many others, huntin' about for the starvin' people, an' he came across
the wives of Blanc and Pierre--poor things! they're widows now, for
Blanc and Pierre are both dead. Well, the women had well-nigh given in.
I had dropped down, they were so tired, and were crawlin' on their
hands and knees when McDermid found them. I didn't hear all the outs
and ins of it, but there is no doubt that poor Perrin has been murdered,
for he was shot right through the breast."

"Perhaps he shot hisself," suggested La Certe.

"No--that could not be, for the women have brought his coat, which shows
that the ball went in at the breast and came _straight_ out at the back.
If he had shot himself he must have pulled the trigger with his toe,
an' then the ball would have slanted up from his breast to somewhere
about his shoulders."

"It was a Saulteaux, may be," said Slowfoot, who had been listening with
all the eagerness of a gossip.

"There were no marks of Redskins' snow-shoes about," returned Dechamp,
"an' the tracks were too confused to make them out. A knife was found,
but there were no marks about it to tell who owned it--only it was a
settler's knife, but there are lots of them about, an' many have changed
hands since the settlers came."

At the time we write of, the colony of Red River of the north was in a
very unhappy and disorganised condition. There were laws indeed, but
there was no authority or force sufficiently strong to apply the laws,
and discord reigned because of the two great fur companies--the Hudson's
Bay, and the Nor'-West--which opposed each other with extreme
bitterness, carrying fire-water, dissension, and disaster all over the
wilderness of Rupert's Land. Happily the two companies coalesced in the
year 1821, and from that date, onward, comparative peace has reigned
under the mild sway of the Hudson's Bay Company.

But at the period which we describe the coalition had not taken place,
and many of the functionaries of the Hudson's Bay Company in Red River,
from the Governor downward, seem to have been entirely demoralised, if
we are to believe the reports of contemporary historians.

Some time previous to this, the Earl of Selkirk--chiefly from
philanthropic views, it is said--resolved to send a colony to Red River.
At different times bands of Scotch, Swiss, Danes, and others, made
their appearance in the Settlement. They had been sent out by the
agents of the Earl, but there was a great deal of mismanag