boy's school in
England as soon as he was nine. I told him it could not be. Jim had
said to me that we would bring up our boy in the wild, new country,
where men are honorable and life is simple. I would follow Jim's
wishes--our boy would not go to England. I defied him. I saw his
temper then. He told me I had nothing to say about it, he was his
grandson's guardian. Jim had made a will before he left home, making
his father executor of his estate. He told me the father was the only
parent the child had in the eyes of the law, and I had no claim on my
boy.

"I had no one to turn to. Jim's mother was one of those sweet,
yielding women, who said 'Yes, dear,' to everything he said. She
followed him around, picking up the things he scattered and the chairs
he kicked over in his fits of temper. Sometimes when he swore she
dabbed her eyes with a daintily trimmed handkerchief. That was her
only protest. She advised me to say nothing, but just do whatever
'father' told me, and I said I would see him in hell first, and at
that she ran out with her fingers in her ears.

"Then a strange thing happened. McPherson, my cousin's husband, the
factor from Fort Resolution, met Jim's father at a lodge meeting, and
told him Jim and I had gone away without being married--the missionary
had refused to marry us--and we had gone away. I think he knew better,
for in the north country every one knows everyone else, and it was
well known that Jim and I were married at Hay River. He came home
raging and called me names. I'll never forget how they went crashing
through my brain. He was a proud man, and this 'disgrace' of Jim's,
as he said, was the finishing touch. But when he began to abuse Jim
I raged too. I said things to him which perhaps had better been left
unsaid. I was sorry afterwards, for Jim was fond of his father for all
his blustering ways. I did not tell him that Jim and I were legally
married, for the fear was on me that he could take little Jim from
me, and it did not matter to me what they thought of me. I had one
thought--and that was to keep my boy and bring him up myself--bring
him up to be a man like his father.

"That night I left. I was proud, too, and I left money to pay for
the time I had been with them. I had a few hundred dollars left, not
enough to take me back to Purple Springs. My first plan was to get a
housekeeper's position, but I soon found I could not do that--the
work was hard, and Jim was not wanted. I worked