This winter at the Post, for Antoine, at least, was also a season of great activity. Antoine’s astute employer, an independent French trader, had conceived a scheme to secure the trade of the People of the Interior when they should come out from the forests in the spring. The scheme was nothing less than to have a score of cases of the strongest fire water sent to the lake, at great expense, hidden from the eyes of the revenue officers en route. The whole was to cost about all that the independent French company could afford to put into the venture, and incidentally, as his employer finally made clear to him, to absorb the whole of Antoine’s available estate in the shape of over a thousand dollars ready cash. Antoine and his employer gloated together over the scoop that would be made when the People of the Interior were told that the old company factor had died and the Post was closed, and learned that the new company had gone to the trouble of providing for them their beloved liquor so that there should be at least something for which to trade their furs. It was planned that Antoine should ascend the river Where-Moose-Abound, down which the People of the Interior generally came, a several days’ journey, and there intercept them and put through the hoax.