234

CHAPTER XVI.
LE GRAND DIABLE SENDS BACK OUR MESSENGER 246

CHAPTER XVII.
THE PRICE OF BLOOD 253

CHAPTER XVIII.
LAPLANTE AND I RENEW ACQUAINTANCE 266

CHAPTER XIX.
WHEREIN LOUIS INTRIGUES 281

CHAPTER XX.
PLOTS AND COUNTER-PLOTS 297

CHAPTER XXI.
LOUIS PAYS ME BACK 313

CHAPTER XXII.
A DAY OF RECKONING 327

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE IROQUOIS PLAYS HIS LAST CARD 341

CHAPTER XXIV.
FORT DOUGLAS CHANGES MASTERS 350

CHAPTER XXV.
HIS LORDSHIP TO THE RESCUE 368

CHAPTER XXVI.
FATHER HOLLAND AND I IN THE TOILS 378

CHAPTER XXVII.
UNDER ONE ROOF 389

CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE LAST OF LOUIS' ADVENTURES 409

CHAPTER XXIX.
THE PRIEST JOURNEYS TO A FAR COUNTRY 433

LORDS OF THE NORTH

CHAPTER I

WHEREIN A LAD SEES MAKERS OF HISTORY

"Has any one seen Eric Hamilton?" I asked.

For an hour, or more, I had been lounging about the sitting-room of a
club in Quebec City, waiting for my friend, who had promised to join me
at dinner that night. I threw aside a news-sheet, which I had exhausted
down to minutest advertisements, stretched myself and strolled across to
a group of old fur-traders, retired partners of the North-West Company,
who were engaged in heated discussion with some officers from the
Citadel.

"Has any one seen Eric Hamilton?" I repeated, indifferent to the merits
of their dispute.

"That's the tenth time you've asked that question," said my Uncle Jack
MacKenzie, looking up sharply, "the tenth time, Sir, by actual count,"
and he puckered his brows at the interruption, just as he used to when I
was a little lad on his knee and chanced to break into one of his
hunting stories with a question at the wrong place.

"Hang it," drawled Colonel Adderly, a squatty man with an over-fed look
on his bulging, red cheeks, "hang it, you don't expect Hamilton? The
baby must be teething," and he added more chaff at the expense of my
friend, who had been the subject of good-natured banter among club
members for devotion to his first-born.

I saw Adderly's object was more to get away from the traders' arguments
than to answer me; and I returned the insolent challenge of his
unconcealed yawn in the faces of the