good Nor'-Westers from nowhere to somewhere else, what do the good Nor'-Westers intend doing to the Little Tyrant?"
"Charles the First him," responds a wag of the club.
"Where's your Cromwell?" laughs the colonel.
"Our Cromwell's a Cameron, temper of a Lucifer, oaths before action," answers the wag.
"Tuts!" exclaims Uncle Jack testily. "We'll settle His Lordship's little martinet of the plains. Warrant for his arrest! Fetch him out!"
"Warrant 43rd King George III. will do it," added one of the partners who had looked the matter up.
"43rd King George III. doesn't give jurisdiction for trial in Lower Canada, if offense be committed elsewhere," interjects a lawyer with show of importance.
"A Daniel come to judgment," laughs the colonel, winking as my uncle's wrath rose.
"Pah!" says Mr. Jack MacKenzie in disgust, stamping on the floor with both feet. "You lawyers needn't think you'll have your pickings when fur companies quarrel. We'll ship him out, that's all. Neither of the companies wants to advertise its profits—"
"Or its methods—ahem!" interjects the colonel.
"And its private business," adds my uncle, looking daggers at Adderly, "by going to court."
Then they all rose to go to the dining-room; and as I stepped out to have a look down the street for Hamilton, I heard Colonel Adderly's last fling—"Pretty rascals, you gentlemen adventurers are, so shy and coy about law courts."
It was a dark night, with a few lonely stars in mid-heaven, a sickle moon cutting the horizon cloud-rim and a noisy March wind that boded snow from The Labrador, or sleet from the Gulf.
When Eric Hamilton left the Hudson's Bay Company's service at York Factory on Hudson Bay and came to live in Quebec, I was but a student at Laval. It was at my Uncle MacKenzie's that I met the tall, dark, sinewy, taciturn man, whose influence was to play such a strange part in my life; and when these two talked of their adventures in the far, lone land of the north, I could no more conceal my awe-struck admiration than a girl could on first discovering her own charms in a looking-glass. I think he must have noticed my boyish reverence, for once he condescended to ask about the velvet cap and green sash and long blue coat which made up the Laval costume, and in a moment I was talking to him as volubly as if he were the boy and I, the great Hudson's Bay trader.
"It makes me feel quite like a boy again," he had said on resuming conversation with Mr. MacKenzie. "By Jove! Sir, I can hardly realize I went into that country a lad of fifteen, like your nephew, and here I am, out of it, an old man."
"Pah, Eric man," says my uncle, "you'll be finding a wife one of these days and renewing your youth."
"Uncle," I broke out when the Hudson's Bay man had gone home, "how old is Mr. Hamilton?"
"Fifteen years older than you are, boy, and I pray Heaven you may have half as much of the man in you at thirty as he has," returns my uncle mentally measuring me with that stern eye of his. At that information, my heart gave a curious, jubilant thud. Henceforth, I no longer looked upon Mr. Hamilton with the same awe that a choir boy entertains for a bishop. Something of comradeship sprang up between us, and before that year had passed we were as boon companions as man and boy could be. But Hamilton presently spoiled it all by fulfilling my uncle's prediction and finding a wife, a beautiful, fair-haired, frail slip of a girl, near enough the twenties to patronize me and too much of the young lady to find pleasure in an awkward lad. That meant an end to our rides and walks and sails down the St. Lawrence and long evening talks; but I took my revenge by assuming the airs of a man of forty, at which Hamilton quizzed me not a little and his wife, Miriam, laughed. When I surprised them all by jumping suddenly from boyhood to manhood—"like a tadpole into a mosquito," as my Uncle Jack facetiously remarked. Meanwhile, a son and heir came to my friend's home and I had to be thankful for a humble third place.
And so it came that I was waiting for Eric's arrival at the Quebec Club that night, peering from the porch for sight of him and calculating how long it would take to ride from the Chateau Bigot above Charlesbourg, where he was staying. Stepping outside, I was surprised to see the form of a horse beneath the lantern of the arched gateway; and my surprise increased on nearer inspection. As I walked up, the creature gave a whinny and I recognized Hamilton's horse, lathered with sweat, unblanketed and shivering. The possibility of an accident hardly suggested itself before I observed the bridle-rein had been slung over the hitching-post and heard steps hurrying to the side door of the club-house.
"Is that you, Eric?" I called.
There was no answer; so I led the horse to the stable boy and hurried back to see if Hamilton were inside. The sitting room was deserted; but Eric's well-known, tall figure was entering the dining-room. And a curious figure he presented to the questioning looks of the club men. In one hand was his riding whip, in the other, his gloves. He wore the buckskin coat of a trapper and in the belt were two pistols. One sleeve was torn from wrist to elbow and his boots were scratched as if they had been combed by an iron rake. His broad-brimmed hat was still on, slouched down over his eyes like that of a scout.
"Gad! Hamilton," exclaimed Uncle Jack MacKenzie, who was facing Eric as I came up behind, "have you been in a race or a fight?" and he gave him the look of suspicion one might give an intoxicated man.
"Is it a cold night?" asked the colonel punctiliously, gazing hard at the still-strapped hat.
Not a word came from Hamilton.
"How's the cold in your head?" continued Adderly, pompously trying to stare Hamilton's hat off.
"Here I am, old man! What's kept you?" and I rushed forward but quickly checked myself; for Hamilton turned slowly towards me and instead of erect bearing, clear glance, firm mouth, I saw a head that was bowed, eyes that burned like fire, and parched, parted, wordless lips.
If the colonel had not been stuffing himself like the turkey guzzler that he was, he would have seen something unspeakably terrible written on Hamilton's silent face.
"Did the little wifie let him off for a night's play?" sneered Adderly.
Barely were the words out, when Hamilton's teeth clenched behind the open lips, giving him an ugly, furious expression, strange to his face. He took a quick stride towards the officer, raised his whip and brought it down with the full strength of his shoulder in one cutting blow across the baggy, purplish cheeks of the insolent speaker.
CHAPTER II
A STRONG MAN IS BOWED
The whole thing was so unexpected that for one moment not a man in the room drew breath. Then the colonel sprang up with the bellow of an enraged bull, overturning the table in his rush, and a dozen club members were pulling him back from Eric.
"Eric Hamilton, are you mad?" I cried. "What do you mean?"
But Hamilton stood motionless as if he saw none of us. Except that his breath was labored, he wore precisely the same strange, distracted air he had on entering the club.
"Hold back!" I implored; for Adderly was striking right and left to get free from the men. "Hold back! There's a mistake! Something's wrong!"
"Reptile!" roared the colonel. "Cowardly reptile, you shall pay for this!"
"There's a mistake," I shouted, above the clamor of exclamations.
"Glad the mistake landed where it did, all the same," whispered Uncle Jack MacKenzie in my ear, "but get him out of this. Drunk—or a scandal," says my uncle, who always expressed himself in explosives when excited. "Side room—here—lead him in—drunk—by