ed the front door and brought out the article asked for
from the back, like a mediaeval chieftain guarding his castle. But all
the time that poor Emilia could hear the voice of the tall trapper her
heart beat two beats for one. For was it not a human voice speaking her
own language? And the days on which he was visible were accounted as
the gates of paradise, and the moments in which he spoke in her hearing
were as paradise itself.

This churlish, inhospitable manner made Lindsley many enemies in a land
in which one can not afford to have enemies. Every half-breed hunter
took the old man's suspicious manner as a personal affront. "He thinks
we are horse thieves," they said scornfully. And Jacques Bourdon, the
half-breed who had "filed on" the claim alongside Lindsley's, and even
claimed unjustly a "forty" of Lindsley's town plot, had no difficulty
in securing the sympathy of the settlers and nomads, who looked on
Lindsley as a monster quite capable of anything. He was even reported
to have beaten his daughter, and to have confined her in the wilderness
that he might keep her out of an immense fortune which she had
inherited. So Lindsley grew every day in disfavor in a region where
unpopularity in its mildest form is sure to take a most unpleasant way
of making itself known. Emilia knew enough to understand this danger,
and she was shaken with a nameless fear whenever she heard the sharp
words that passed between her father and Bourdon, the half-breed. The
resentment of the latter reached its climax when the decision of the
land office was rendered in favor of Mr. Lindsley. From that hour the
revenge of this man, whose hot French was mixed with relentless Indian
blood, hung over the head of the old man, who still read and wrote, and
invented and theorized, in utter ignorance of any peril except the
danger that some man, not a fool, should marry his daughter.

The Fourth of July was celebrated at Gager's. People came from fifty
miles round. Patriotism? No! but love of human fellowship. The
celebrated Pierre Bottineau and the other Canadians and half-breeds
were there, mellowed with drink, singing the sensual and almost lewd
French rowing songs their fathers had sung on the St. Lawrence. "Whisky
Jim," the retired stage driver, and Hans Brinkerhoff and the other
German settlers, with two or three Yankees, completed the slender
crowd, which comprised almost the entire population of six skeleton
counties. And the ever-popula