There is no measuring device for joy, and no foot-rule one can lay on emotion, but it is questionable if to the heart of any man comes greater lightness than to that of the one who by stress and endurance in the wilderness, upturns the treasure he has so arduously sought. These moments are few and rapt and precious, and they glowed in the slow brain of the half-breed Fisette as nothing else had ever glowed. It was true that he stood to do well and earn independence out of this discovery, but he was conscious at the instant of a reward greater than ease and comfort and money to spend. He had backed himself, single-handed, against the wilderness, and he had won. Again he unrolled from a strip of caribou skin the fragment of ore Clark had given him--the fragment he was to match--and laid it amongst the fresh chippings at his feet. Only by size and shape could he distinguish it. Now it may be assumed that Fisette forthwith threw his tattered hat into the air and gave way to noisy manifestations of joy. He did nothing of the kind, for in his hairy breast were combined the practical side of his French father and the noiseless secrecy of an Indian mother. There was much to be done, and he went about it with voiceless determination. First of all he blazed a jack pine whose knotted roots grasped nakedly at the ridge, and marked it boldly with his name and the number of his prospecting license and the date, which latter, he remembered contentedly, was the birthday of his youngest child. This accomplished, he disappeared in the bush and two hours later reappeared bending forward under a pack strap whose broad center strained against his swarthy forehead. And in the pack were a small shed tent and his camping outfit. Making a tiny, smokeless fire of dry wood, he cooked and ate, stopping now and again to listen intently. But all he heard was the chuckle of a hidden spring and the insolent familiarity of a blue jay, which, perched in a branch immediately above, eyed the prospector's frying pan with a bright inquiring gaze. By noon of the second day Fisette had blazed the enclosing boundaries of three claims, along the middle of which for three quarters of a mile he had traced the ridge of ore, and when corner posts were in, he shouldered his pack and, stepping quietly to the river where his canoe was hidden three miles away, began his homeward journey. He paddled easily, squatting in the middle like his ancestors, and feeling a new pleasure in the steady pressure of his noiseless blade. He did not experience any particular sense of triumph, but when, six hours afterward, he saw the glint of Lake Superior around a bend in the river he laughed softly to himself. IX.--CONCERNING THE APPREHENSION OF CLARK'S DIRECTORS