res
and passed out again, now seen for a moment in the paler ray of a candle
farther down the hall, now lost in the shadows which everywhere swept
across the great brown room from side to side, like broad-winged ghosts
resting in mid-air and looking down upon the revels. The music came from
six French fiddlers, four young, gayly dressed fellows, and two
grizzled, withered old men, and they played the tunes of the century
before, and played them with all their might and main. The little fort,
a one-company post, was not entitled to a band; but there were, as
usual, one or two German musicians among the enlisted men, and these now
stood near the French fiddlers and watched them with slow curiosity,
fingering now and then in imagination the great brass instruments which
were to them the keys of melody, and dreaming over again the happy days
when they, too, played "with the band." But the six French fiddlers
cared nothing for the Germans; they held themselves far above the common
soldiers of the fort, and despised alike their cropped hair, their
ideas, their uniforms, and the strict rules they were obliged to obey.
They fiddled away with their eyes cast up to the dark beams above, and
their tunes rang out in that shrill, sustained, clinging treble which no
instrument save a violin can give. The entire upper circle of society
was present, and a sprinkling of the second; for the young officers
cared more for dancing than for etiquette, and a pretty young French
girl was in their minds of more consequence than even the five Misses
Macdougall with all their blood, which must have been, however, of a
thin, although, of course, precious, quality, since between the whole
five there seemed scarcely enough for one. The five were there, however,
in green plaided delaines with broad lace collars and large flat
shell-cameo breastpins with scroll-work settings: they presented an
imposing appearance to the eyes of all. The father of these ladies, long
at rest from his ledgers, was in his day a prominent resident official
of the Fur Company; his five maiden daughters lived on in the old house,
and occupied themselves principally in remembering him. Miss Lois seated
herself beside these acknowledged heads of society, and felt that she
was in her proper sphere. The dance-music troubled her ears, but she
endured it manfully.

"A gay scene," she observed, gazing through her spectacles.

The five Misses Macdougall bowed acquiescence, and said