isive
action. He intended to go off again in a few hours to
Prince Albert to direct the siege against that town. Only
those who had witnessed the wantonness and the capture
of the "white witch" followed. Most of the rebels were
too busy improving the shining hour of unlimited loot.
A half-breed on one side and an Indian on the other, each
with a dirty mitt on Dorothy's shoulder, led her to the
Judgment Hall of the dusky prophet, Louis David Riel,
"stickit priest," and now malcontent and political agitator
by profession. This worthy gentleman had already cost
the Government a rebellion, but why he should have been
allowed to run to a second is one of those seeming
mysteries that can only be accounted for by the too
clement policy of a British Government.

Dorothy and her captors entered the small porch of the
chapel and passed into the sacred edifice. For one like
Riel, who had been educated for the priesthood in Lower
Canada, it was a strange use to put such a place to. The
scene when they entered almost defies description. It
was crowded with breeds and Indians armed to the teeth
with all manner of antiquated weapons. Most of them wore
blue copotes and kept on their unplucked beaver caps or
long red tuques. Haranguing them close to the altar was
the great Riel himself, the terror of the Saskatchewan.

He did not look the dangerous, religious fanatic that he
was in reality. He was about five feet seven in height,
with red hair and beard. His face was pale and flabby,
and his dark grey eyes, set close together, glowed when
he spoke and were very restless. His nose was slightly
aquiline, his neck long, and his lips thick. His voice,
though low and gentle in ordinary conversation, was loud
and abrupt now that he was excited.

He was so carried away by the exuberance of his own
eloquence when Dorothy and her captors entered, that he
still kept on in a state of rapt ecstasy. His semi-mystical
oration was a weird jumble of religion and lawlessness,
devout exhortation, riot, plunder, prayer, and pillage.
He extolled the virtues of the murderous Poundmaker and
Big Bear. He said that Mistawasis and Chicastafasin, the
chiefs, and some others, were feeble of heart and
backsliders, for they had left their reserves to escape
being drawn into the trouble. Crowfoot, head chief of
the Blackfoot nation, was protesting his loyalty to the
Lieutenant-Governor, and his squaws would one day stone
him to death as a judgment. Fort P