a strange surprise, and David cared for no one yet.
"Ah, I beg your pardon." It was unusual for David to do an awkward thing, but he trod on Bruce's toes, and Bruce had corns. Snuff-box in hand, the old Scotch warder reposed from the care of the flags, the guns, the garden, and the gate, sleepily watching the weaving dancers and thinking of Waterloo, perhaps. Burris, portly and rubicund, resplendent in a huge roll of colored neckerchief and horn spectacles astride his nose, slipped out again to take a nip of ale behind the buttery door.
To be the governor's guest at Christmas was no light honor. Monique and Charlefoux were there in their gayest dress, fine green cloth coats and silver buttons, crimson caps and golden tassels, cutting pirouettes and pigeon wings, stamping in the noisy rigadoon, and heeling it and toeing it on air. Tom McKay alone made no change in dress. With the free, frank manners of the Scot and the grace and affability of the Frenchman, he came in his hunting outfit. Scorning the effeminate foppery of the Canadians, he wore as usual his leathern belt, from which depended the powder-flask, the bulletpouch, and the long scabbard that concealed the swordlike hunting-knife. Tall, dark, powerful, Tom McKay acknowledged no master save McLoughlin. No other man could do what McKay did at Fort Vancouver or on the trail. His name was a terror in the mountains. The Indians believed this Hudson's Bay cousin of theirs bore a charmed life; the whites knew him to be an unerring shot. But with all his fierceness Tom McKay had the gentle heart of a woman.
Past midnight the dance, half Highland with a dash of Indian, ceased, and the dancers disappeared. Old
