was sound asleep in
a big chair on the far side of the table, remote from the candlelight.
He had been there when I entered, and I could not recall having seen him
before about the hotel; but of this I was not certain, since his face
was in shadow and half-covered by his hat. In the adjoining bar, to
judge from the clinking of glasses and bottles and the hum of
conversation, Madame Ragoul was busy with a few customers. The evening
was warm, and as I sat by the open window sucking at my long pipe, I
could hear on the one side the occasional challenge of the sentries high
up on the ramparts of the citadel. From the other direction came the
boisterous voices of boatmen and sailors down by the quays of the St.
Lawrence.

Two long months had passed since my arrival in Quebec. I was heartily
tired of its noisy, brawling life, hungry for the solitude of my native
wilderness. At first I had found much to see and enjoy, but the novelty
soon wore off. I had but few acquaintances in the town, and none of them
were to my fancy. I preferred the seclusion of the hotel, and the
company of the honest little Frenchman and his wife. Not so with
Baptiste. He had fallen in with a loose set of his own kind, and
frequented the low taverns by the riverside. That very evening I had
brought him home helplessly drunk, and seen him safely abed.

But before I go on, if you please, a word or two concerning the business
that brought me to Quebec. I have spoken of Griffith Hawke, the factor
of Fort Royal. He was a man of fifty-odd years, simple-hearted, absorbed
in his duties, and with not a spark of romance or sentiment in his
being. Would you believe that such a one could think of marriage? Yet it
was even so! A wife he suddenly resolved to have, and he sent for one to
the head office in London, as was a common custom in those days. Many a
woman was sent out by the company to cheer the lonely lot of their
employees.

To be brief, a correspondence was carried on for two years between Fort
Royal and London--that meant but a couple of letters on either side--and
the result of it was that I was now in Quebec to meet the bride of
Griffith Hawke and escort her to her distant home.

She was due in the early summer, being a passenger on the ship Good
Hope. I was to put her in care of Madame Ragoul, and we were both to
sail for Hudson's Bay at the first opportunity in one of the company's
vessels. The factor had not been able to leave his post for so lo