he afterwards pay the price for his aggressions.

The last acts of Governor Semple as the report of them was carried
westward and repeated over the camp fires of the Nor'-Westers and their
Bois-brules horsemen and voyageurs caused the most violent excitement.
The Metis claimed a right in the soil from their Indian mothers. The
Indian title had never been extinguished and afterwards Lord Selkirk
found it necessary to make a treaty and satisfy the Indian claim. The
Nor'-Westers were also by a good number of years the first occupants of
the Red River district. The Canadian discovery of the West by French
traders, the daring occupation by Findlay, the Frobishers, Thompson, and
Sir Alexander Mackenzie all from Montreal even to the Arctic and Pacific
Oceans, seemed strong to Canadians as against the undefined and shadowy
claim to the soil of Lord Selkirk and his officers.

Certain signs of coming trouble might have pressed themselves upon
Governor Semple. He had eyes but he saw not.

The Indians, it is true, with their reverence for King George III., and
showing their silver medals with the old King's face upon them, were
disposed to take sides with the British Company. This may have confirmed
Semple in the tyrannical course he had followed, but had he studied the
action of the free traders it might have opened his eyes. Just as
certain animals of the prairie exposed to enemies have an instinctive
feeling of coming danger, so these denizens of the plains felt the
approach of trouble, and with their wives and half-breed children betook
themselves--bag and baggage--to the far Western plains where the buffalo
runs, and remained there to let the storm blow past, to return to the
"Forks" in more peaceful times.

Lord Selkirk, Lady Selkirk, with his Lordship's son and two daughters,
were on the other hand drawing nearer to the scene of conflict, as they
came to Montreal in the summer of 1815. In the spring Lord Selkirk
started westward to see the vast estate which he possessed, but alas!
only to see it in the throes of division, of excited passion and of
bloody conflict, and to face one of the greatest catastrophes of new
world Colonization.

CHAPTER IX.

SEVEN OAKS MASSACRE.

Semple's course is on trial. Self-assertion and dictation bring their
own penalty with them. That so experienced a leader as Colin Robertson,
who had been in both Companies, who knew the native element, and was
acquainted with the daring and r