“My needs,” he replied.  “No; I have enough.”

“Then why?” she insisted.

“Because that old charter has long since expired, and now this country is as free for me as for the Company,” he explained.  “We are in a civilized century, and no man has a right to tell me where I shall or shall not go.  Does the Company own the Indians and the creatures of the woods?” Something in the tone of his voice brought her eyes steadily to his for a moment.

“Is that all?” she asked at length.

He hesitated, looked away, looked back again.

“No, it is not,” he confessed, in a low voice.  “It is a thing I do not speak of.  My father was a servant of this Company, a good, true servant.  No man was more honest, more zealous, more loyal.”

“I am sure of it,” said Virginia, softly.

“But in some way that he never knew himself he made enemies in high places.  The cowards did not meet him man to man, and so he never knew who they were.  If he had, he would have killed them.  But they worked against him always.  He was given hard posts, inadequate supplies, scant help, and then he was held to account for what he could not do.  Finally he left the company in disgrace—­undeserved disgrace.  He became a Free Trader in the days when to become a Free Trader was worse than attacking a grizzly with cubs.  In three years he was killed.  But when I grew to be a man “—­he clenched his teeth—­“by God! how I have prayed to know who did it.”  He brooded for a moment, then went on.  “Still, I have accomplished something.  I have traded in spite of your factors in many districts.  One summer I pushed to the Coppermine in the teeth of them, and traded with the Yellow Knives for the robes of the musk-ox.  And they knew me and feared my rivalry, these traders of the Company.  No district of the far North but has felt the influence of my bartering.  The traders of all districts—­Fort au Liard, Lapierre’s House, Fort Rae, Ile a la Crosse, Portage la Loche, Lac la Biche, Jasper’s House, the House of the Touchwood Hills—­all these, and many more, have heard of Ned Trent.”

“Your father—­you knew him well?”

“No, but I remember him—­a tall, dark man, with a smile always in his eyes and a laugh on his lips.  I was brought up at a school in Winnipeg under a priest.  Two or three times in the year my father used to appear for a few days.  I remember well the last time I saw him.  I was about thirteen years old.  ’You are growing to be a man,’ said he; ‘next year we will go out on the trail.’  I never saw him again.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, he was just killed,” replied Ned Trent, bitterly.

The girl laid her hand on his arm with an appealing little gesture.

“I am so sorry,” said she.

“I have no portrait of him,” continued the Free Trader, after an instant.  “No gift from his hands; nothing at all of his but this.”