gentlemen in the service can select wives.
The result is, many of them marry native women, or the daughters of
mixed marriages contracted by the older officials. These women make
excellent wives and mothers, and, being ambitious to learn, they often
become as clever and bright as their white sisters, to many of whom they
are superior in personal appearance. Into many a cozy home can the
adventurous tourist go, and never would he dream that the stately,
refined, cultured woman at the head of the home, honoured by her husband
and beloved by her children, if not of pure Indian blood, was at least
the daughter or granddaughter of a pure Indian.

Very romantic is the story of Mr Ross's love adventure, and here it is
given for the first time. Long years before this, when Mr Ross was
comparatively a young man, he saw in one of the Indian villages a little
dark-eyed native girl, who looked to him as beautiful as a poet's dream.
Although she was only ten or twelve years old, and he approaching
thirty, he fell desperately in love with her, and said she must yet be
his wife. He knew her language, and soon found that the bright and
beautiful child was willing some time in the future to be his bride.

So it was arranged that she should be sent to the old land to be
educated. Fortunately good Bishop Anderson was returning to England in
connection with his work in the Red River Settlement, going by the
Hudson Bay Company's ship. Wenonah was placed in charge of his family
on the voyage, and at the journey's end was sent to a first-class
school, called "The Nest." Here at Mr Ross's expense she was kept for
several years, until she was not only highly educated as a student, but
loving, interested ladies taught her, in their kindness, the things
essential for a good housekeeper to know.

When she was about twenty years of age she returned to the Hudson Bay
territories, and was married by the missionary to Mr Ross, who had so
well-earned the skillful, loving wife she ever proved to be. Over
twenty years of wedded life had been theirs before Mr Ross retired from
the service, and several more had passed ere our story opened. Two sons
were away from home as clerks in the company's service at some remote
stations similar to those in which most of the officials had begun their
apprenticeship.

At home were two bright girls about ten and eight years of age, and a
younger brother hardly six, whose name was Roderick. The names of the