Excellency's hands rested with a peculiar half fatherly, half
brotherly touch on the shoulders of the slim lad before him.

"Then you have blood in your veins that the whole world might envy,"
he said slowly. "The blood of old France and the blood of a great
aboriginal race that is the offshoot of no other race in the world. The
Indian blood is a thing of itself, unmixed for thousands of years, a
blood that is distinct and exclusive. Few white people can claim such
a lineage. Boy, try and remember that as you come of Red Indian blood,
dashed with that of the first great soldiers, settlers and pioneers
in this vast Dominion, that you have one of the proudest places and
heritages in the world; you are a Canadian in the greatest sense of
that great word. When you go out into the world will you remember
that, Fire-Flint?" His Excellency's voice ceased, but his thin, pale,
aristocratic fingers still rested on the boy's shoulders, his eyes still
shone with that peculiar brotherly light.

"I shall remember, sir," replied Fire-Flint, while his homeless young
heart was fast creating for itself the foothold amongst the great
nations of the earth. The principal of the school stood awkwardly,
hoping that all this attention would not spoil his head pupil; but he
never knew that boy in all the five years he had instructed him, as
His Excellency, Lord Mortimer, knew him in that five minutes' chat.

"No," said the Governor, again turning to the principal, "I certainly do
not like that term 'half-breed.' Most of the people on the continent of
America are of mixed nationality--how few are pure English or Scotch or
Irish--or indeed of any particular race? Yet the white people of mixed
nations are never called half-breeds. Why not? It would be quite
reasonable to use the term regarding them." Then, once again addressing