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And then his eyes fell nearer to the settle river a quarter of a mile away That, too, had been the wilderness, in the days before the railroad ca, but it had not yet destroyed Athabasca Landing was still the door that opened and closed on the great North Its buildings were scattered and few, and built of logs and rough lumber Even now he could hear the drowsy hurist Not far away the orn flag of the British E over a Hudson Bay Company's post that had bartered in the trades of the North for h that hundred years Athabasca Landing had pulsed with the heart-beats of strongits way by river and dog sledge froht for which the farther North gave in exchange its still more precious furs And today, as Kent looked down upon it, he saw that sah the years of a century A brigade of scows, laden to their gunwales, was just sweeping out into the river and into its current Kent had watched the loading of the lazily out fro in the sun, their crews singing wildly and fiercely their beloved Chanson des Voyageurs as their faces turned to the adventure of the North

In Kent's throat rose a thing which he tried to choke back, but which broke from his lips in a low cry, al, wild and free as the forests themselves, and he wanted to lean out of hisand shout a last good-by For the brigade--a Cos up and down the water reaches of the land fornorth And he knehere it was going--north, and still farther north; a hundred miles, five hundred, a thousand--and then another thousand before the last of the scows unburdened itself of its precious freight For the lean and brown-visaged men ith the and joyous thrill under the open skies Overwhelainst his pillows and covered his eyes

In those mos he was losing Toade would still be sweeping on--on into the Grand Rapids of the Athabasca, fighting the Death Chute, hazarding valiantly the rocks and rapids of the Grand Cascade, the whirlpools of the Devil's Mouth, the thundering roar and boiling dragon teeth of the Black Run--on to the end of the Athabasca, to the Slave, and into the Mackenzie, until the last rock-blunted nose of the outfit drank the tide-water of the Arctic Ocean And he, James Kent, would be DEAD!