ise is the only law in the
fur-trader's realm. Special attentions, too, must be paid those old
retainers who have acted as mentors of the fort in times of trouble.

A few years ago it would not have been safe to give this treat inside
the fort walls. Rations would have been served through loop-holes and
the feast held outside the gates; but so faithfully have the Indians
become bound to the Hudson's Bay Company there are not three forts in
the fur territory where Indians must be excluded.

Of the feast little need be said. Like the camel, the Indian lays up
store for the morrow, judging from his capacity for weeks of morrows.
His benefactor no more dines with him than a plantation master of the
South would have dined with feasting slaves. Elsewhere a bell calls the
company officers to breakfast at 7.30, dinner at 1, supper at 7.
Officers dine first, white hunters and trappers second, that difference
between master and servant being maintained which is part of the
company's almost military discipline. In the large forts are libraries,
whither resort the officers for the long winter nights. But over the
feast wild hilarity reigns.

A French-Canadian fiddler strikes up a tuneless jig that sets the
Indians pounding the floor in figureless dances with moccasined heels
till midday glides into midnight and midnight to morning. I remember
hearing of one such midday feast in Red River settlement that prolonged
itself past four of the second morning. Against the walls sit old folks
spinning yarns of the past. There is a print of Sir George Simpson
behind one _raconteur's_ head. Ah! yes, the oldest guides all remember
Sir George, though half a century has passed since his day. He was the
governor who travelled with flags flying from every prow, and cannon
firing when he left the forts, and men drawn up in procession like
soldiers guarding an emperor when he entered the fur posts with
_coureurs_ and all the flourish of royal state. Then some story-teller
recalls how he has heard the old guides tell of the imperious governor
once provoking personal conflict with an equally imperious steersman,
who first ducked the governor into a lake they were traversing and then
ducked into the lake himself to rescue the governor.

And there is a crucifix high on the wall left by Pere Lacomb the last
time the famous missionary to the red men of the Far North passed this
way; and every Indian calls up some kindness done, some sacrifice by
Fathe