breath in. "What a country! What a place to live in! Do you do everything on as big a scale as that?"
"I suppose that some of our men are the smallest things we have," said Dick dryly, and turned down the deck as Ducane came up the ladder. But young Grahame followed him.
"Excuse me," he said with the stately courtesy which made Dick put his choice in the baronet-father. "I hear that you know Fort Macpherson. Can you tell me anything about it, for I'm going there?"
Dick leaned on the rail. It had been nothing dishonourable which had brought this lad over-seas.
"You have come after adventure, I imagine," he said. "Well, you'll get it—if your idea of it happens to be the same as that of the Force. You will have to cut wood and haul it four or five miles—probably more. And the green fish for dog-feed usually has to come from Arctic Red River—about thirty-five miles. You'll go after that in the winter, through anything down to sixty or seventy below zero, instead of attending balls and Caledonian meetings. Some day you may shoot your bear or your moose to save your life—and may not save it then. There is the routine work, of course. And the patrols to Herschel Island—two-fifty miles each way. The Dawson patrols—considerably longer and harder; and perhaps another to Kittigazuit You'll have to chase the mountain Indians for deer-meat for yourselves, and the river ones for fish for dog-feed. The Peel hardly gives enough to last the summer." He smiled a little. "Have I frightened you?" he asked.
"Heavens!" said young Grahame. "It's like Fenimore Cooper and all the rest of 'em rolled into one. You've been through all that!"
"I have lived through it." Then Dick's face changed. "I wish you luck," he said. "I believe you are probably going to be a credit to us."
Grahame looked north to the faint stars that dipped to the waste of waters. Beyond them he was to find stars yet unseen, and his heart swelled high and hot in him. Scotland's sons have broken the trails of Canada through all the dim rusty centuries even as he himself would do.
