them. He had not long after this quarrelled with his employers, when he
left their service, and commenced the life of a free trader and trapper.
For some time he had considerable success, and as his wife had
presented him with a daughter, whom he devotedly loved, he was doubly
anxious to gain the means of supporting and educating her in the rank of
a lady. Neither he nor her mother, however, could bear to part with
her.

At an early age she was seen and admired by Donald Grey, a young clerk
in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, who sought for and obtained
her hand. He, however, had managed, as his father-in-law had done, to
quarrel with the chief officer of the fort where he was stationed, and
having some means of his own, had taken up his residence at the Red
River Settlement.

After living there a year, and becoming the father of a little girl, he
received intelligence from England that he had inherited a good
property. He had embarked with his young wife and child and a Cree
nurse, intending to proceed through the Lake of the Woods, across Lake
Superior to Canada. From that day, weeks, months, and years went by,
and the old trapper, still supposing that they had arrived safely in
England, waited in vain to receive intelligence of them.

It is necessary here to remark that when the superintendent at the
company's post on the Sault Saint Marie made inquiries of the chief
factors and other officers throughout the north-west territory, they
replied that no person connected with them was missing, or had crossed
Lake Superior at the time he mentioned. From the American traders also
he could obtain no information. Not until Isaac Sass, or more properly,
Hugh Lindsay, heard Captain Mackintosh describe the way Sybil had been
discovered, did he suspect the fate of his daughter and son-in-law. He
had accounted for never having received a letter from them, by supposing
that on reaching the old country, and occupying a new sphere of life,
they had forgotten him, or had not taken the trouble to write. His
wife, dying soon after their daughter's marriage, he had taken to the
wild life he had from that time forward led, believing that he himself
was forgotten by his kindred, and endeavouring in a misanthropical
spirit to banish from his mind all thoughts of the past.

On seeing Sybil, a chord had been struck in his heart, and on hearing
her history, he was at once convinced, from her extraordinary likeness
to hi