Lords of the North | Page 2

to the workings of the great fur trading companies. Theirs were the trappers and runners, the Coureurs des Bois and Bois-Brul��s, who traversed the immense solitudes of the pathless west; theirs, the brigades of gay voyageurs chanting hilarious refrains in unison with the rhythmic sweep of paddle blades and following unknown streams until they had explored from St. Lawrence to MacKenzie River; and theirs, the merry lads of the north, blazing a track through the wilderness and leaving from Atlantic to Pacific lonely stockaded fur posts--footprints for the pioneers' guidance. The whitewashed palisades of many little settlements on the rivers and lakes of the far north are poor relics of the fur companies' ancient grandeur. That broad domain stretching from Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean, reclaimed from savagery for civilization, is the best monument to the unheralded forerunners of empire.
RUFUS GILLESPIE.
WINNIPEG--ONE TIME FORT GARRY FORMERLY RED RIVER SETTLEMENT, 19th June, 18--
Transcriber's note: Minor typos have been corrected.

CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
WHEREIN A LAD SEES MAKERS OF HISTORY 9
CHAPTER II.
A STRONG MAN IS BOWED 23
CHAPTER III.
NOVICE AND EXPERT 38
CHAPTER IV.
LAUNCHED INTO THE UNKNOWN 55
CHAPTER V.
CIVILIZATION'S VENEER RUBS OFF 70
CHAPTER VI.
A GIRDLE OF AGATES RECALLED 92
CHAPTER VII.
THE LORDS OF THE NORTH IN COUNCIL 99
CHAPTER VIII.
THE LITTLE STATUE ANIMATE 118
CHAPTER IX.
DECORATING A BIT OF STATUARY 131
CHAPTER X.
MORE STUDIES IN STATUARY 144
CHAPTER XI.
A SHUFFLING OF ALLEGIANCE 163
CHAPTER XII.
HOW A YOUTH BECAME A KING 181
CHAPTER XIII.
THE BUFFALO HUNT 200
CHAPTER XIV.
IN SLIPPERY PLACES 220
CHAPTER XV.
THE GOOD WHITE FATHER 234
CHAPTER XVI.
LE GRAND DIABLE SENDS BACK OUR MESSENGER 246
CHAPTER XVII.
THE PRICE OF BLOOD 253
CHAPTER XVIII.
LAPLANTE AND I RENEW ACQUAINTANCE 266
CHAPTER XIX.
WHEREIN LOUIS INTRIGUES 281
CHAPTER XX.
PLOTS AND COUNTER-PLOTS 297
CHAPTER XXI.
LOUIS PAYS ME BACK 313
CHAPTER XXII.
A DAY OF RECKONING 327
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE IROQUOIS PLAYS HIS LAST CARD 341
CHAPTER XXIV.
FORT DOUGLAS CHANGES MASTERS 350
CHAPTER XXV.
HIS LORDSHIP TO THE RESCUE 368
CHAPTER XXVI.
FATHER HOLLAND AND I IN THE TOILS 378
CHAPTER XXVII.
UNDER ONE ROOF 389
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE LAST OF LOUIS' ADVENTURES 409
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE PRIEST JOURNEYS TO A FAR COUNTRY 433

LORDS OF THE NORTH
CHAPTER I
WHEREIN A LAD SEES MAKERS OF HISTORY
"Has any one seen Eric Hamilton?" I asked.
For an hour, or more, I had been lounging about the sitting-room of a club in Quebec City, waiting for my friend, who had promised to join me at dinner that night. I threw aside a news-sheet, which I had exhausted down to minutest advertisements, stretched myself and strolled across to a group of old fur-traders, retired partners of the North-West Company, who were engaged in heated discussion with some officers from the Citadel.
"Has any one seen Eric Hamilton?" I repeated, indifferent to the merits of their dispute.
"That's the tenth time you've asked that question," said my Uncle Jack MacKenzie, looking up sharply, "the tenth time, Sir, by actual count," and he puckered his brows at the interruption, just as he used to when I was a little lad on his knee and chanced to break into one of his hunting stories with a question at the wrong place.
"Hang it," drawled Colonel Adderly, a squatty man with an over-fed look on his bulging, red cheeks, "hang it, you don't expect Hamilton? The baby must be teething," and he added more chaff at the expense of my friend, who had been the subject of good-natured banter among club members for devotion to his first-born.
I saw Adderly's object was more to get away from the traders' arguments than to answer me; and I returned the insolent challenge of his unconcealed yawn in the faces of the elder men by drawing a chair up to the company of McTavishes and Frobishers and McGillivrays and MacKenzies and other retired veterans of the north country.
"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said I, "what were you saying to Colonel Adderly?"
"Talk of your military conquests, Sir," my uncle continued, "Why, Sir, our men have transformed a wilderness into an empire. They have blazed a path from Labrador on the Atlantic to that rock on the Pacific, where my esteemed kinsman, Sir Alexander MacKenzie, left his inscription of discovery. Mark my words, Sir, the day will come when the names of David Thompson and Simon Fraser and Sir Alexander MacKenzie will rank higher in English annals than Braddock's and----"
"Egad!" laughed the officer, amused at my uncle, who had been a leading spirit in the North-West Company and whose enthusiasm knew no bounds, "Egad! You gentlemen adventurers wouldn't need to have accomplished much to eclipse Braddock." And he paused with a questioning supercilious smile. "Sir Alexander was a first cousin of yours, was he not?"
My uncle flushed hotly. That slighting reference to gentlemen adventurers, with just a perceptible emphasis of the adventurers, was not to his taste.
"Pardon me, Sir," said he stiffly, "you forget that by the terms of their charter, the Ancient and Honorable Hudson's Bay Company have the privilege of being known as gentlemen adventurers. And by the Lord, Sir,