ecause his
judgment, like his temper, had grown somewhat uncertain. His popularity
in the Hudson's Bay country had been at some tension since he had
shipped his wife away to England. Even the ordinary savage mind saw
something unusual and undomestic in it, and the general hospitality
declined a little. Armour did not immediately guess the cause; but one
day, about a year after his wife had gone, he found occasion to reprove
a half-breed, by name Jacques Pontiac; and Jacques, with more honesty
than politeness, said some hard words, and asked how much he paid for
his English hired devils to kill his wife. Strange to say, he did not
resent this startling remark. It set him thinking. He began to blame
himself for not having written oftener to his people--and to his wife.
He wondered how far his revenge had succeeded. He was most ashamed of it
now. He knew that he had done a dishonourable thing. The more he thought
upon it the more angry with himself he became. Yet he dreaded to go back
to England and face it all: the reproach of his people; the amusement
of society; his wife herself. He never attempted to picture her as a
civilised being. He scarcely knew her when he married her. She knew
him much better, for primitive people are quicker in the play of their
passions, and she had come to love him before he had begun to notice her
at all.

Presently he ate his heart out with mortification. To be yoked for ever
to--a savage! It was horrible. And their children? It was strange he had
not thought of that before. Children? He shrugged his shoulders. There
might possibly be a child, but children--never! But he doubted
even regarding a child, for no word had come to him concerning that
possibility. He was even most puzzled at the tone and substance of their
letters. From the beginning there had been no reproaches, no excitement,
no railing, but studied kindness and conventional statements, through
which Mrs. Armour's solicitous affection scarcely ever peeped. He had
shot his bolt, and got--consideration, almost imperturbability. They
appeared to treat the matter as though he were a wild youth who would
not yet mend his ways. He read over their infrequent letters to him; his
to them had been still more infrequent. In one there was the statement
that "she was progressing favourably with her English"; in another, that
"she was riding a good deal"; again, that "she appeared anxious to adapt
herself to her new life."

At all these he