and along the uplands duck were calling and wild geese clanging in their haste to be gone, and Dick's foot broke a stray yellow dandelion from its stem as he sprang into the canoe. Hansham pointed his cane at it.
"Look," he said. "In August, and a hundred miles within the Arctic Circle as the crow flies. What would English people think of that?"
"I've found wild-flowers in July two-fifty miles further on."
"At Herschel?" Hensham looked at him quickly. "You've been there, then? Why—I guess—you're the man who picked that Yankee absconder out of his own whaler there about five years, ago."
"Six. It is a great solace to some of us to find we can win fame so easily."
"I imagine it wasn't easily. You can't treat a Yank like anyone else. He mostly has his own opinions. These canoes are pretty decent, aren't they? The Indians won't use anything but birch bark. Our hardwood's good enough, too. Baskerville—he's H. B. factor here—he has a pair of birch bark snow-shoes over a hundred years old. Right and left spread of frame, you know. I want them the worst way, but he won't part for any money."
It was good to hear Hensham talk after the long silences filled with thoughts that hurt. And it was good to paddle smoothly with the strong stern-thrust to help, past banks of spruce and willow and scented Balm of Gilead where the coloured leaves dropped into the water. The frost had killed out the last flies and mosquitoes; but Hensham remembered them feelingly.
"An absolutely devilish pest they are," he said. "How did you get on?"
"Kept out in the stream all day, and made smudges at night. They were nothing to what I've known on the Hudson Bay side."
"Tell me about it. What's the hunting like there? We have the jumping deer here, you know. They're fine sport. And moose, of course, and sometimes musk-ox. But there's nothing much better than the jumping deer among the foothills. Grahame was crazy about them. Said they beat the Scotch deer-forests hollow."
