" said Dan, good-humouredly. "I
would not consent to have her on such terms. She must fix and arrange
everything without constraint from any one--not even from you, Duncan
McKay."

"Oh! fery goot!" retorted the old man with a touch of sarcasm; "you know
fery well what Elspie will be sayin' to that, or you would not be so
ready to let it rest with her. Yes, yes, she is safe to see her way to
go the way that you want her to go."

It was a strange coincidence that at the very time these two were
conversing on this subject in the verandah of Ben Nevis Hall, Mrs
Davidson and Elspie were discussing the very same subject in an upper
room of Prairie Cottage. We refrain from giving the details, however,
as it would be unpardonable to reveal such matters. We will merely
state that the conclusions to which the ladies came were very similar to
those arrived at by the gentlemen.

But delay was still destined to be an element in the cup of this
unfortunate couple.

When the harvest had been gathered in that year, there came what old
McKay called a visitation which, with its consequences, recalls
irresistibly the words of our great Scottish poet--"the best-laid
schemes o' mice and men gang aft a-gley." This visitation was a plague
of mice. The whole colony was infested with them. Like the
grasshoppers, the mice devoured everything. The grain after being
stacked was almost totally destroyed by them. The straw, the very
stubble itself, was cut to atoms. The fields, the woods, the plains,
seemed literally alive with this new visitor, and the result would have
been that most of the settlers would again have been driven to spend
another dreary winter in trapping and hunting with the Indians at
Pembina, if it had not been for the fortunate circumstance that the
buffalo runners had been unusually successful that year. They returned
from the plains rejoicing,--their carts heavily laden with buffalo-robes
and innumerable bags of pemmican.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

RETRIBUTION.

Owing to the success of the buffalo runners, the winter passed away in
comparative comfort. But, as we have said, some of the settlers who had
been ruined by the failure of the fisheries and the depredations of the
mice, and who did not share much in the profits of the autumn hunt, were
obliged once again to seek their old port of refuge at Pembina.

Among these was the Swiss family Morel. Andre went, because he did not
wish to remain comparativ