it."

"What stuff?"

"The stuff that lays outside the door--Wentworth's stuff, of course!'

"In the cabin?"

"Yes, in the cabin!" cried the factor impatiently. "Ye didn't think ye
was to put it in the stove, did ye?"

Hedin moved slowly away in search of the Company Indians, and Wentworth
laughed. "Hasn't got quite all his buttons, has he?" he inquired. "I
should say the Company had treated you shabbily in the matter of a
clerk."

"Well, I don't know," replied Murchison. "I could have had worse.
'Tis not to be gainsaid that he's slow an' heavy of wit in the matter
of most things, but the lad knows fur. More than forty years I've
handled fur, an' yet to-day the striplin' knows more about fur, an' the
value of fur, than I ever will know. An' then there's the
close-mouthedness of him. Ye tell him a thing, an' caution him to say
naught about it, an' no bribe nor threat could drag a word of it from
his lips. So, ye see, for the job he's got, I could scarce hope for
better."

"I presume he knows only raw furs," said Wentworth casually. "He
could, of course, have no knowledge of the finished product."

"An' there ye're wrong. Of his early life I know nothing except that