for the chair-arms and held them firmly. He began:

"I first remember swinging in a blanket from a pine-tree at a buffalo-
hunt while my mother cooked the dinner. There were scores of tents,
horses, and many Indians and half-breeds, and a few white men. My father
was in command. I can see my mother's face as she stood over the fire.
It was not darker than mine; she always seemed more French than Indian,
and she was thought comely."

Lady Belward shuddered a little, but Gaston did not notice.

"I can remember the great buffalo-hunt. You heard a heavy rumbling
sound; you saw a cloud on the prairie. It heaved, a steam came from it,
and sometimes you caught the flash of ten thousand eyes as the beasts
tossed their heads and then bent them again to the ground and rolled on,
five hundred men after them, our women shouting and laughing, and arrows
and bullets flying. . . . I can remember a time also when a great
Indian battle happened just outside the fort, and, with my mother crying
after him, my father went out with a priest to stop it. My father was
wounded, and then the priest frightened them, and they gathered their
dead together and buried them. We lived in a fort for a long time, and
my mother died there. She was a good woman, and she loved my father.
I have seen her on her knees for hours praying when he was away.--I have
her rosary now. They called her Ste. Heloise. Afterwards I was always
with my father. He was a good man, but he was never happy; and only at
the last would he listen to the priest, though they were always great
friends. He was not a Catholic of course, but he said that didn't
matter."

Sir William interrupted huskily. "Why did he never come back?"