t the chance
I'll cook for him on my knees--cook for him and serve him; he saved my
life and nearly lost his own--while you, Shorty, a far better swimmer,
would have let me drown like a dog."

"He's nothing but a North-West halfbreed," sneered Shorty, hiding his
cowardice behind ill words for others.

"So is my mother a North-West halfbreed, and she's the loveliest, the
grandest woman in all Canada!" said Hal in a voice that rang clear,
sharp, strong as a man's.

There was a dead silence. "Do you hear me, you fellows?" tormented
Hal's even voice again, "you who have of your own free will placed me,
a quarter blood, as the leading boy in this school, my mother is a
halfbreed, if you wish to use that refined term, and my mother is proud
of it. Her mother, my grandmother, wore a blanket and leggings and
smoked a red stone pipe upon the Red River years ago, and I tell you my
mother is proud of it, and so am I. I have never told you fellows this
before--what was the use? I felt you would never understand, but you
hear me now! Do you quite grasp what I am telling you--that _my mother
is a halfbreed_?"

Shorty's hand went blindly to his head; he looked dazed, breathless.
"Lady Bennington a halfbreed!" was all he said.

"Yes, Lady Bennington," said Hal. "And now will you let Shag read that
address?" But Shag was at his elbow.

"Hal, Hal, oh, why did you tell them?" he cried.

Hal whirled about like one shot. "_Tell them_--what do you mean by
tell _them_? Did you know this all along?"

"Yes," said Shag regretfully. "I always knew that Lady Bennington was
half Indian, but I thought that you didn't, and I promised father that
I should never tell when I came down East." But softly as he spoke, the
boys near by heard him. "Do you mean to say," Locke, gripping Shag's
shoulders in vice-like fingers, "that all this time we have been ragging
you and running on you, that you knew Hal's mother was a half Indian and
you never said a word?"

"Why should I?" asked Shag, raising his eyebrows.

"Boys," said Locke, facing the room like a man, "we've been--well, just
cads. And right here I propose that Shag Larocque read the address to
His Excellency to-day."

"And I second the motion," said Shorty--"second it heartily"; then he
walked over to Shag.

"I'm not going to ask you to shake hands with me, Larocque," he said;
"I've been too much of a cad for that. You must despise me too much to
forgive me, despise me for my cowardice i