resigned from the Hudson Bay Company. "I'll neiver leeve i' the wuids again," he said. A few days later, walking lonely in the streets of London, he came unexpectedly upon Dr. McLoughlin. The benevolent face beamed, it touched an aching void throwing himself upon his knees at the doctor's feet, with tears he begged to be taken back. Despite some obstinate disobediences the doctor valued the old gardener, so back he came, a fixture for life. Bruce looked eagerly, too, for his old musket, that cherished relic of Waterloo. In half an hour he had all the laddies in a row, with flint-locks on their shoulders "Heids up," "'Taes out like sooldiers, noo," "Mek reddy," "Tek aim," "Fire! "
David McLoughlin was like a child again. He seemed to wake from a dream to look upon the weather-beaten palisades, the unpainted stores resting on blocks, the sparks flying from the forge. He strode through his mother's sitting-room, unchanged save that Chinese matting, the first ever used in this country, had supplanted the native Indian mats. Just to see how it would taste, he drew a bucket of water from the deep well never walled, and snipped a handful of biscuit from the bakehouse. Even the big brass bell under its peaked roof sang the same old song, "Pumbrun! Pumbrun! Pumbrun! "that it sang when Pambrun rang it and David was a little boy. Apparently the same furs lay in the same bales in the furroom, the same trappers came in the same boats, singing the same old songs that had been his cradle lullabies. The same ship brought the same goods and departed again on her cycle of sailing. Changes had come to David, and he had expected changes here, but it was like opening a story-book to a page read long ago.
