can tell about another?" Eloise was sorry her mother referred to that old sorrow.
To one that noted such trifles the Madame's hair was growing whiter, as if a box of powder had been spilled since the governor went away. Quite snowy now, it floated over the back of her easy-chair. She always wore it so, loosely, like her mother and her grandmother before her. Her eyes kept wandering toward the snow on Mt. Hood. Her ears strained to catch the distant boat song; she started whenever the great gate opened and shut.
And who had Madame McLoughlin been before her marriage to the great doctor? Some old voyageurs could have told you that forty years ago the Madame had been the fairest girl in the Cumberland District of Manitoba. Her Scotch father sent her to school with the nuns at Quebec. As a child she heard rumors from the South; scattered fragments of the American Revolution when the Tories came flocking across the Canadian border. As a girl she met Alexander McKay, who had just returned with Alexander Mackenzie from that wonderful tour in which they, the first white men that ever crossed the continent, had scribbled with red ochre on Pacific rocks:
A. MACKENZIE
ARRIVED FROM CANADA BY LAND, JULY, 1793.
Retracing their steps, Mackenzie went to England to be knighted Sir Alexander and crowned with fame. McKay remained and married Margaret. Two children came to their home at Sault Ste. Marie. A dozen, fourteen years went by. The boy became a sturdy lad, the girl a miss of twelve, while their Scotch father
