“Listen!” resumed the Highlander, with a serious air that was unusual in him. “I read the future thus. You have already, as I am aware, sent in your resignation. Well, you will not only quit the service of the HBC, but you will go and join your friend Maxby in Colorado; you will become a farmer; and, worst of all, you will take my dear sister with you.”
“In some respects,” said Lumley, also becoming serious, “you are right. I have made up my mind that, God willing, I shall quit the service—not that I find fault with it, very much the reverse; but it is too much of a life of exile and solitude to my dear Jessie. I will also go to Colorado and join Maxby, but I won’t take your sister from you. I will take you with me, brother-in-law, if you will consent to go, and we shall all live together. What say you?”
Macnab shook his head, sadly.
“You forget my boy, that your case is very different from mine. You have only just reached the end of your second term of service, and are still a youth. Whereas, I am a commissioned officer of the Fur Trade, with a fairish income, besides being an elderly man, and not very keen to throw all up and begin life over again.”
There was much in what Macnab said, yet not so much but that Lumley set himself, with all his powers of suasion and suavity, to induce his brother-in-law to change his mind. But Lumley had yet to learn that no power of Saxon logic, or personal influence, can move the will of a man from beyond the Grampian range who has once made up his mind.
When all was said, Macnab still shook his head, and smiled regretfully.
“It’s of no use wasting your breath, my boy,—but tell me, is Jessie anxious for this change?”
“She is anxious. She naturally pines for female society—though she did not say so until I urged her solemnly to tell me all her mind. And she is right. It is not good for woman, any more than for man, to be alone, and when I am away on these long expeditions—taking the furs to the depot, searching out the Indians, hunting, etcetera,—she is left unavoidably alone. I have felt this very strongly, and that was why, as you know, I had made up my mind during the winter, and written to the governor and council that, as my time had expired, I meant to retire this spring.”
“Yes, boy, I know,” returned Macnab. “I foresaw all this even long before you began to move in the matter, and I also took steps with a view to contingencies. You know that I am entitled to a year’s furlough this spring. Well, I wrote during the winter to say that I intended to avail myself of it. Now, then, this is what I intend to do. When you retire, and go off to the States, I will go with you on leave of absence. We won’t lose time by the way, for you may depend on it that Maxby will not delay his wedding longer than he can help. Fortunately, his old father won’t be able to wind up his affairs in England, and set off to Colorado quite as quickly as the son expects, so that will help to delay matters; and thus, though we can hardly expect to be in time for the wedding, we will at least be time enough to claim a revival and extension of the festivities. Then, you know, Big Otter—”
“Aye, what of him?” asked Lumley, seeing that Macnab paused.