claimed as Hudson's Bay Territory----"

"Just listen to this," cries my uncle pulling out a copy of the
obnoxious proclamation and reading aloud an order for the expulsion of
all rivals to the Hudson's Bay Company from the northern territory.

"Where can Hamilton be?" said I, losing interest in the traders' quarrel
as soon as they went into details.

"Home with his wifie," half sneered the officer in a nagging way, that
irritated me, though the remark was, doubtless, true. "Home with his
wifie," he repeated in a sing-song, paying no attention to the
elucidation of a subject he had raised. "Good old man, Hamilton, but
since marriage, utterly gone to the bad!"

"To the what?" I queried, taking him up short. This officer, with the
pudding cheeks and patronizing insolence, had a provoking trick of
always keeping just inside the bounds of what one might resent. "To the
what, did you say Hamilton had gone?"

"To the domestics," says he laughing, then to the others, as if he had
listened to every word of the explanations, "and if His Little
Excellency, Governor MacDonell, by the grace of Lord Selkirk, ruler over
gentlemen adventurers in no-man's-land, expels the good Nor'-Westers
from nowhere to somewhere else, what do the good Nor'-Westers intend
doing to the Little Tyrant?"

"Charles the First him," responds a wag of the club.

"Where's your Cromwell?" laughs the colonel.

"Our Cromwell's a Cameron, temper of a Lucifer, oaths before action,"
answers the wag.

"Tuts!" exclaims Uncle Jack testily. "We'll settle His Lordship's little
martinet of the plains. Warrant for his arrest! Fetch him out!"

"Warrant 43rd King George III. will do it," added one of the partners
who had looked the matter up.

"43rd King George III. doesn't give jurisdiction for trial in Lower
Canada, if offense be committed elsewhere," interjects a lawyer with
show of importance.

"A Daniel come to judgment," laughs the colonel, winking as my uncle's
wrath rose.

"Pah!" says Mr. Jack MacKenzie in disgust, stamping on the floor with
both feet. "You lawyers needn't think you'll have your pickings when fur
companies quarrel. We'll ship him out, that's all. Neither of the
companies wants to advertise its profits--"

"Or its methods--ahem!" interjects the colonel.

"And its private business," adds my uncle, looking daggers at Adderly,
"by going to court."

Then they all rose to go to the dining-room; and as I stepped out to
have a look down