itt, Battleford and
Prince Albert must shortly capitulate to them, and then
the squaws would receive the white women of those places
as their private prisoners to do with as their sweet
wills suggested. Already many of the accursed whites had
been slaughtered, as at Duck Lake, for instance, but many
more had yet to die. They must be utterly exterminated,
so that the elect might possess the land undisturbed.

At this point he caught sight of the newcomers. At a
sign from him they approached.

"Ha!" he said, with an unctuous accent in his voice, and
rubbing his hands like a miserable old Fagin, "Truly the
Lord is delivering them into our hands. What are you,
woman?"

But beyond her name Dorothy would at first tell him
nothing. Her captors briefly stated the little they knew
concerning her presence in the town. The self-constituted
dictator tried bombast, threats and flattery to gain
information from her, but they were of no avail. His
authority being thus disputed by a woman, and his absurd
self-esteem ruffled, he gave way to a torrent of abuse,
but Dorothy was as if she heard it not. It was only when
Riel was about to give instructions to his "General,"
Gabriel Dumont, and more of the members of his staff and
"government" to instantly cause a search to be made in
the camp for those who might have been with the girl,
that she said he might do so if he chose, but it would
be useless, as her friends must have entered the Fort an
hour ago.

"Hear to her, hear to this shameless woman!" cried the
fanatical and self-constituted saviour of the metis,
gesticulating and trying, as he always did, to work upon
the easily-roused feelings of his semi-savage following.
"She convicts herself out of her own mouth; she must
suffer. She is young and fair to look upon, but she is
the daughter of Douglas, the great friend of the English,
and therefore evil of heart. Moreover, she defies me,
even me, to whom St Peter himself appeared in the Church
of St. James at Washington, Columbia! Take her hence and
keep her as a prisoner until we decide what fate shall
be hers. In the days of the old prophets the dogs licked
the blood of a woman from the stones--of a woman who
deserved better than she."

With a wave of his hand the arch rebel, who was yet to
pay the penalty of his inordinate vanity and scheming
with his life, dismissed the prisoner and her captors.
He instructed an Irish renegade and member of his cabinet,
called Nolin, to