"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."
He turned to young Ivrey.
"It might be that these locations answer to different names. Heard you
aught from the guides of these two posts?"
"We did not pass them, Sir Alfred," answered the young man soberly.
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