one might resent. "To the what, did you say Hamilton had gone?"[Pg 18]

[Pg 18]

"To the domestics," says he laughing, then to the others, as if he had listened to every word of the explanations, "and if His Little Excellency, Governor MacDonell, by the grace of Lord Selkirk, ruler over gentlemen adventurers in no-man's-land, expels the good Nor'-Westers from nowhere to somewhere else, what do the good Nor'-Westers intend doing to the Little Tyrant?"

"Charles the First him," responds a wag of the club.

"Where's your Cromwell?" laughs the colonel.

"Our Cromwell's a Cameron, temper of a Lucifer, oaths before action," answers the wag.

"Tuts!" exclaims Uncle Jack testily. "We'll settle His Lordship's little martinet of the plains. Warrant for his arrest! Fetch him out!"

"Warrant 43rd King George III. will do it," added one of the partners who had looked the matter up.

"43rd King George III. doesn't give jurisdiction for trial in Lower Canada, if offense be committed elsewhere," interjects a lawyer with show of importance.

"A Daniel come to judgment," laughs the colonel, winking as my uncle's wrath rose.

"Pah!" says Mr. Jack MacKenzie in disgust, stamping on the floor with both feet. "You lawyers needn't think you'll have your pickings when fur companies quarrel. We'll ship him out, that's all. Neither of the companies wants to advertise its profits—"[Pg 19]

[Pg 19]

"Or its methods—ahem!" interjects the colonel.

"And its private business," adds my uncle, looking daggers at Adderly, "by going to court."

Then they all rose to go to the dining-room; and as I stepped out to have a look down the street for Hamilton, I heard Colonel Adderly's last fling—"Pretty rascals, you gentlemen adventurers are, so shy and coy about law courts."

It was a dark night, with a few lonely stars in mid-heaven, a sickle moon cutting the horizon cloud-rim and a noisy March wind that boded snow from The Labrador, or sleet from the Gulf.

When Eric Hamilton left the Hudson's Bay 

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