But to her surprise the man was thinking of something else.

“Who told you?” he demanded, harshly.  Then, without waiting for a reply, “It was that little preacher; I’ll have an interview with him!”

“No, no!” protested the girl.  “It was not he.  It was a friend.  I had the right to know.”

“You had no right!” he cried, vehemently.  “You and life should have nothing to do with each other.  There is a look in your eyes that was not in them yesterday, and the one who put it there is not your friend.”  He stood staring at her intently, as one who ponders what is best to do.  Then very quietly he took her hands and drew her to a place beside him on the bowlder.

“I am going to tell you something, little girl,” said he, “and you must listen quietly to the end.  Perhaps at the last you may see more clearly than you do now.

“This old Company of yours has been established for a great many years.  Back in old days, over two centuries ago, it pushed up into this wilderness to trade for its furs.  That you know.  And then it explored ever farther to the west and the north, until its servants stood on the shores of the Pacific and the stretches of the Arctic Ocean.  And its servants loved it.  Enduring immense hardships, cut off from their kind, outlining dimly with the eye of faith the structure of a mighty power, they loved it always.  Thousands of men were in its employ, and so loyal were they that its secrets were safe and its prestige was defended, often to a lonely death.  I have known the Company and its servants for a long time, and if I had leisure I could instance a hundred examples of devotion and sacrifice beside which mere patriotism, would seem a little thing.  Men who had no country cleaved to her desolate posts, her lakes and rivers and forests; men who had no home ties felt the tug of her wild life at their hearts; men who had no God bowed in awe before her power and grandeur.  The Company was a living thing.

“Rivals attempted her supremacy, and were defeated by the steadfastness of the men who received her meagre wages and looked to her as their one ideal.  Her explorers were the bravest, her traders the most enterprising and single-minded, her factors and partners the most capable and potent in all the world.  No country, no leader, no State ever received half the worship her sons gave her.  The fierce Nor’westers, the traders of Montreal, the Company of the X Y, Astor himself, had to give way.  For, although they were bold or reckless or crafty or able, they had not the ideal which raises such qualities to invincibility.

“And, little girl, nothing is wrong to men who have such an ideal before them.  They see but one thing, and all means are good that help them to assure that one thing.  They front the dangers, they overcome the hardships, they crush the rivals.  Bloody wars have taken place in these forests, ruthless deeds have been done, but the men who accomplished them held the deeds good.  So for two hundred years, aided by the charter from the king, they have made good their undisputed right.