"But that was the capital you were to begin trading on?"
"Aye, but we'll have t' give th' tradin' up now. I'm thinkin' th' Lard weren't wantin' us t' go tradin' or t' have th' money, an' I'm not complainin', though I were wonderful disappointed when I hears of un first."
Shad asked many questions, in the course of which he drew from Bob a description of the air castles which Bob had been building, and which had been so unceremoniously knocked down about his ears by his mother's letter; of the poverty-stricken condition of the Bay folk, which Bob in his big-hearted and youthful enthusiasm had hoped to relieve; and of many other things which he had planned to do with his fortune.
Though all this was of the past, and of little importance now, he had intended to keep it a secret. But he and Shad had grown very close together, and somehow Shad had a way of drawing from him even his most sacred thoughts--and before Bob realised it he had bared his heart to his friend.
"An' I were thinkin'," said Bob, after the sum-total of his shattered plans had been disclosed, "when we was up on th' Great Lake, what a rare fine thing 'twould ha' been for th' Injuns, if I hadn't ha' lost th' money, t' make a tradin' station an' a cache o' grub up th' other end o' th' Great Lake--seventy or eighty miles in from where Manikawan dies--so when another bad year comes th' Injuns down that way could get grub t' carry un out t' th' Ungava post. If they'd been a cache there this winter, Manikawan wouldn't ha' died, an' a lot o' th' other poor Injuns as must ha' died would ha' got out."
"That's so," agreed Shad. "What an amount of suffering it would have saved! And the poor little Indian girl wouldn't have been sacrificed."
The others returned at this point, and conversation drifted into other channels--the striking up of the traps--the probability of an early break-up--the hard times that the present season's failure was certain to cause among the people of the Bay.
"Bob, if you're going to strike up and make this next trip your last one of the season, I'm going over the trail with you," said Shad, the following day. "I want to see again the trail I helped you lay, and the tilts we built together. It seems a long while ago, and the memory of it is already a pleasant one."
So on Monday morning they started on the last round of traps for the season. The days were long now, and the sun was still high when they reached the tilt on the first lake--the tilt where Manikawan had found Bob's rifle, and the first of the series of tilts Bob and Shad had built.
They cooked and ate their supper, and then lounged back upon their bunks to chat of their first exploration of the trail, their visit to the falls, and of Manikawan's unexpected appearance when they were on the island.