“I fancy you would not care to wear the same coat always, nor yet to wag the same tail,” laughed her father, a genial-looking man of fifty, who was dressed with equal fitness for rough travel, and was just now intent on hurrying his daughter to the lake boat, which was getting up steam at a little distance.

“Like it or not, I expect it is what I shall be reduced to by the end of the summer,” laughed Mary Selincourt, as she watched the various bags and bundles being piled on to a barrow by the hotel porter.

“Well, look your last on civilization and come along, for that boat won’t wait much longer,” said Mr. Selincourt, adding with a laugh:  “unless indeed you are beginning to repent, in which case it is not too late to change your mind and go back to Miss Griffith.”

“Thank you!  I never change my mind unless it is about the weather, and I wouldn’t turn back on this journey on any account whatever.”

“Not if I turned back myself?” he enquired, as they went on board the boat.

“No; unless, of course, you were ill, in which case, I suppose, my sense of duty would oblige me to stop, even while my inclination was dragging me, with both hands, as near to the North Pole as a woman may hope to get,” she said, with a nervous catching of her breath which showed some agitation behind.

“But James Bay isn’t the North Pole,” objected Mr. Selincourt.

“It is nearer though than this, I suppose.  And this is better than Montreal,” she answered, then turned to talk to a gentleman who had come on board before them, and was bound for a fishing camp higher up the lake.

Lake Temiskaming is thirty miles long, and they reached its end in the evening.  But, as Mr. Selincourt had made arrangements to keep the boat for use as a floating hotel until the next morning, their first night in the wilds was a very comfortable one.

At dawn next morning everyone was astir.  Three river boats were landed; these were made light enough for portage work, and strong enough for weight carrying.  With them were landed some men engaged at a point farther down the lake, who had undertaken to work the boats up the Abbitibbi River to Hannah Bay.  The men, although there were plenty of them, looked askance at the luggage which had to be unladen from the steamer and packed into the boats.  They were thinking of the portages, and the numberless times those bags, bales, bundles, and boxes would have to be carried over miles of portages on their shoulders.  But the pay was good, quite twice what they could have earned in any other direction, and as they were too wise to quarrel with their daily bread, which in this case was only biscuit, they accepted the burdens in silence.