icket,
with a corresponding adjustment of the number of dollar-bills to be
drawn from the coffer. If a man between treaty-paying and treaty-paying
marries a widow with a family, he draws five dollars each for the new
people he has annexed. If there is an exchange of wives (a
not-infrequent thing), the babies have to be newly parcelled out.
Through all the family intricacies Mr. Conroy follows the interpreter
with infinite patience and bonhomie. To the listener it sounds startling
as the interpreter, presenting two tickets says, "He married these three
people--this fellow." "O, he give dat baby away to Charles." When we
hear in a dazed way that "_Mary Catholic's_ son married his dead woman's
sister who was the widow of _Anton Larucom_ and the mother of two boys,"
we take a long breath and murmur, "If the angle ACB is not equal to the
angle ABC, then how can the angle DEF be equal to the angle DFE?" A
young couple, looking neither of them more than sixteen or seventeen,
return with a shake of the head five of the fifteen dollars proffered
them, and the interpreter explains, "Their little boy died--there's only
two of them."

Gregory Daniels in a Scottish voice, which cannot quite hide its
triumphant ring, pushes back his five dollars and demands forty-five. "I
got a wife and siven since last year, she's a Cree wumman." Another
half-breed asks anxiously if he would be allowed to send for a "permit"
like a white man if he refused to take treaty.

One man with long black hair and a cheese-cutter cap creates
consternation at the tent-door by claiming treaty for two wives and
seventeen children. Mr. Conroy, scenting an attempt to stuff the
ballot-box, produces seventeen matches, lays them at my feet on the
tent-floor and asks _The-Lean-Man_ to name them. He starts in all right.
We hear, "_Long Lodge, Little Pine, Blue Fish, Birdtail, Little Bone,
Sweet Grass, Ermine Skin_," and then in a monotone he begins over again,
"_Long Lodge, Little Pine, Blue Fish_," and finally gives it up, eagerly
asking the interpreter to wait "a-little-sun." The drama of paying and
recording has gone on for half an hour and we have quite forgotten
_The-Lean-Man_, when back he comes with _Mrs. Lean-Man, Sr._, and _Mrs.
Lean-Man, Jr_. Each spouse leads her own progeny. Seeing is believing,
and off _Lean-Man_ goes with a fat wallet. We wander into the stores to
see what purchases the Indians will make. One young blade is looking at
a box of stogies,