itizen, but a man who trailed glory in his wake. More than this,
Ould Michael was a friend to all, and they loved him for his simple,
generous heart. Too generous, as it turned out, for every month it was
his custom to summon his friends to Paddy Dougan's bar and spend the
greater part of the monthly remittance that came in his letter from
home. That monthly letter should be placed in the category of household
gods with the flag, the garden and the postoffice. Its arrival was
always an occasion for celebration--not for the remittance it contained,
but for the wealth of love and tender memory it brought to Ould Michael
in this far-off land.

Late in the afternoon, just before the arrival of the mail-stage, there
rode up the bench towards the postoffice a man remarkable even in that
company of remarkable men. He was tall--a good deal over six
feet--spare, bony, with huge hands and feet and evidently possessed of
immense strength. His face and head were covered with a mass of shaggy
hair--brick-red mixed with grey--and out of this mass of grizzled hair
gleamed two small grey eyes, very bright and very keen.

"Howly mither av Moses!" shouted Ould Michael rushing towards him; "'tis
McFarquhar. My friend, Mr. McFarquhar," said Ould Michael, presenting me
in his most ceremonious style and standing at attention.

McFarquhar took my hand in his paw and gave me a grasp so cordial that,
were it not for the shame of it, I would have roared out in agony.

"I am proud to make the acquaintance of you," he said, with a strong
highland accent. "You will be a stranger in these parts?"

I told him as much of my history and affairs as I thought necessary and
drew from him as much information about himself and his life as I could,
which was not much. He had come to the country a lad of twenty to take
service under the Hudson Bay Company. Fifteen years ago had left the
Company and had settled in the valley of Grizzly Creek, which empties
into the Fraser a little below the Grand Bend. I found out too, but not
from himself, that he had married an Indian woman and that, with her and
his two boys, he lived the half-savage life of a hunter and rancher. He
was famous as a hunter of the grizzly bears that once frequented his
valley and, indeed, he bore the name of "Grizzly McFarquhar" among the
old-timers.

He was Ould Michael's dearest friend. Many a long hunt had they taken
together, and over and over again did they owe their lives to each