Chief Factor MacKinroy himself would have been the first to assign to the missionary, the Rev. John Chambers, M.A., Oxon., the position of premier influence and even of authority, not only in the little community at the Post but in the whole district tributary to the Post, with its nondescript population of white traders and trappers, half-breeds and Indians. And this was due to those mysterious qualities that go to the making of personality, and to the services which the possession of these qualities fitted him to render. He was the titular head of the Anglican Mission, which of course gave him a standing at once influential and authoritative, but had he not been more his official position as a dignitary of a great church would have gone but a small way to win him place and power. Fifteen years ago, raw from the greatest university in the English speaking world, he had come up with a Hudson’s Bay Company brigade and had planted himself here in this far north outpost of civilisation, to establish a mission in partibus infidelium for his church. Quite a year before his arrival, his coming had been duly announced by the company authorities in London to Factor MacKinroy, who received the announcement with explosive profanity in the “twa langiges” and then speedily forgot all about the thing. “And who the deevil will you be?” was the Factor’s greeting, when the fly-bitten and sorely battered representative of the church disentangled himself from the motley crew of the brigade and presented himself to the Factor’s gaze. “Ah—I beg your pardon. Ah—Chambers is my name——” “And what the deevil will be your business in these parts?” inquired the Factor, on the lookout for doubtful characters, rival traders, prying politicians, globe trotters and the like. “Before I answer your polite inquiry, sir, may I ask who the devil are you?” For quite ten portentous seconds the Factor glared at the little man whose steady blue eyes twinkled pleasantly at him out of a face brick red and horribly distorted by the assiduous attentions of the swarms of various kinds of flies, big and little, black, brown and grey, for the past six weeks. During those portentous ten seconds the Factor’s keen eyes had been taking stock of the little man before him, with swift appraising glances. “God bless my soul!” said he at length. “And it is yourself will be the new minister. And I will be asking your pardon, for I can well see you are a man as well.” So began a friendship that fifteen years of mutual knowledge and of common experience of the toils and perils of the wild North land welded into something that no earthly strain could break.