round their brows. There was the Coppermine River trail to the Dismal Lakes on the rim of the Arctic Ocean, or there was the great Mackenzie route to the Yukon and to Herschel Island. Dick weighed the chances of each with all cunning and knowledge. He believed that Andree would go down the Mackenzie; for, wild creature of the forest though she was, she had never loved loneliness nor the Indian. . Her ways had lain among the white men, and her vanity and love of excitement would keep them there. The ice was breaking on the Great Slave Lake when Dick reached it, and in a little while the birch canoes shot across the long blue run of it. Dick was to do much paddling there before he came upon the trail of Grange's Andree. He was to know well the mouse-grey evenings when the sea-birds and loons flew low, calling stridently. He was to see the prairies yellow as the snow passed and the pale feathers of birch and poplar blow against the indigo of the fir-forests. He was to seek the camp of many a breed and Indian along the shores, remembering past history, and making, in his dull khaki and his untiring determination, his small indelible share of the new.
Very familiar now were the names of those long-dead forts which Sir John Franklin had set up all across this wild land. Enterprise, Reliance, Providence, Confidence, Good Hope and Resolution. The courage of the bluff old sailor and his strong-hearted men rang in the words yet; beacon-lights for the men who come after them.
One night the smell of a spruce camp-fire called him into a bight where the thick trees came to the water-lip. A score of trappers lay round the fire with the fierce resinous glow of it in their faces, and Dick saw there that look of deep content which belongs only to the people of the North in their own stamping-grounds. He went ashore, and stayed the night there. And when he paddled back to Resolution he knew that Grange's Andree was flying from what he was bringing her to the great silence of the Mackenzie River.
Next day he packed his kit and followed her. He followed while the brief summer glowed to the full and faded; while the anemones and fragile snow-flowers gave place to fireweed that glowed in all the glory of a Scotch heather
