“Who are you?” he asked.

“I Alexander Selkirk, me,” was the answer.

Ambrose could not but smile at the misapplication of the sonorous Scotch name to such a manikin.

“You Ambrose Doane?” the other said solemnly.

“Everybody seems to know me,” said Ambrose.

Alexander stared at him with a sullen, walled, speculative regard, exactly, Ambrose thought, like a schoolboy facing an irate master, and wondering where the blow will fall.

To carry out this effect he was holding something inside his voluminous jacket, something that suggested contraband.

“What have you got there?” demanded Ambrose.

Without changing a muscle of his face, Alexander undid a button and produced a gleaming black pelt.

Ambrose gasped.  It was a beautiful black fox.  Such a prize does not come a trader’s way once in three seasons.  The last black fox Minot & Doane had secured brought twelve hundred dollars in London—­and it was not so fine a specimen as this.

Lustrous, silky, black as anthracite; every hair in place, and not a white hair showing except the tuft at the end of the brush.

“Where did you get it?” Ambrose asked, amazed.

“I trap him, me, myself,” said Alexander.

“When?”

“Las’ Februar’.”

“Are you offering it to me?” asked Ambrose, eying it desirously.

“’Ow much?” demanded Alexander, affecting a wall-eyed indifference.

Ambrose made a more careful examination.  There was no doubt of it; the skin was perfect.  He thrilled at the idea of returning with such a prize to his partner.  He made a rapid calculation.

“Five hundred and fifty cash,” he said.  “Seven hundred fifty in trade.”

A spark showed in Alexander’s eyes.

“It is yours,” he said.

“How can we make a trade?” asked Ambrose, perplexed.  “John Gaviller would never honor any order of mine.  I have no goods here to give you in trade.”

“All right,” said Alexander imperturbably.  “I go to Moultrie to get goods.”

“You, too,” said Ambrose.  “I can’t import you all.”

“I got go Moultrie, me,” said Alexander.  “I got trouble wit’ Gaviller.  He starve me and my children.  They sick.”

“Starve you!”

“Gaviller say give no more debt till I bring him my black fox,” Alexander went on apathetically.  “Give no flour, no sugar, no meat, no tea.  My brot’er feed us some.  Gaviller say to him better not.  So now we have nothing.  We ongry.”

This promised difficulties.  Ambrose frowned.  “Tell me the whole story,” he said.

The little man was eying the grub-box wolfishly.  Throwing back the cover, Ambrose offered him a cold bannock.

“Here,” he said.  “Eat and tell me.”

Alexander without a word turned and scrambled up the bank and disappeared, clutching the loaf to his breast.  The white man shouted after him without effect.  He left the precious pelt behind him.