something that had in it the real color of the country.

At this point the free trader paused to assemble the Missourian. This
iron-gray individual shook himself out, came forward, and gripped our
hands, one after another.

The free trader would not allow us to make camp that night. We were
sentenced to sup and lodge with him, furnishing our own bedding, of
course, but baking his bread.

The smell of cooking coffee and the odor of frying fish came to us from
the kitchen, and floating over from somewhere the low, musical, well
modulated voice of Cromwell, conversing in Cree, as he moved about among
his mute and apparently inoffensive camp servants.

The day died hard. The sun was still shining at 9 P.M. At ten
it was twilight, and in the dusk we sat listening to tales of the far
North, totally unlike the tales we read in the story-books. Smith the
Silent, who was in charge of our party, was interested in the country,
of course, its physical condition, its timber, its coal, and its mineral
possibilities. He asked about its mountains and streams, its possible
and impossible passes; but the "Literary Cuss" and I were drinking
deeply of weird stories that were being told quite incautiously by the
free trader, the old factor, and by the Missourian. We were like
children, this young author and I, sitting for the first time in a
theatre. The flickering camp fire that we had kindled in the open served
as a footlight, while the Gitch Lamp, still gleaming in the west,
glanced through the trees and lit up the faces of the three great actors
who were entertaining us without money and without price. The Missourian
was the star. He had been reared in the lap of luxury, had run away from