ed to."

"Listen!" resumed the Highlander, with a serious air that was unusual in
him. "I read the future thus. You have already, as I am aware, sent in
your resignation. Well, you will not only quit the service of the HBC,
but you will go and join your friend Maxby in Colorado; you will become
a farmer; and, worst of all, you will take my dear sister with you."

"In some respects," said Lumley, also becoming serious, "you are right.
I have made up my mind that, God willing, I shall quit the service--not
that I find fault with it, very much the reverse; but it is too much of
a life of exile and solitude to my dear Jessie. I will also go to
Colorado and join Maxby, but I won't take your sister from you. I will
take you with me, brother-in-law, if you will consent to go, and we
shall all live together. What say you?"

Macnab shook his head, sadly.

"You forget my boy, that your case is very different from mine. You
have only just reached the end of your second term of service, and are
still a youth. Whereas, I am a commissioned officer of the Fur Trade,
with a fairish income, besides being an elderly man, and not very keen
to throw all up and begin life over again."

There was much in what Macnab said, yet not so much but that Lumley set
himself, with all his powers of suasion and suavity, to induce his
brother-in-law to change his mind. But Lumley had yet to learn that no
power of Saxon logic, or personal influence, can move the will of a man
from beyond the Grampian range who has once made up his mind.

When all was said, Macnab still shook his head, and smiled regretfully.

"It's of no use wasting your breath, my boy,--but tell me, is Jessie
anxious for this change?"

"She is anxious. She naturally pines for female society--though she did
not say so until I urged her solemnly to tell me all her mind. And she
is right. It is not good for woman, any more than for man, to be alone,
and when I am away on these long expeditions--taking the furs to the
depot, searching out the Indians, hunting, etcetera,--she is left
unavoidably alone. I have felt this very strongly, and that was why, as
you know, I had made up my mind during the winter, and written to the
governor and council that, as my time had expired, I meant to retire
this spring."

"Yes, boy, I know," returned Macnab. "I foresaw all this even long
before you began to move in the matter, and I also took steps with a
view to contingencies. You k