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 ", w'at you t'ink, Loup? De Albanee onlee leetle piece now? We do good job to mak' for de sout' shore, eh?"

With a whine the great slate-gray husky in the bow turned his slant eyes from the white wall of mist enveloping the canoe to his master's face, as if in full agreement with the change of course.

The west coast of James Bay lay blanketed with fog from the drifting ice-fields far to the north. Early that morning, when the mist blotted out the black ribbon of spruce edging the coast behind the marshes of the low shore, Gaspard Laroque had swung his canoe in from the deep water. For hours now he had been feeling his way alongshore toward the maze of channels through which the Albany River reached the yellow waters of the bay.

Fifteen miles of mud-flat, sand-spit, and scrub-grown island marked the river's mouth, and his goal, the Hudson's Bay Company post. Fort Albany, lay on the easternmost thoroughfare of the delta. There waited the dusky wife and children he had not seen since his trip down the coast over the sea-ice at Christmas with the dog that now worried at the scent of the invisible flocks of geese that rose clamoring through the fog ahead of the boat. Bought when a puppy