Then, as it seemed more quickly than it had been darkened, the blackness was removed from the sun's face, and the 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 slept under the snows, it was the general meeting-place of the Douglas household.
Henry Douglas, widower and rancher, was perhaps, one of the best-to-do men between Battleford and Prince Albert. The number of his cattle and horses ran into four figures, and no one who knew him begrudged his success. He was an upright, cheery man, who only aired his opinions round his own fireside, and these were always charitable. But to-night he did not speak much; he was gazing thoughtfully into the flames that sprang in gusty jets from the logs, dancing fantastically and making strange noises. At length he lifted his head and looked at that great good-natured French Canadian giant, Jacques St Arnaud, who sat opposite him, and said—