were worn out, unable to——"

He had successfully conquered the temptation to see her even when he had been swayed by Evelyn's pleading, and now the integrity and strength which had carried him through a similar meeting in that same room rose instinctively to wage the same old fight.

Yet words would not come. It was as if he faced an opponent with the gloves and could not raise his hands. He was helpless in her presence, aware only that she was there, that some power over which he had no control was driving him forward.

In a last desperate effort he tried to turn his eyes from that eager face, from all that he read in it. He saw that she had come with the confident expectation that he had abandoned his former stand. He knew she believed the end of their disheartening trail had been reached and he could not bear to tell her of the hazard still remaining.

Then the light in her eyes died. She drew back against the door, her hand searching behind her for the latch.

"I am sorry," she whispered. "I see it now. Mother thought—she did not know—understand. She believed——"

Her hand found the latch and she turned quickly.

"Janet!" Donald cried.

With a bound he was across the room and whirling her toward him. He lifted her chin and looked down into a face blank with despair.

"Janet! Janet!" he exclaimed. "Nothing matters. Nothing! Nothing! I've been a fool, a stubborn, selfish fool!"

His arms went around her but even before he had drawn her close he felt the quick, passionate straining of her body as she swayed against him. She lifted her face—a face so radiant he was dazzled—and as they clung together he knew that nothing could ever separate them, that whether white or smeared with red he had not the right to deny her even a brief happiness.

For an instant he was tempted to tell Millington's story but as he lifted her head and looked into her eyes, now glowing through tears, he understood that nothing could add to that moment, that nothing counted with Janet but he himself, that the question of his parentage weighed so little in her mind that the mere introduction of the subject would only mar her ecstasy.

Then there came to him a complete realization of how marvelous a thing the love of a woman could be. It had risen above race, had scorned the teachings of precedent and the counsel of wisdom. It had dared custom, defied opinion, braved all the future might hold.

"Janet," he whispered brokenly, "you are the most glorious being in the world. I didn't know it, but from that day you looked through the picket fence at me at Kenogami I have loved you. And I always will, always."

She drew away and looked at him.

"There never was a fence, dearest, except in your own mind. And no matter what comes, Donald, always think first that I love you."

"But you give me so much and I——"

"You give me all that I wish, and you always can. There are only three things in the world, you and I and our love for each other, and the three, dearest—don't you see? They are inseparable, and always will be, no matter what happens, for we have the power to make them so."

It was with that last sentence foremost in his thoughts that Donald started early the next morning for Fort James. Yet with each of those three hundred and fifty miles over which he sped its potency diminished. Away from Janet, alone in the wilderness with his half-breed driver, fighting for each foot and each second, the fatigue of his body brought a weariness and a trembling of the spirit.

In those dreary miles he saw things as they were, as he always had seen them, as they must irrevocably be unless——More and more he felt that the very strength and purity of Janet's love demanded a future untainted by the common tragedy of fur land; that somehow he must wring sanction from the man who had impressed all the north country with his hardness.

Yet when he reached Fort James another factor intruded itself. For the first time he saw clearly what he was about to do, understood that the man to whom he was going was his father and that he must tell him a story that could be only stunning and excruciating in its effect.

Corrigal himself came to the door when Donald drove up at the Hudson's Bay.

"Did you get him?" he demanded eagerly.

"Yes, the other side of Fort Bruce. I turned him over to the Mounted."

Corrigal led the way into the living room, asking questions rapidly as he did so.

"Wait," Donald protested. "I'll tell all that later. There's something else, something more important."

For five minutes Corrigal listened without interruption. Donald sought desperately not to color the story. He tried to repeat it exactly as Millington had told it to him, while he cringed there beside the camp-fire and the two half-breeds grumbled in the cold a hundred yards down the trail. He did not tell all the circumstantial facts in his own history and as he neared the end he eagerly searched the face of the man who sat opposite him.

But after the first startling statements Corrigal's expression had hardened and told nothing. When Donald reached the point where Nee-tah-wee-gan had described the murder of the helpless woman the district manager leaped to his feet with a sharp cry.

Donald was silent as he paced the floor.

"Go on," Corrigal said at last.

He continued his pacing when Donald had finished and for a full minute the younger man sat there with hope dwindling and heart sinking.

Back and forth Corrigal strode. His features were twisted by rage and pain and then he stopped directly before Donald and looked down at him.

"Lad," he said huskily, "that was a terrible thing to bring to me. For a moment I couldn't think of anything except the horror of it—of how she must have died there alone.

"But that is something we'll have to make each other forget. Some day I'll tell you about her. You'll want to hear—and I have never told anyone. But I know you can help me. You have already. There are thirty years we will have to wipe clean and——"

"You mean," Donald cried when he paused, "you mean that you believe it—that you believe I am——"

He had risen to his feet and Corrigal threw both arms around him.

"Great God!" he cried in a voice that touched Donald as nothing else ever had.

His head was down on Donald's shoulder and his body shook as the room echoed with his sobs.

But in a moment he got hold of himself. He leaned back, grasping the younger man by the arms and holding him away. The tears were running down his cheeks but through them there shone a smile that was like a child's, for it had broken through the repression of thirty years.

"Son!" he whispered. "My son! Mine!"

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Table of Contents

THE TEST OF DONALD NORTON

CONTENTS

The Test of Donald Norton

CHAPTER I

A Mystery of Birth

CHAPTER II

The Portent of a Dream

CHAPTER III

The Making of a Man

CHAPTER IV

Victory and Promotion

CHAPTER V

A Pilgrimage for a Friend

CHAPTER VI

Donald Meets a Strange God

CHAPTER VII

Donald Loses a Friend

CHAPTER VIII

Red Smears Donald's Dream

CHAPTER IX

Corrigal Drives His Men

CHAPTER X

Nee-tah-wee-gan's Revenge

CHAPTER XI

Corrigal Bares His Soul

CHAPTER XII

Donald Builds a Defense

CHAPTER XIII

Donald Tastes Defeat

CHAPTER XIV

A Fight to the Finish

CHAPTER XV

A Bitter Day for Corrigal

CHAPTER XVI

Fate Saves a Crook

CHAPTER XVII

A Duel for Fur

CHAPTER XVIII

Janet Bares Her Heart

CHAPTER XIX

Against Great Odds

CHAPTER XX

Superstition Lends a Hand

CHAPTER XXI

Millington's Plot Fails

CHAPTER XXII

The Real Man Wins

CHAPTER XXIII

Nee-tah-wee-gan's Proof

CHAPTER XXIV

Nee-tah-wee-gan Dies

CHAPTER XXV

Hate Endures to Death

CHAPTER XXVI

At the End of the Trail

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE