and able leader, M. Riel. The great swaggering, windy
_pere_ Richot, took his coarse person from house to house
denouncing the Canadian Government and inciting the
people.

"No harm can come to you," he would say; "you have in
the Canadian Government a good friend in Mr. George E.
Cartier. He will see that no hair of one of your heads
is touched." And Riel went abroad giving the same assurance.
Moreover, it was known to every thinking one of the
fifteen thousand Metis that Riel was a _protege_ of
Monseigneur Tache; that through this pious bishop it was
he had received his education, and that His Lordship
would not alone seek to minimize what his favourite had
done, but would say that the uprising was a justifiable
one. This was how the Catholic Church in Red River
stimulated the diseased vanity and the lawless spirit of
this thrice-dangerous Guiteau of the plains.

I have already said that Bruce was put up by Riel as a
mere figure-head. When the end of the pretence had been
accomplished, this poor scare-crow was thrown down and
Louis Riel assumed the presidency of the Provisional
Government. Now he began to draw to himself all those
men whom he knew would be faithful tools in carrying out
any scheme of villainy, or even of blood that he proposed
to them. The coarse and loud-mouthed O'Donoghue was duly
installed as a confidential attendant with wide powers,
and Lepine was made head of the military part of the
insurrectionary body. It certainly was strange if the