before the outbreak, Riel, in company with a
half-breed, had gone in the autumn shooting chicken along
the prairies. The hunting-ground was many miles distant
from Riel's home, so that the intention of the sportsmen
was to trust themselves to the hospitality of some
farm-house in the neighbourhood. The settlers were all,
with two or three exceptions, Metis; and the door of the
half-breed is never shut against traveller or stranger.
One late afternoon, as the two men were passing along
the prairie footpath towards a little settlement, they
heard at some distance over the plain, a girl singing.
The song was exquisitely worded and touching, and the
singer's voice was sweet and limpid as the notes of a
bobolink. M. Riel, like Mohammed, El Mahdi, and other
great patrons of race and religion, is strong of will;
but he is weaker than a shorn Samson when a lovely woman
chooses to essay a conquest. So he marvelled much to his
companion as to who the singer might be, and proposed
that both should leave the path and join the unknown fair
one. A few minutes walk brought the two beyond a small
poplar grove, and there, upon a fallen tree-bole, in the
delicious cool of the autumn evening, they saw the
songstress sitting. She was a maiden of about eighteen
years, and her soft, silky-fine, dark hair was over her
shoulders. In girlish fancy she had woven for herself a
crown of flowers out of marigolds and daisies, and put
it upon her head. She did not hear the footsteps of the
men upon the soft prairie, and they did not at once reveal
themselves, but stood a little way back listening to her.
She had ceased her song, and was gazing beyond intently.
On the naked limb of a desolate, thunder-riven tree that
stood apart from its lush, green-boughed neighbours, sat
a lonely thrush in seeming melancholy. Every few seconds
he would utter a note of song. Sometimes it was low and
sorrowful, then it was louder, with the same sad quality
in it, as if the lonely bird were calling for some
responsive voice from far away over the prairie.

"Dear bird, you have lost your mate, and are crying out
for her," the girl said, stretching out her little brown
hand compassionately toward the low-crouching songster.
"Your companions have gone to the South, and you wait
here trusting that your mate will come back, and not
journey to summer lands without you. Is not that so, my
poor bird? Ah, would that I could go with you where there
are always flowers, a