orm of an officer of the time of Wellington, and beside it--the
leather coat and fur cap of a trapper of the Hudson's Bay Company! At
that window I commenced to build again upon the ashes of last night's
fire. Pretty Pierre, the French half-breed, or rather the original of
him as I knew him when a child, looked out of the window at me. So
I went home, and sitting in front of the fire which had received my
manuscript the night before, with a pad upon my knee, I began to write
'The Patrol of the Cypress Hills' which opens 'Pierre and His People'.

The next day was Sunday. I went to service at the Foundling Hospital in
Bloomsbury, and while listening superficially to the sermon I was also
reading the psalms. I came upon these words, "Free among the Dead
like unto them that are wounded and lie in the grave, that are out of
remembrance," and this text, which I used in the story 'The Patrol of
the Cypress Hills', became, in a sense, the text for all the stories
which came after. It seemed to suggest the lives and the end of the
lives of the workers of the pioneer world.

So it was that Pierre and His People chiefly concerned those who had
been wounded by Fate, and had suffered the robberies of life and time
while they did their work in the wide places. It may be that my readers
have found what I tried, instinctively, to convey in the pioneer life I
portrayed--"The soul of goodness in things evil." Such, on the whole, my
observation had found in life, and the original of Pierre, with all his
mistakes, misdemeanours, and even crimes, was such an one as I would
have gone to in trouble or in hour of need, knowing that his face would
never be turned from me.

These stories made their place at once. The 'Patrol of the Cypress
Hills' was published first in 'The Independent' of New York and in
'Macmillan's Magazine' in England. Mr. Bliss Carman, then editor of
'The Independent', eagerly published several of them--'She of the Triple
Chevron' and others. Mr. Carman's sympathy and insight were a great help
to me in those early days. The then editor of 'Macmillan's Magazine',
Mr. Mowbray Morris, was not, I think, quite so sure of the merits of
the Pierre stories. He published them, but he was a little credulous
regarding them, and he did not pat me on the back by any means. There
was one, however, who made the best that is in 'Pierre and His People'
possible; this was the unforgettable W. E. Henley, editor of The
'National Observer'. O