Flower of the North

to the sullen beat of surf beyond the black edge of

r meeting that afternoon, after a separation of nearly two years, had dispelled for a time the trouble which he now saw revealing itself in his companion's face and attitude, and the lightness of Whittemore's manner in beginning his explanation for inducing him to come into the north had helped to complete the mask. There occurred to him, for an instant, a picture which he had once drawn of Whittemore as he had kn

's lightness had been but a passing flash of his old buoyancy, that the old life and sparkle had gone from him. Two years, he judged, had woven things

om an inside pocket Philip produced a small bundle of papers. Fro

ne. And I've promised you a fight. Have you ever seen a rat in a trap with a blood-thirsty terrier guarding the litt

, mildly. "Pretty soon you'll be having it a

. "What if I should say there is a girl-a woman-in this trap-n

as going to be a

le-that you and I will get lost in the shuffle somewhere. We're two, no more. And we're going up against forces which would make a dozen South American revolutions look like thirty

to Gregson, pointi

now. That road, cutting across four hundred miles of wilderness, is opening up a country half as big as the United States, in which more mineral wealth will be dug during the next fifty years than will ever be taken from Yukon or Alaska. It is shortening the route from Montreal, Duluth, Chicago, and the Middle West to Liverpool and other European ports by a thousand miles. It mean

a flash of his old smil

ntains of iron and another interest had a grip on coal-fields. Six months I spent among the Indians, French, and half-breeds. I lived with them, trapped and hunted with them, and picked up a little Cree and French. The life suited me. I became a northerner in heart and soul, if not quite yet in full experience. Clubs and balls and cit

rew another from the bundle of

he night, and I sat up with a camp-fire laughing at me through the flap in my tent, stunned by the knockout it had given me. It seemed, at first, as though a gold-mine ha

ifference-his light-toned attitude in the face of most serious affairs would have made a failure of him in many things. But his tense interest did not hide itself now. A cigarette remai

o see," he said, "b

are so full of fish that the bears along 'em smell fishy. Whitefish, Gregson-whitefish and trout. There is a fresh-water area represented on that map three times as large as the whole of the five Great Lakes, and yet the Canadians and the government have never wakened up to what it means. There's a fish supply in this northland lar

illionaire,"

opy, mind you. I saw in it a chance to get back at the very people who brought about my father's ruin, and who kept pounding him after he was in a corner until he broke down and died. They killed him. They robbed me a few years later. They made me hate what I was once, a moving, joyous part of-life down there. I went from the north, first to Ottawa, then to Toronto and Winnipeg. After that I went to Brokaw, my father's old partner, with the scheme. I've told you of Brokaw-one of the deepest, shrewdest old fighters in the Middle West. It was only a year after my father's death that he was on

ftened. He chuckled as he pulled

ole country would be in sympathy with us. I expressed my views with enthusiasm at our final meeting, when the seven of us met to complete our plans. Brokaw and the other five were to direct matters in the south; I was to have full command of affairs in the north. A month later I was at work. Over here"-he leaned over Gregson's shoulder and placed a forefinger on the map-"I established our headquarters, with MacDougall, a Scotch engineer, to help me. Within six months we had a hundred and fifty men at Blind Indian Lake, fifty canoemen bringing in supplies, and another gang putting in stations over a stretch of more than a hundred miles of lake country. Everything was working smoothly, better than I had expected. At Blind Indian Lake w

te as he stood in the middle

ching around the corners of his mouth, and then said, 'Don't allow a trivial matter like th

at up wit

on! Grea

d fighting smile. "There was a hundred thousand dollars to

nds gripped the edges of the table. He made no