I'll speak wi' Mr. MacDonald t' give ye debt for your grub. Micmac
John's wantin' th' trail, but I'm not thinkin' t' let he have un."

At first Bob's parents both opposed the project. The dangers were so
great that his mother asserted that if he were to go she would not
have an easy hour until she saw her boy again. But he put forth such
strong arguments and plead so vigorously, and his disappointment was
so manifest, that finally she withdrew her objections and his father
said:

"Well, you may go, my son, an Douglas lets you have th' trail."

[Illustration: "Bob jumped out with the painter in his hand"]

So Bob, scarcely sixteen years of age, was to do a man's work and
shoulder a man's burden, and he was glad that God had given him
stature beyond his years, that he might do it. He could not remember
when he had not driven dogs and cut wood and used a gun. He had done
these things always. But now he was to rise to the higher plane of a
full-fledged trapper and the spruce forest and the distant hills
beyond the post seemed a great empire over which he was to rule. Those
trackless fastnesses, with their wealth of fur, were to pay tribute to
him, and he was happy in the thought that he had found a way to save
little Emily from the lifelong existence of a poor crippled invalid.
His buoyant spirit had stepped out of the old world of darkness and
despair into a new world filled with light and love and beauty, in
which the present troubles were but a passing cloud.

"Ho, lad! so your father let ye come. I's glad t' see ye, lad. An' now
we're t' make a great hunt," greeted Douglas when the punt ground its