I'm not surprised to learn that Paul is not her father," he said. "It
was always a puzzle to me how she came to be so lady-like and refined in
her feelings, with such a rough, though kindly, father. But I can
easily understand it now that I hear who and what her mother was."

But the principal person concerned in Tom Brixton's little scheme held
an adverse opinion to his friends Paul and Fred and Flinders. Betty
would by no means listen to Tom's proposals until, one day, her brother
said that he would like to see her married to Tom Brixton before he
died. Then the obdurate Rose of Oregon gave in!

"But how is it to be managed without a clergyman?" asked Fred Westly one
evening over the camp fire when supper was being prepared.

"Ay, how indeed?" said Tom, with a perplexed look.

"Oh, bother the clergy!" cried the irreverent Flinders.

"That's just what I'd do if there was one here," responded Tom; "I'd
bother him till he married us."

"I say, what did Adam and Eve an' those sort o' people do?" asked Tolly
Trevor, with the sudden animation resulting from the budding of a new
idea; "there was no clergy in their day, I suppose?"

"True for ye, boy," remarked Flinders, as he lifted a large pot of soup
off the fire.

"I know and care not, Tolly, what those sort o' people did," said Tom;
"and as Betty and I are not Adam and Eve, and the nineteenth century is
not the first, we need not inquire."

"I'll tell 'ee what," said Mahoghany Drake, "it's just comed into my
mind that there's a missionary goes up once a year to an outlyin' post
o' the fur-traders, an' this is about the very time. What say ye to
make an excursion there to get spliced, it's only about two hundred
miles off? We could soon ride there an' back, for the country's all
pretty flattish after passin' the Sawback range."

"The very thing!" cried Tom; "only--perhaps Betty might object to go,
her brother being so ill."

"Not she," said Fred; "since the poor man found in her a sister as well
as a nurse he seems to have got a new lease of life. I don't, indeed,
think it possible that he can recover, but he may yet live a good while;
and the mere fact that she has gone to get married will do him good."

So it was finally arranged that they should all go, and, before three
days had passed, they went, with a strong band of their Indian allies.
They found the missionary as had been expected. The knot was tied, and
Tom Brixton brought back the Rose of O