're coming to our department at Fort
Gibraltar, and I want you to give Father Holland a place in your canoes
to come north with us. He's on his way to the Missouri."

At that instant Duncan Cameron came up to Grant and muttered something.
Both men at once went back to the council hall of the General Assembly.
I heard the courtyard gossips vowing that the Hudson's Bay would cease
its aggressions, now that Cameron and Cuthbert Grant were to lead the
Nor'-Westers; but I made no inquiry. Next to keeping his own counsel and
giving credence to no man, the fur trader learns to gain information
only with ears and eyes, and to ask no questions. The scurrying turmoil
in the fort lasted all day. At dusk, natives were expelled from the
stockades and work stopped.

Grand was the foregathering around the supper table of the great dining
hall that night. _Bourgeois_, clerks and traders from afar, explorers,
from the four corners of the earth--assembled four hundred strong,
buoyant and unrestrained, enthusiastically loyal to the company, and
tingling with hilarious fellowship over this, the first reunion for
twenty years. Though their manner and clothing be uncouth, men who have
passed a lifetime exploring northern wilds have that to say, which is
worth hearing. So the feast was prolonged till candles sputtered low and
pitch-pine fagots flared out. Indeed, before the gathering broke up,
flagons as well as candles had to be renewed. Lanterns swung from the
black rafters of the ceiling. Tallow candles stood in solemn rows down
the centre of each table, showing that men, not women, had prepared the
banquet. Stuck in iron brackets against the walls were pine torches,
that had been dipped in some resinous mixture and now flamed brightly
with a smell not unlike incense. Tables lined the four walls of the hall
and ran in the form of a cross athwart the middle of the room. Backless
benches were on both sides of every table. At the end, chairs were
placed, the seats of honor for famous _Bourgeois_. British flags had
been draped across windows and colored bunting hung from rafter to
rafter.

"Ah, mon! Is no this fine? This is worth living for! This is the company
to serve!" Duncan Cameron exclaimed as he sank into one of the chairs at
the head of the centre table. The Scotchman's heart softened before
those platters of venison and wild fowl, and he almost broke into
geniality. "Here, Gillespie, to my right," he called, motioning me to
the edg