It had brought him Marie, the slim, dark-eyed Cree girl, who hated him--and who in spite of her hatred "kept house for him." That was the polite way of explaining her presence if explanations were ever necessary.

McTaggart looked again at the notes he had made on the sheet of paper.

Pierrot's trapping country, his own property according to the common law of the wilderness, was very valuable.

During the last seven years he had received an average of a thousand dollars a year for his furs, for McTaggart had been unable to cheat Pierrot quite as completely as he had cheated the Indians.

A thousand dollars a year! Pierrot would think twice before he gave that up.