“Swell, you see,” said Jacques Parfaite, as he gave Whiskey Wine, the leading dog, a cut with the whip and twisted his patois to the uses of narrative, “he has been alone there at the old Fort for a long time. I remember when I first see him. It was in the summer. The world [...]

He lived in a hut on a jutting crag of the Cliff of the King. You could get to it by a hard climb up a precipitous pathway, or by a ladder of ropes which swung from his cottage door down the cliff-side to the sands. The bay that washed the sands was called Belle [...]

I. THE SEARCH
She was only a big gulf yawl, which a man and a boy could manage at a pinch, with old-fashioned high bulwarks, but lying clean in the water. She had a tolerable record for speed, and for other things so important that they were now and again considered by the Government at Quebec. [...]

I
When old Throng the trader, trembling with sickness and misery, got on his knees to Captain Halby and groaned, “She didn’t want to go; they dragged her off; you’ll fetch her back, won’t ye?–she always had a fancy for you, cap’n,” Pierre shrugged a shoulder and said:
“But you stole her when she was in her [...]

It was no use: men might come and go before her, but Kitty Cline had eyes for only one man. Pierre made no show of liking her, and thought, at first, that hers was a passing fancy. He soon saw differently. There was that look in her eyes which burns conviction as deep as the [...]

“Fingall! Fingall!–Oh, Fingall!”
A grey mist was rising from the river, the sun was drinking it delightedly, the swift blue water showed underneath it, and the top of Whitefaced Mountain peaked the mist by a hand-length. The river brushed the banks like rustling silk, and the only other sound, very sharp and clear in the liquid [...]

I
“Read on, Pierre,” the sick man said, doubling the corner of the wolf-skin pillow so that it shaded his face from the candle.
Pierre smiled to himself, thinking of the unusual nature of his occupation, raised an eyebrow as if to someone sitting at the other side of the fire,–though the room was empty save for [...]

“No, no, m’sieu’ the governor, they did not tell you right. I was with him, and I have known Little Babiche fifteen years–as long as I’ve known you…. It was against the time when down in your world there they have feastings, and in the churches the grand songs and many candles on the altars. [...]

“John York, John York, where art thou gone, John York?”
“What’s that, Pierre?” said Sir Duke Lawless, starting to his feet and peering round.
“Hush!” was Pierre’s reply. “Wait for the rest…. There!”
“King of my heart, king of my heart, I am out on the trail of thy bugles.”
Sir Duke was about to speak, but Pierre lifted [...]

Just at the point where the Peace River first hugs the vast outpost hills of the Rockies, before it hurries timorously on, through an unexplored region, to Fort St. John, there stood a hut. It faced the west, and was built half-way up Clear Mountain. In winter it had snows above it and below it; [...]

His trouble came upon him when he was old. To the hour of its coming he had been of shrewd and humourous disposition. He had married late in life, and his wife had died, leaving him one child–a girl. She grew to womanhood, bringing him daily joy. She was beloved in the settlement; and there [...]

It stood on a wide wall between two small bridges. These were approaches to the big covered bridge spanning the main channel of the Madawaska River, and when swelled by the spring thaws and rains, the two flanking channels divided at the foundations of the house, and rustled away through the narrow paths of the [...]

Old Athabasca, chief of the Little Crees, sat at the door of his lodge,staring down into the valley where Fort Pentecost lay, and Mitawawahis daughter sat near him, fretfully pulling at the fringe of her finebuckskin jacket. She had reason to be troubled. Fyles the trader had puta great indignity upon Athabasca. A factor of [...]

“He’ll swing just the same to-morrow. Exit Malachi!” said Freddy Tarlton gravely.
The door suddenly opened on the group of gossips, and a man stepped inside and took the only vacant seat near the fire. He glanced at none, but stretched out his hands to the heat, looking at the coals with drooping introspective eyes.
“Exit Malachi,” [...]

“He stands in the porch of the world–(Why should the door be shut?)The grey wolf waits at his heel,(Why is the window barred?)Wild is the trail from the Kimash Hills,The blight has fallen on bush and tree,The choking earth has swallowed the streams,Hungry and cold is the Red Patrol:(Why should the door be shut?)The Scarlet [...]

When Tybalt the tale-gatherer asked why it was so called, Pierre said: “Because of the Great Slave;” and then paused.
Tybalt did not hurry Pierre, knowing his whims. If he wished to tell, he would in his own time; if not, nothing could draw it from him. It was nearly an hour before Pierre, eased off [...]

St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, had given him its licentiate’s hood, the Bishop of Rupert’s Land had ordained him, and the North had swallowed him up. He had gone forth with surplice, stole, hood, a sermon-case, the prayer-book, and that other Book of all. Indian camps, trappers’ huts, and Company’s posts had given him hospitality, and had [...]

“Why don’t she come back, father?”
The man shook his head, his hand fumbled with the wolf-skin robe covering the child, and he made no reply. “She’d come if she knew I was hurted, wouldn’t she?”
The father nodded, and then turned restlessly toward the door, as though expecting someone. The look was troubled, and the pipe [...]

“Here now, Trader; aisy, aisy! Quicksands I’ve seen along the sayshore, and up to me half-ways I’ve been in wan, wid a double-and-twist in the rope to pull me out; but a suckin’ sand in the open plain–aw, Trader, aw! the like o’ that niver a bit saw I.”
So said Macavoy the giant, when the [...]

He was seven feet and fat. He came to Fort O’Angel at Hudson’s Bay, an immense slip of a lad, very much in the way, fond of horses, a wonderful hand at wrestling, pretending a horrible temper, threatening tragedies for all who differed from him, making the Fort quake with his rich roar, and playing [...]

Pierre had determined to establish a kingdom, not for gain, but for conquest’s sake. But because he knew that the thing would pall, he took with him Macavoy the giant, to make him king instead. But first he made Macavoy from a lovely bully, a bulk of good-natured brag, into a Hercules of fight; for, [...]

Once Macavoy the giant ruled a tribe of Northern people, achieving the dignity by the hands of Pierre, who called him King Macavoy. Then came a time when, tiring of his kingship, he journeyed south, leaving all behind, even his queen, Wonta, who, in her bed of cypresses and yarrow, came forth no more into [...]

It lay between the mountains and the sea, and a river ran down past it, carrying its good and ill news to a pacific shore, and out upon soft winds, travelling lazily to the scarlet east. All white and a tempered red, it nestled in a valley with other valleys on lower steppes, which seemed [...]

He lay where he could see her working at the forge. As she worked she sang:
“When God was making the world,(Swift is the wind and white is the fire)The feet of his people danced the stars;There was laughter and swinging bells,
And clanging iron and breaking breath,The hammers of heaven making the hills,The vales on the [...]

“Height unto height answereth knowledge.”
His was the first watch, the farthest fire, for Shaknon Hill towered above the great gulf, and looked back also over thirty leagues of country towards the great city. There came a time again when all the land was threatened. From sovereign lands far off, two fleets were sailing hard to [...]

By that place called Peradventure in the Voshti Hills dwelt Golgothar the strong man, who, it was said, could break an iron pot with a blow, or pull a tall sapling from the ground.
“If I had a hundred men so strong,” said Golgothar, “I would go and conquer Nooni, the city of our foes.”
Because he [...]

“Mother, didst thou not say thy prayers last night?”
“Twice, my child.”
“Once before the little shrine, and once beside my bed–is it not so?”
“It is so, my Fanchon. What hast thou in thy mind?”
“Thou didst pray that the storm die in the hills, and the flood cease, and that my father come before it was again [...]

“Ah, Monsieur, Monsieur, come quick!”
“My son, wilt thou not be patient?”
“But she–my Fanchon–and the child!”
“I knew thy Fanchon, and her father, when thou wast yet a child.”
“But they may die before we come, Monsieur.”
“These things are in God’s hands, Gustave.”
“You are not a father; you have never known what makes the world seem nothing.”
“I knew [...]

“My father, shall we soon be there?”
The man stopped, and shading his eyes with his hand, looked long before him into the silver haze. They were on the southern bank of a wide valley, flanked by deep hills looking wise as grey-headed youth, a legion of close comrades, showing no gap in their ranks. They [...]

The Tent stands on the Mount of Lost Winters, in that bit of hospitable land called the Fair Valley, which is like no other in the North. Whence comes the soft wind that comforts it, who can tell? It swims through the great gap in the mountains, and passing down the valley, sinks upon the [...]

“Divils me darlins, it’s a memory I have of a time whin luck wasn’t foldin’ her arms round me, and not so far back aither, and I on the wallaby track hot-foot for the City o’ Gold.”
Shon McGann said this in the course of a discussion on the prosperity of Pipi Valley. Pretty Pierre remarked [...]

“The birds are going south, Antoine–see–and it is so early!”
“Yes, Angelique, the winter will be long.”
There was a pause, and then: “Antoine, I heard a child cry in the night, and I could not sleep.”
“It was a devil-bird, my wife; it flies slowly, and the summer is dead.”
“Antoine, there was a rushing of wings by [...]

Hilton was staying his horse by a spring at Guidon Hill when he first saw her. She was gathering may-apples; her apron was full of them. He noticed that she did not stir until he rode almost upon her. Then she started, first without looking round, as does an animal, dropping her head slightly to [...]

At Fort Latrobe sentiment was not of the most refined kind. Local customs were pronounced and crude in outline; language was often highly coloured, and action was occasionally accentuated by a pistol shot. For the first few months of its life the place was honoured by the presence of neither wife, nor sister, nor mother. [...]

Father Corraine stood with his chin in his hand and one arm supporting the other, thinking deeply. His eyes were fixed on the northern horizon, along which the sun was casting oblique rays; for it was the beginning of the winter season.
Where the prairie touched the sun it was responsive and radiant; but on either [...]

They hung all bronzed and shining, on the side of Margath Mountain–the tall and perfect pipes of the organ which was played by some son of God when the world was young. At least Hepnon the cripple said this was so, when he was but a child, and when he got older he said that [...]

“News out of Egypt!” said the Honourable Just Trafford. “If this is true, it gives a pretty finish to the season. You think it possible, Pierre? It is every man’s talk that there isn’t a herd of buffaloes in the whole country; but this-eh?”
Pierre did not seem disposed to answer. He had been watching a [...]

The story has been so much tossed about in the mouths of Indians, and half-breeds, and men of the Hudson’s Bay Company, that you are pretty sure to hear only an apocryphal version of the thing as you now travel in the North. But Pretty Pierre was at Fort Luke when the battle occurred, and, [...]

“Is it that we stand at the top of the hill and the end of the travel has come, Pierre? Why don’t you spake?”
“We stand at the top of the hill, and it is the end.”
“And Lonely Valley is at our feet and Whiteface Mountain beyond?”
“One at our feet, and the other beyond, Shon McGann.”
“It’s [...]

Talk and think as one would, The Woman was striking to see; with marvellous flaxen hair and a joyous violet eye. She was all pulse and dash; but she was as much less beautiful than the manager’s wife as Tom Liffey was as nothing beside the manager himself; and one would care little to name [...]

“What can I do, Dan? I’m broke, too. My last dollar went to pay my last debt to-day. I’ve nothing but what I stand in. I’ve got prospects, but I can’t discount prospects at the banks.” The speaker laughed bitterly. “I’ve reaped and I’m sowing, the same as you, Dan.”
The other made a nervous motion [...]

CHAPTER I. AN ECHO. “O de worl am roun an de worl am wide–O Lord, remember your chillun in de mornin!It’s a mighty long way up de mountain side,An day aint no place whar de sinners kin hide,When de Lord comes in de mornin.”
With a plaintive quirk of the voice the singer paused, gayly flicked [...]