ocked him in a dungeon. A terrible
fever seized her, and she cried out in her delirium to
take her to her lover. For many days after the fire of
her illness had cooled, she lay between life and death
like some fitful shadow; but when a letter came to her,
in the dear writing that she so well knew, announcing
that he was once more free, the enfeebled blood began to
stir in her veins, and a faint tint of rose began to
appear on the wasted cheek.

"I will run over and see my little love during the first
breathing time that offers," he wrote. "I hope, ma amie,
you are not sorrowing at my absence. No hour passes over
me, whether wake or dreaming, that I do not sigh for my
darling Marie; but I am consoled with the thought that
when the turmoil is ended, when this land of tumult and
tyranny has become a region of peace and fruitful industry,
I will be able to bring my darling back to her dear old
home; and in a little wed her there, and then take her
to my arms for ever."

This was very sweet tidings to the desolate girl. She
read the letter over and over till she could repeat every
word of the eight large pages which it contained. When
she began to grow stronger she would keep it in her lap
all day, and touch it tenderly as a young mother would
her sleeping babe. Before blowing out her lamp in the
night she would kiss the letter, and put it under her
pillow. When she opened her large bright eyes in the
morning she would take it, kiss it, and read it once
again.

During all this time the fire of Riel's two-fold passion
was not burning lower:--nay, it was growing stronger.
His aim now was to make himself such a ruler and master
in the settlement that every word of his should be as
law, and that no man, not all the people, might disobey
his command or censure his action.

"So Thomas Scott is to marry her, when the strife ends,"
he would speculate. "Ah, Monsieur Scott, if to that time
you defer your nuptials, they shall take place in heaven
--or in hell." For the furtherance of his diabolical
personal aims he now began to assume a benignant, fatherly
tone, and when he issued his famous "Proclamation to the
people of the North-West," everybody was struck by the
calmness, the restraint, and even the dignity of its
language. [Footnote *1] He likewise endeavoured to show
that he was not a disturber whose only mission was to
pull down. Through his instrumentality, and at his
suggestion in every one of its details, a Bill