while the steaming tea, sipped out of small tin cups, and taken
without sugar or milk, was the "loving cup" of that dark-visaged
company. And far into the morning hours they sat sipping their
favourite beverage, and discussing the last tidings from the woods.
Every item of news is interesting, whether from hunter's camp, or
trapper's wigwam. There are births, marriages, and deaths, to be
pondered over and commented upon; the Indian has his chief, to whom
he owes deference and vows allegiance; he has his party badge, both
in religion and politics; what wonder then that even the long winter
night of the North, seemed far too short for all the important knotty
points which had to be discussed and settled!

"You have had good times at the little Lake," said Peter, a brother
of Michel's, who was deliberately chewing a piece of dried meat held
tight between his teeth, while with his pocketknife he severed its
connection with the piece in his hand, to the imminent peril of his
nose.

"I wish I were a freedman: I should soon be off to the Lake myself!
I am sick of working for the Company. I did not mind it when they set
me to haul meat from the hunters, or to trap furs for them, but now
they make me saw wood, or help the blacksmith at his dirty forge:
what has a 'Tene Jua' to do with such things as these?"

"And I am sick of starving!" said another. "This is the third winter
that _something_ has failed us,--first the rabbits, then the
fish ran short; and now we hear that the deer are gone into a new
track, and there is not a sign of one for ten miles round the Fort.
And the meat is so low" added the last speaker, "that the 'big
Master' says he has but fifty pounds of dried meat in the store, and