a good man needin' her. Mother o' Moses, how
manny! From Terry O'Ryan, brother of a peer, at Latouche, to Bernard
Bapty, son of a millionaire, at Vancouver, there's a string o' them. All
pride and self; and as fair a lot they've been as ever entered for the
Marriage Cup. Now, isn't that so, father?"

Finden's brogue did not come from a plebeian origin. It was part of his
commercial equipment, an asset of his boyhood spent among the peasants
on the family estate in Galway.

Father Bourassa fanned himself with the black broadbrim hat he wore, and
looked benignly but quizzically on the wiry, sharp-faced Irishman.

"You t'ink her heart is leetla. But perhaps it is your mind not so big
enough to see--hein?" The priest laughed noiselessly, showing
white teeth. "Was it so selfish in Madame to refuse the name of
Finden--n'est-ce pas?"

Finden flushed, then burst into a laugh. "I'd almost forgotten I was one
of them--the first almost. Blessed be he that expects nothing, for he'll
get it, sure. It was my duty, and I did it. Was she to feel that Jansen
did not price her high? Bedad, father, I rose betimes and did it, before
anny man should say he set me the lead. Before the carpet in the parlour
was down, and with the bare boards soundin' to my words, I offered her
the name of Finden."

"And so--the first of the long line! Bien, it is an honour." The priest
paused a moment, looked at Finden with a curious reflective look, and
then said: "And so you t'ink there is no one; that she will say yes not
at all--no?"

They were sitting on Father Bourassa's veranda, on the outskirts of
the town, above the great river, along which had travelled millions of
bygone people, fighting, roaming, hunting, trapping; and they could hear
it rushing past, see the swirling eddies, the impetuous currents, the
occasional rafts moving majestically down the stream. They were facing
the wild North, where civilisation was hacking and hewing and ploughing
its way to newer and newer cities, in an empire ever spreading to the
Pole.

Finden's glance loitered on this scene before he replied. At length,
screwing up one eye, and with a suggestive smile, he answered: "Sure,
it's all a matter of time, to the selfishest woman. 'Tis not the same
with women as with men; you see, they don't get younger--that's a point.
But"--he gave a meaning glance at the priest--"but perhaps she's not
going to wait for that, after all. And there he rides, a fine figure of
a m