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A man by the name of Thomas Purchas had built him a hut in the lonely wilderness, just below the Falls of the Androscoggin, in the present town of Brunswick. His family dwelt alone in the midst of the wilderness and the Indians. He purchased furs of the natives, and took them in his canoe down to the settlements near the mouth of the Sagadahock, from whence they were transported to England.
In a few weeks the whites had bartered away nearly all the axes, chisels, hoes, and picks, and what powder, shot, and pikeheads they could steal, in exchange for furs, baskets, young beasts and such like commodities. Though the supply of furs was scanty in Virginia, one master confessed he had got in one voyage by this private trade what he sold in England for thirty pounds.
"Played out; I'd some trouble to get him along," he explained to the men. "We're going on to the claims at the gulch to-morrow." Then he addressed the two in furs: "I guess you'll take me out a letter?" "Why, of course; but you'll have to hustle," said one of them, and Lisle turned to a man in a deerskin jacket whom he took for the agent. "Can you give me some paper?" "Sure! Sit down right here."
"Oh! not for the world, madame, not for the world," said Vitelle, burying his head in a pack of furs, "would I go up that bank in this storm." And here he began crying most lustily to all the saints in the calendar. It Was indeed awful. The roaring of the thunder and the flashing of the lightning around us were like the continued discharge of a park of artillery.
Inside, arranged like the letter L, were the various buildings the factor's house, those of the laborers, mechanics, hunters and other employees; a log hut for the clerks; the storehouses where were kept the furs, skins and pelts, and the Indian trading house where the bartering was done.
And just then a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and, with a bound and a choked cry, he turned to grapple his assailant. He was somewhat abashed to find, in the person whom he had so roughly seized, the short young lady in the furs. She, on her part, was shocked and terrified beyond expression, and hung trembling in his grasp.
Jasper was standing inside the outer door and applauded her. "Well done. If it weren't for your pose and walk, my dear, I should hardly have known you myself." Joan stood beside him, holding her furs close, breathing fast through the parted, painted lips. "Is he here, do you know?" "Yes. He's been waiting. I told him you might be late. Now, keep your head. Everything depends upon that.
She cut the lashings with her teeth, she seized the whip out of Metak's hands, she pushed Metak off the sledge, and sent him sprawling on the snow; and then she wheeled the dogs around, and fairly made them fly again on the backward track to her father's hut, where she crawled once more into her nest of furs, and where the luckless Metak was ever afterwards content to let her stay, satisfied that he was no match for her.
Behind these followed twelve sleds or toboggans, laden with furs, which the Hudson's Bay Company was shipping to its Department Headquarters. When one remembers that black or silver fox skins are frequently sold for over a thousand dollars each, one may surmise the great value of a cargo of furs weighing nearly four thousand pounds, such as the Dog Brigade was hauling.
There was the day I had seen her from the club window stoop to pick up a little ragged barefooted child that was crying in the street, and wrap her furs about it and carry it off, smiling and happy, in her arms, with no more thought of the attention such an action would attract than if she had been alone with her waif in the desert.
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