house to the rear of the court, I gave
both the slip. I had no chance to reconnoitre, but dug my hunting-knife
into the stockade, hoisted myself up the wooden wall, got a grip of the
top and threw myself over, escaping with no greater loss than boots
pulled off before climbing the palisade, and the Highland cap which
stuck fast to a picket as I alighted below. At dawn, bootless and
hatless, I came in sight of Fort Gibraltar and Father Holland, who was
scanning the prairie for my return, came running to greet me.

"The tip-top o' the mornin' to the renegade! I thought ye'd been
scalped--and so ye have been--nearly--only they mistook y'r hat for the
wool o' y'r crown. Boots gone too! Out wid your midnight pranks."

A succession of welcoming thuds accompanied the tirade. As breath
returned, I gasped out a brief account of the night.

"And now," he exclaimed triumphantly, "I have news to translate ye to a
sivinth hiven! Och! But it's clane cracked ye'll be when ye hear it.
Now, who's appointed to trade with the buffalo hunters but y'r very
self?"

It was with difficulty I refrained from embracing the bearer of such
good tidings.

"Be easy," he commanded. "Ye'll need these demonstrations, I'm
thinkin'--huntin' one lass and losin' y'r heart to another."

We arranged he should go to Fort Douglas for Frances Sutherland and I
was to set out later. They were to ride along the river-path south of
the forks where I could join them. I, myself, picked out and paid for
two extra horses, one a quiet little cayuse with ambling action, the
other, a muscular broncho. I had the satisfaction of seeing Father
Holland mounted on the latter setting out for Fort Douglas, while the
Indian pony wearing an empty side-saddle trotted along in tow.

The information I brought back from Fort Douglas delayed any more
hostile demonstrations against the Hudson's Bay. That very morning,
before I had finished breakfast, Governor McDonell rode over to Fort
Gibraltar, and on condition that Fort Douglas be left unmolested gave
himself up to the Nor'-Westers. At noon, when I was riding off to the
buffalo hunt and the Missouri, I saw the captain, smiling and debonair,
embarking--or rather being embarked--with North-West brigades, to be
sent on a free trip two thousand five hundred miles to Montreal.

"A safe voyage to ye," said Duncan Cameron, commander of Nor'-Westers,
as the ex-governor of Red River settled himself in a canoe. "A safe
voyage to ye, mo