hill. Tall mauve asters swayed by the banks, and the shining ranks of the golden-rod lit up the hillsides where the black crows flapped low and heavily and the wild bird calls thrilled, thin and far, through the dry tang of the pine-forests. At Fort Simpson the barley in the Mission fields was swelling with the milk in it, and all the potatoes were in flower. Dick stayed here some days; seeing the Sisters of Charity working in the garden-patches, and questioning the many breeds and Indians who drift through the post from the Liard River and across to Lac la Marte. Here the Hudson Bay Store stood in the strongly-palisaded enclosure which had been common to all of old, and the hot sun warmed its weather-beaten flanks and struck colour from rock and sweeping prairie. Then the excitement of separating two drunken Hare Indians one night took him to the Hudson Bay factor with a question.
"Well, you know what it is," said the factor, and laughed. "Men will drink something. They make this abominable stuff themselves of hops and yeast and dried fruit and sugar. The smell nearly kills a chap dead. But it serves its purpose. You might let Macpherson know about it."
Dick assented. Two little detachments patrolled the whole of this Mackenzie River district as best they might, and they would infallibly bring the weight of law into Simpson some day before long.
The old stars were dying down the sky behind him now, and new ones rode in an unfamiliar sky. Already there was a riot of coloured leaves on the wild-rose bushes and the tall, slight saskatoons, and down by-ways the pea-vines were taking colour and fireweed leaves blazed red and orange. Near Fort Norman he met a canoe with a constable and a Hare Indian, paddling upstream with the sun in their eyes. Dick gave a greeting, and the Constable swung alongside.
"Come and tiffin with me," he said. "It's about time." And on the bank of the Mackenzie the two ate badly-cooked damper and tinned beans and freshly-caught fish with more appetite than they once had eaten in London hotels.
The Constable used the speech of Eton and Oxford, and
