obtained leave to push the chair of old McKay. The younger man was
wheeled under the shade of a tree with his back to the house, and left
there. Then the family retired out of the way, leaving Archie to attend
the invalid.

A few minutes after young Duncan had been placed, Little Bill pushed his
charge under the same tree, and, wheeling the chair quickly round,
brought father and son suddenly face to face.

The surprise was great on both sides, for each, recollecting only the
man that _had been_, could hardly believe in the reality of the ghost
that sat before him.

"Father!" exclaimed Duncan at last.

But the old man answered not. Some strong feeling was evidently surging
within him, for his mouth was tightly pursed and his features worked
strangely. Suddenly he burst into tears, but the weakness was
momentary. With an effort that seemed to concentrate the accumulated
energy of all the McKays from Adam downwards, he again pursed his mouth
and looked at his younger son with a stern persistent frown, worthy of
the most rugged of Highlanders in his fiercest mood.

Duncan was inexpressibly touched.

"Father," said he again, "I've been a baad, baad son to _you_."

"Tuncan," retorted the old man, in a husky but firm voice, "I've been a
baad, baad father to you."

"Let us shake hands--whatever," said the son.

The two silently grasped each other's hands with all the little strength
that remained to them. Then old McKay turned suddenly to his henchman.

"Little Bill," said he, in a tone that was not for an instant to be
disregarded, "shove me down to the futt of the garden--you _rascal_!"

With a promptitude little short of miraculous the Highlander was wheeled
away, and thus the momentous meeting was abruptly brought to a close.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.

MATRIMONIAL PLANS AND PROSPECTS.

Time passed by, as time is rather apt to do, and still the feud between
the rival fur companies continued, to the detriment of the Indians and
the fur-trade, the unsettling of Red River Settlement, and the
demoralisation more or less of all concerned.

Men who would gladly have devoted all their energies to the arts of
peace, became more or less belligerent in spirit, if not in act, and
many were forced to take sides in the controversy--some siding with the
Nor'-Westers and others with the Hudson's Bay Company.

With the merits of their contentions we do not propose to meddle. We
confine ourselves to facts.

One