could not occur without the canoe.

Re-created as an e-Text by Nick Hodson, August 2003.

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THE RED MAN'S REVENGE, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.

CHAPTER ONE.

A TALE OF THE RED RIVER FLOOD.

OPENS THE BALL.

If ever there was a man who possessed a gem in the form of a daughter of
nineteen, that man was Samuel Ravenshaw; and if ever there was a girl
who owned a bluff, jovial, fiery, hot-tempered, irascible old father,
that girl was Elsie Ravenshaw.

Although a gem, Elsie was exceedingly imperfect. Had she been the
reverse she would not have been worth writing about.

Old Ravenshaw, as his familiars styled him, was a settler, if we may use
such a term in reference to one who was, perhaps, among the most
unsettled of men. He had settled with his family on the banks of the
Red River. The colony on that river is now one of the frontier towns of
Canada. At the time we write of, it was a mere oasis in the desert, not
even an offshoot of civilisation, for it owed its existence chiefly to
the fact that retiring servants of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company
congregated there to spend the evening of life, far beyond the Canadian
boundary, in the heart of that great wilderness where they had spent
their working days, and on the borders of that grand prairie where the
red man and the buffalo roamed at will, and the conventionalities of
civilised life troubled them not.

To this haven of rest Samuel Ravenshaw had retired, after spending an
active life in the service of the fur-traders, somewhat stiffened in the
joints by age and a rough career, and a good deal soured in disposition
because of promotion having, as he thought, been too long deferred.

Besides Elsie, old Ravenshaw possessed some other gems of inferior
lustre. His wife Maggie, a stout, well-favoured lady, with an
insufficient intellect and unbounded good humour, was of considerable
intrinsic value, but highly unpolished. His second daughter, Cora, was
a thin slip of sixteen years, like her mother in some respects--pretty,
attractive, and disposed to take life easily. His eldest son, Victor, a
well-grown lad of fourteen, was a rough diamond, if a diamond at all,
with a soul centred on sport. His second son, Anthony, between five and
six, was large and robust, like his father. Not having been polished at
that time, it is hard to say what sort of gem Tony was. When engaged in
mischief--his