along the edge of the shining river a quarter of a mile away.
That, too, had been the wilderness, in the days before the
railroad came. The poison of speculation was stirring, but it had
not yet destroyed. Athabasca Landing was still the door that
opened and closed on the great North. Its buildings were scattered
and few, and built of logs and rough lumber. Even now he could
hear the drowsy hum of the distant sawmill that was lazily turning
out its grist. Not far away the wind-worn flag of the British
Empire was floating over a Hudson Bay Company's post that had
bartered in the trades of the North for more than a hundred years.
Through that hundred years Athabasca Landing had pulsed with the
heart-beats of strong men bred to the wilderness. Through it,
working its way by river and dog sledge from the South, had gone
the precious freight for which the farther North gave in exchange
its still more precious furs. And today, as Kent looked down upon
it, he saw that same activity as it had existed through the years
of a century. A brigade of scows, laden to their gunwales, was
just sweeping out into the river and into its current. Kent had
watched the loading of them; now he saw them drifting lazily out
from the shore, their long sweeps glinting in the sun, their crews
singing wildly and fiercely their beloved Chanson des Voyageurs as
their faces turned to the adventure of the North.

In Kent's throat rose a thing which he tried to choke back, but
which broke from his lips in a low cry, almost a sob. He heard the
distant singing, wild and free as the forests themselves, and he
wanted to lean out of his window and shout a last good-by. For the
brigade--a Company brigade, the brigade that had chanted its songs
up and down the water reaches of the land for more than two
hundred and fifty years--was starting north. And he knew where it