IN QUEST OF TREASURE 49 



Indian had known the good missionary, and had learnt the 

 lesson of honesty and respect for his neighbour's property.' 



"Yes; he had learnt the lesson of honesty, but his teacher, 

 my friend, had been other than human. The good missionary 

 had never reached the Hope of Hudson, nor improved the 

 morals of the Moose That Walks. 



" But let us go on. After waiting two days he determined to 

 set off for St. John's, two full days' travel. He set out, but his 

 heart failed him, and he turned back again. 



"At last, on the fourth day, he entered the parchment win- 

 dow, leaving outside his comrade, to whom he jealously denied 

 admittance. Then he took from the cask of powder three 

 skins' worth, from the tobacco four skins' worth, from the shot 

 the same; and sticking the requisite number of martens' skins 

 in the powder barrel and the shot bag and the tobacco case, he 

 hung up his remaining skins on a nail to the credit of his ac- 

 count, and departed from this El Dorado, this Bank of England 

 of the Red Man in the wilderness. And when it was all over 

 he went his way, thinking he had done a very reprehensible 

 act, and one by no means to be proud of." 



If it were necessary further to establish the honesty of the* 

 forest Indian, I could add many proofs from my own experience, 

 but one will suffice: 



Years ago, during my first visit to the Hudson's Bay Post 

 on Lake Temagami, when the only white man living in all that 

 beautiful region was old Malcolm MacLean, a "freeman" of 

 the H. B. Co., who had married an Indian woman and become 

 a trapper, I was invited to be the guest of the half-breed 

 Hudson's Bay trader, Johnnie Turner, and was given a bedroom 

 in his log house. The window of my room on the ground floor 

 was always left wide open, and in fact was never once closed 

 during my stay of a week or more. Inside my room, a foot from 

 the open window, a lidless cigar box was nailed to the wall, yet 

 it contained a heap of bills of varying denominations ones, 



