was heard, and old Mr Kennedy
rushed out of the fort in a towering rage.

Now Mr Kennedy had no reason whatever for being angry. He was only a
visitor at the fort, and so had no concern in the behaviour of those
connected with it. He was not even in the Company's service now, and
could not, therefore, lay claim, as one of its officers, to any right to
interfere with its men. But Mr Kennedy never acted much from reason;
impulse was generally his guiding-star. He had, moreover, been an
absolute monarch, and a commander of men, for many years past in his
capacity of fur-trader. Being, as we have said, a powerful, fiery man,
he had ruled very much by means of brute force--a species of suasion, by
the way, which is too common among many of the gentlemen (?) in the
employment of the Hudson's Bay Company. On hearing, therefore, that the
men were fighting in front of the fort, Mr Kennedy rushed out in a
towering rage.

"Oh, you precious blackguards!" he cried, running up to the combatants,
while with flashing eyes he gazed first at one and then at the other, as
if uncertain on which to launch his ire. "Have you no place in the
world to fight but _here_--eh, blackguards?"

"O monsieur," said Baptiste, lowering his hands, and assuming that
politeness of demeanour which seems inseparable from French blood,
however much mixed with baser fluid, "I was just giving _that dog_ a
thrashing, monsieur."

"Go!" cried Mr Kennedy, in a voice of thunder, turning to Hugh, who
still stood in a pugilistic attitude, with very little respect in his
looks.

Hugh hesitated to obey the order; but Mr Kennedy continued to advance,
grinding his teeth and working his fingers convulsively, as if belonged
to lay violent hold of the Orkney-man's swelled nose; so he retreated in
his uncertainty, but still with his face to the foe. As has been
already said, the Assiniboine River flows within a hundred yards of the
gate of Fort Garry. The two men, in their combat, had approached pretty
near to the bank, at a place where it descends somewhat precipitately
into the stream. It was towards this bank that Hugh Mathison was now
retreating, crab fashion, followed by Mr Kennedy, and both of them so
taken up with each other that neither perceived the fact until Hugh's
heel struck against a stone just at the moment that Mr Kennedy raised
his clinched fist in a threatening attitude. The effect of this
combination was to pitch the poor man head over heels