hear. The last thing I saw was a hand stretching up out of the
sands."

There was a long pause, painful to bear. The Trader sat with eyes fixed
humbly as a dog's on Pierre. At last Macavoy said: "She kissed ye,
Pierre, aw yis, she did that! Jist betune the eyes. Do yees iver see her
now, Pierre?"

But Pierre, looking at him, made no answer.

A LOVELY BULLY

He was seven feet and fat. He came to Fort O'Angel at Hudson's Bay, an
immense slip of a lad, very much in the way, fond of horses, a wonderful
hand at wrestling, pretending a horrible temper, threatening tragedies
for all who differed from him, making the Fort quake with his rich
roar, and playing the game of bully with a fine simplicity. In winter he
fattened, in summer he sweated, at all times he ate eloquently.

It was a picture to see him with the undercut of a haunch of deer or
buffalo, or with a whole prairie-fowl on his plate, his eyes measuring
it shrewdly, his coat and waistcoat open, and a clear space about
him--for he needed room to stretch his mighty limbs, and his necessity
was recognised by all.

Occasionally he pretended to great ferocity, but scowl he ever so much,
a laugh kept idling in his irregular bushy beard, which lifted about his
face in the wind like a mane, or made a kind of underbrush through which
his blunt fingers ran at hide-and-seek.

He was Irish, and his name was Macavoy. In later days, when Fort O'Angel
was invaded by settlers, he had his time of greatest importance.

He had been useful to the Chief Trader at the Fort in the early days,
and having the run of the Fort and the reach of his knife, was little
likely to discontinue his adherence. But he ate and drank with all the
dwellers at the Post, and abused all impartially. "Malcolm," said he to
the Trader, "Malcolm, me glutton o' the H.B.C., that wants the Far North
for your footstool--Malcolm, you villain, it's me grief that I know you,
and me thumb to me nose in token." Wiley and Hatchett, the principal
settlers, he abused right and left, and said, "Wasn't there land in the
East and West, that you steal the country God made for honest men--you
robbers o' the wide world! Me tooth on the Book, and I tell you what,
it's only me charity that kapes me from spoilin' ye. For a wink of me
eye, an' away you'd go, leaving your tails behind you--and pass that
shoulder of bear, you pirates, till I come to it sideways, like a hog to
war."

He was even less sympathetic with Bar