but a heathen Russian Jew an' his squaw?" He flung out a stubby hand where the thumb was blackened by the pipe-dottel. "What right or call have we wi' heathen foreigners in this land?" he said. "Give me the men o' my own breed. They're rotten some, but I know how an' why. I can deal wi' them. But I'll have no dealin's wi' a Russian Jew what's gotten a squaw for wife, an' a bunch o' papooses nasty as hisself. What do we want wi' his breed in our country? What do we want wi' him?"

"We must colonise," said Dick derisively.

Randal sat back with a grunt.

"Colonise be—— What for do we want to colonise wi' the alien for? Why arn't England sendin' us more of her own? By all accounts she's got about a couple or more too many in that London o' hers. Why arn't she sendin' them to us—an' why arn't we waitin' on her?"

Dick spoke with intimate remembrance of some men whom he knew.

"They are not entirely immaculate either," he suggested.

"What o' that? They come o' like blood. You can reckon what they'll do if a man hits or curses them. But the Lord A'mighty couldn't reckon on a Russian Jew—what's gotten a squaw to wife. That Russian acrost there—he took my axe last week, an' I tole him bring it back. Sakes, he had the woman an' kids into that tepee like he thought I was goin' to eat the whole bunch. I don't know how to handle his sort, an' I don't want." Randal spat out of the door; solemnly, reflectively, like one performing a rite. "Give me the men o' my own breed," he said again.

"Does he ill-treat the squaw?" demanded Dick.

Randal shrugged his shoulders.

"Not more'n nat'ral," he said.

"Which means—not more than the men of our own breed." Dick laughed. "Lord knows what the Canadian of the future is going to be," he said. "But he won't be that crawling baby with the high cheekbones, and he won't quite—be you or me. If he has luck he may be a better man than either of us. Where are you going to bed us down to-night, Randal?"