Sore, sore, indeed, was the heart of the young factor of Fort de
Seviere as he lay under the stars and listened to the death-wail in the
darkened camp.
Nowhere was there a fire.
Desolation sat upon the Nakonkirhirinons.
Along toward dawn, presaged by the westward wheeling of the big stars,
tom-toms began to beat throughout the maze of lodges. They beat oddly
into the air, cold with the chill of the coming day,
McElroy's thoughts had left the great country of the Hudson Bay and
travelled back along the winding waterways, across the lakes, and at
last out on that heaving sea which bore away from his homeland. Once
more he had been in the smoke of London town, had looked into the
loving eyes of his mother and gripped the hand of his tradesman father.
Once more he had wondered what the future held.
The sudden striking up of the tom-toms answered him.
This.
This was to be the end of his eager advance in the Company's favour,
the end of that good glass of life whose red draught he had drunk with
wholesome joy, the end of love that had but dawned for him to sink into
aching darkness.
He sighed wearily. So poignant was his sense of loss and the pain of it
that the end was a weariness rather than a new pain.
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