“I am like a person hanging suspended in space. I neither know where I came from, nor where I am going. What is Fort Enterprise like?”

“A trading-post.”

“Your home?”

“Such as it is.”

“Why ‘such as it is’?”

“Well, it’s a bit of a hole.”

“No society?”

“Society!” He laughed grimly.

“Aren’t there any girls there?”

“Devil a one!—except Miss Pringle, the parson’s sister, and she’s considerable oldish.”