he reiterated
conviction that Adderly and the Citadel writing paper and Louis Laplante
had some connection with the malign influence that was balking our
efforts.

"Fudge!" exclaims my uncle, stamping about his study and puffing with
indignation. "You should have knocked that blasted quarantine's head
off!"

"You've said that several times already, Mr. MacKenzie," I put in,
having a touch of his own peppery temper from my mother's side. "What
about Adderly's rage?"

"Adderly's been in Montreal since the night of the row. For the Lord's
sake, boy, do you expect to find the woman by believing in that bloated
bugaboo?"

"But the Citadel paper?" I persisted.

"Of course you've never been told, Rufus Gillespie," he began, choking
down his impatience with the magnitude of my stupidity, "that the
commissariat buys supplies from hunters?"

"That doesn't explain the big squaw's suspicions and Louis' own
conduct."

"That Louis!" says my uncle. "Pah! That son of an inflated old seigneur!
A fig for the buck! Not enough brains in his pate to fill a peanut!"

"But there might be enough evil in his heart to wreck a life," and that
was the first argument to pierce my uncle's scepticism. The keen eyes
glanced out at me as if there might be some hope for my intelligence,
and he took several turns about the room.

"Hm! If you're of that mind, you'd better go out and excavate the
smallpox," was his sententious conclusion. "And if it's a hoax, you'd
better----" and he puckered his brows in thought.

"What?" I asked eagerly.

"Join the traders' crews and track the villains west," he answered with
the promptitude of one who decides quickly and without vacillation. "O
Lord! If I were only young! But to think of a man too stout and old to
buckle on his own snow-shoes hankering for that life again!" And my
uncle heaved a deep sigh.

Now, no one, who has not lived the wild, free life of the northern
trader, can understand the strange fascinations which for the moment
eclipsed in this courteous and chivalrous old gentleman's mind all
thought of the poor woman, with whom my own fate was interwoven. But I,
who have lived in the lonely fastnesses of the splendid freedom, know
full well what surging recollections of danger and daring, of success
and defeat, of action in which one faces and laughs at death, and calm
in which one sounds the unutterable depths of very infinity--thronged
the old trader's soul. Indeed, when he spoke, it wa