“Aye, what save a whim of the moment could have induced me to undertake so great a hardship as this winning to the Saskatchewan? What save the love of excitement sent me to be, like yourself, the head of a lost trading-post in this far north country?”
The merry blue eyes were full of gaiety and light.
“Truly,—and I pay.”
A whim it might be, yet there was in the spirited face of Alfred de Courtenay that which told plainly that it would be followed to its end, be that what it might, as faithfully as though it were a deeper thing.
For a moment a little line appeared between the straight brows of the factor.
The word of so grave an office mentioned as a “whim,” “a caprice,” went down hard with him. There was nowhere in the heavens above nor the earth below so serious a thing as that same office, and he served it with his whole heart. Therefore he could not quite understand the other. Yet he thought in a moment of De Courtenay's newness and the frown cleared. Of a very wide tolerance was McElroy.
“And you came, I suppose, from York Factory, down by way of God's Lake and the house there. What is the word of Anderson who presides there? A fine fellow,—I met him once at Churchill.”
“York Factory? God's Lake?”
De Courtenay lowered his pipe and looked through the smoke.
“Nay,” he said, “I know nothing of those places, M'sieu.”