a villain," said the
priest.

CHAPTER IX

DECORATING A BIT OF STATUARY

I frequently passed that window above the stoop next day. Once I saw a
face looking down on me with such withering scorn, I wondered if the
disgraceful scene with Louis Laplante had become noised about, and I
hastened to take my exercise in another part of the courtyard.
Thereupon, others paid silent homage to the window, but they likewise
soon tired of that parade ground.

Eastern notions of propriety still clung to me. Of this I had immediate
proof. When our rough crews were preparing to re-embark for the north, I
was shocked beyond measure to see this frail girl come down with her
father to travel in our company. Not counting her father, the priest,
Duncan Cameron, Cuthbert Grant and myself, there were in our party
three-score reckless, uncurbed adventurers, who feared neither God nor
man. I thought it strange of a father to expose his daughter to the bold
gaze, coarse remarks, and perhaps insults of such men. Before the end of
that trip, I was to learn a lesson in western chivalry, which is not
easily explained, or forgotten. As father and daughter were waiting to
take their places in a boat, a shapeless, flat-footed woman, wearing
moccasins--probably the half-breed wife of some trader in the fort--ran
to the water's edge with a parcel of dainties, and kissing the girl on
both cheeks, wished her a fervent God-speed.

"Oh!" growled the young Nor'-Wester, who had been carried from the
banquet hall, and now wore the sour expression that is the aftermath of
banquets. "Look at that fat lump of a bumblebee distilling honey from
the rose! There are others who would appreciate that sort of thing! This
_is_ the wilderness of lost opportunities!"

The girl seated herself in a canoe, where the only men were Duncan
Cameron, her father and the native _voyageurs_; and I dare vouch a score
of young traders groaned at the sight of this second lost opportunity.

"Look, Gillespie! Look!" muttered my comrade of the banquet hall. "The
Little Statue set up at the prow of yon canoe! I'll wager you do
reverence to graven images all the way to Red River!"

"I'll wager we all do," said I.

And we did. To change the metaphor--after the style of Mr. Jack
MacKenzie's eloquence--I warrant there was not a young man of the eight
crews, who did not regard that marble-cold face at the prow of the
leading canoe, as his own particular guiding star. And the whi