in a state of
considerable agitation; she had just encountered the redskin! Miss Trim
was a poor relation of Mrs Ravenshaw. She had been invited by her
brother-in-law to leave England and come to Red River to act as
governess to Tony and assistant-companion in the family. She had
arrived that autumn in company with a piano, on which she was expected
to exercise Elsie and Cora. Petawanaquat, being the first "really wild
and painted savage" she had seen, made a deep impression on her.

"Oh, Mr Ravenshaw, I have seen _such_ an object in the garden!" she
exclaimed, in a gushing torrent--she always spoke in a torrent--"and it
was all I could do to stagger into the house without fainting. Such
eyes! with black cheeks and a red nose--at least, it looked red, but I
was in such a state that I couldn't make sure whether it was the nose or
the chin, and my shoe came off as I ran away, having broken the tie in
the morning. And such a yell as it gave!--the creature, not the
shoe-tie--but I escaped, and peeped out of the upper window--the one in
the gable, you know, with the green blind, where you can see the garden
from end to end, and I found it had disappeared, though I can't
understand--"

"Tut, tut, Miss Trim; how you do gallop! Was it a beast?" asked the old
trader.

"A beast? No; a man--a savage."

"Oh! I understand; it was that scoundrel Petawanaquat," said Sam
Ravenshaw, with a laugh; "he's Little Wolf by name, and a big thief by
practice, no doubt. You needn't fear him, however, he's not so
dangerous as he looks, and I gave him a rebuff just now that will make
him shy of Willow Creek.--Ha, Tony, you rascal! Come here, sir."

Tony came at once, with such a gleeful visage that his father's intended
chastisement for the recent practical joke ended in a parental caress.

Bitterly did Ian Macdonald repent of his agreeing to join the shooting
party that day. Owing to some defect in his vision or nervous system,
he was a remarkably bad shot, though in everything else he was an expert
and stalwart backwoodsman, as well as a good scholar. But when his
friend Victor invited him he could not refuse, because it offered him an
opportunity of spending some time in the society of Elsie Ravenshaw, and
that to him was heaven upon earth! Little of her society, however, did
the unfortunate teacher enjoy that day, for handsome Louis Lambert
engrossed not only Elsie, but the mother and father as well. He had
beaten all his