hitewashed. Ample barns and outhouses spread around
a rough square. The whole picture brought to mind a manor-house of
earlier and simpler times.

The patriarch himself waited at the door. He was a fine figure of
manhood--lean, straight, rugged as a jack-pine. He had the noble
aquiline features of the red side of the house, and his dark face was
wonderfully set off by a luxuriant, snowy thatch.

Ambrose, indifferent as he was, could not but be struck by the old
man's beauty, and his dignity was equal to his good looks. Young
Tole's naive pride in his parent was explained.

Ambrose was introduced to a wide interior of a dignified bareness.
This was the main room of the house; the kitchen they called it, though
the cooking was done outside.

It was spotlessly clean; none too common a thing in the north. Clearly
these people had their pride.

Still Ambrose was reminded of the difference between white and red, for
the women of the house were ignored, and when later he sat down to sup
with Simon and his five strong sons the wives waited humbly on the
table.

Afterward the men sat before the door, smoking. Simon kept Ambrose at
his right hand, and conversed with him as with an honored guest. He
avoided all reference to what had brought him.

When Ambrose, not understanding the reason for his delicacy, asked
about the coming meeting, Simon said:

"When all come you learn what every man thinks. I not want to shape
your mind to my mind until all are here."

They came by ones and twos, a little company of twenty-odd. Many
anomalies of race were exhibited. Some showed a Scotch cast of
feature, some French, some purely Indian.

One or two might have been taken for white men had it not been for an
odd cast of the eye. Yet it might happen the Indian and the white man
were full brothers. The general character of the faces was stolid
rather than passionate.

There was little talk.

The room having been cleared, they went inside. The women had
disappeared. Simon Grampierre sat at an end of the room, with Ambrose
at his right, and his sons ranged about him. The other men faced them
from the body of the room.

There were not chairs for all, but indeed chairs suggested church, the
trader's house, and other places of ceremony; and those without,
squatting on their heels around the walls, were the happier.

Talk was slow to start. They kept their hats on and stolidly looked
down their noses. When it began