"One day, with our winter catch of furs packed on the dogs, we came out. The Indians could not understand why we were leaving, and stood sorrowfully watching us as far as we could see them—there was a heaviness on our spirits that day, as if we knew what was coming.
"On the Judah Hill, at Peace River, came the accident. The train went over the bank. When I came to I was in the Irene Hospital there, with little Jim beside me quite unhurt. But I knew—I knew. I saw in the nurses' face—my Jim had been killed."
All the color had gone from her voice, and she spoke as mechanically as a deaf person.
"He was instantly killed—they did not let me see him.
"I went on. I knew what I should do. I would carry out as far as possible what Jim and I had started out to do. We had filed on the land, and I had the papers—I have them still. In Peace River we had sold the furs, and I had quite a lot of money, for furs were high that year.
"Jim had told me a lot about his father, a domineering but kindly old fellow, the local member of Parliament in a little Eastern town—a man who had had his own way all his life. Jim had not got along well with him, and had left home at eighteen.
"I remembered Jim had said that he wouldn't tell his father about the valley until he had talked it over with a lawyer and got everything settled, for the old man would run the whole thing. So when I went to his home I said little about our valley, except to tell them of the beauty of it.
"I was very unhappy. He raged about Jim and his wild ways. I could not bear it. He knew nothing of the real Jim that I knew, the tender, loving, sweet-souled Jim. I could see how he had raised the devil in the boy with his high-handed ways.
"He was passionately fond of the little Jim, and foolishly indulgent. He would give the child a dollar for a kiss, but if he did not come running to him the very moment he called he would be angry. Yet I could see that he adored the little fellow, and was very proud of his clever ways.
"One day he told me he was going to send Jim to a boy's school in England as soon as he was nine. I told him it could not be. Jim had said to me that we would bring up our boy in the wild, new country, where men are honorable and life is simple. I would follow Jim's wishes—our boy would not go to England. I defied him. I saw his temper then. He told me I had nothing to say about it, he was his grandson's guardian. Jim had made a will before he left home, making his father executor of his estate. He told me the father was the only parent the child had in the eyes of the law, and I had no claim on my boy.