did not price her high? Bedad, father, I rose betimes and did it, before
anny man should say he set me the lead. Before the carpet in the parlour
was down, and with the bare boards soundin' to my words, I offered her
the name of Finden."

"And so--the first of the long line! Bien, it is an honour." The priest
paused a moment, looked at Finden with a curious reflective look, and
then said: "And so you t'ink there is no one; that she will say yes not
at all--no?"

They were sitting on Father Bourassa's veranda, on the outskirts of the
town, above the great river, along which had travelled millions of bygone
people, fighting, roaming, hunting, trapping; and they could hear it
rushing past, see the swirling eddies, the impetuous currents, the
occasional rafts moving majestically down the stream. They were facing
the wild North, where civilisation was hacking and hewing and ploughing
its way to newer and newer cities, in an empire ever spreading to the
Pole.

Finden's glance loitered on this scene before he replied. At length,
screwing up one eye, and with a suggestive smile, he answered: "Sure,
it's all a matter of time, to the selfishest woman. 'Tis not the same
with women as with men; you see, they don't get younger--that's a point.
But"--he gave a meaning glance at the priest--"but perhaps she's not
going to wait for that, after all. And there he rides, a fine figure of
a man, too, if I have to say it!"

"M'sieu' Varley?" the priest responded, and watched a galloping horseman
to whom Finden had pointed, till he rounded the corner of a little wood.