shadow passed.

The murmur and the shout that went up from the wondering
throng must have been as music in the ears of the arrant
fraud. He looked down upon the deluded ones with triumph
and a new sense of power.

"The Great Spirit has spoken!" he said with commendable
dramatic brevity.

"Big is the Medicine of Riel!" cried the people. "We
are ready to do his bidding when the time comes."

"The time has come," said Riel.

Never perhaps in the history of impostors from Mahomet
to the Mahdi had an almanac proved so useful.




CHAPTER I

IN THE GREAT LONE LAND

It was the finest old log house on the banks of the mighty
Saskatchewan river, and the kitchen with its old-fashioned
furniture and ample space was the best room in it. On
the long winter nights when the ice cracked on the river,
when the stars twinkled coldly in the blue, and Nature