In the intervals between teaching the boys she kept the books for her father, and even attended to the wants of an occasional customer when 'Duke Radford was busy or absent.
The store at Roaring Water Portage was awkwardly placed for business.

It stood on a high bank overlooking the rapids, and when it was built, five years before, had been the centre of a mining village.

But the mining village had been abandoned for three years now, because the vein of copper had ended in a thick seam of coal, which, under present circumstances, was not worth working.

Now the nearest approach to a village was at Seal Cove, at the mouth of the river, nearly three miles away, where there were about half a dozen wooden huts, and the liquor saloon kept by Oily Dave when he was at home, and shut up when he was absent on fishing expeditions.
Although houses were so scarce, there was no lack of trade for the lonely store in the woods.

All through the summer there was a procession of birchbark canoes, filled with red men and white, coming down the river to the bay, laden with skins of wolf, fox, beaver, wolverine, squirrel, and skunk, the harvest of the winter's trapping.