"That's so, but I can't tell how you knew. I don't remember having talked about the thing; and my clerk has never left the factory. There wasn't another white man within a week's journey."
"I heard, all the same. You had afterwards some better furs than usual brought in."
The agent looked surprised. "Some of these people are grateful, but although I've been in the country twelve years I don't pretend to understand them."
"They understand you. The proof of it is that you can keep your factory open in a district where furs are rather scarce and have had very few mishaps. You can take that as a compliment."
There was something significant in Clarke's tone which Blake remarked, while Sedgwick, feeling that he was being left out, strolled on.
"Then you know the Jack-pine?" the agent asked.
"Pretty well, though it's not easy to reach. I came down it one winter from the Wild-goose hills. I'd put in the winter with a band of Stonies."
"The Northern Stonies? Did you find them easy to get on with?"
"They knew some interesting things," Clarke answered drily. "I went there to study."
"Ah!" said the agent. "What plain folk, for want of a better name, call the occult. But it's fortunate there's a barred door between white men and the Indian's mysticism."