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Rh lick the hand that lassooed him. He was too surely a son of the strong North for that.

Dick got his pipe out, and cast himself into the smoke-reek and talk. And the doings of these men of the naked lives unrolled in their idle speech. There was Caird of the Government Survey, grey-haired and keen-eyed and calm, going down for his twentieth year's measuring-off of the solitudes with gay young de Musset from Ottawa and the silent Lyons with the tragedy in his still face. There was a broad-barrelled German, prospecting for gold with an absolutely admirable outfit and an easy knowledge that he might forget the ways of white nations before he mixed with them again. There was a Revillons' "fur-pup" going North to a dim, slim branch of that great Company which has dared raise its head against the Hudson Bay, and a big, buoyant lad of the North-West Police called to the long lonely beats of Fort Macpherson. He would be a man when he came back, that fresh-faced boy, and the little "fur-pup" would have ceased to yelp when the cards of Life went against him.

Through the open door Dick heard Bessait shout down the tube to the other controller of the steamer's destinies.

"Kick her into it," he said. And then the shudder of life ran through the dead timber; the screw backed and squattered; swung out to the broad full stream, and the "Northern Light" laid her nose to the Pole and went to look for it. Among the cotton-woods a red handkerchief leapt up like a heart-flame, and Dick slid out of the door to make answer with his own. The red flag flew till the banks veered in, and Dick laughed, wondering if the girl in the cotton-woods knew. Then he ran up the steep ladder to the naked upper deck where the funnel roared and all the canvas surface lay at gaze to the open sky. And as his head lifted above the level his eyes met Jennifer's.

He stared, almost unbelieving. Then he reddened with anger. Was Ducane dragging his wife into these shady games which he was playing? What had he brought her up here for except as a blind? And if so what was he going to do—with her and with himself? The thoughts fled through his mind like lightning on a cloud. But they