“So you are, Tony, my boy!” cried the old trader, catching up the pride of his heart in his strong arms and tossing him towards the ceiling. “You shall shoot before long with a real gun.”
Tony knocked the pipe out of his father’s mouth, and was proceeding to operate on his half-bald head with the scalping-knife, when Cora, who entered the room at the moment, sprang forward and wrenched the weapon from his grasp.
“We’ll give them dinner after the shooting is over, shan’t we, father?” asked Cora.
“Of course, my dear, of course,” replied the hospitable old gentleman, giving the pride of his heart a sounding kiss as he put him down. “Set your mother to work on a pie, and get Miss Trim to help you with a lot of those cakes you make so famously.”
As he spoke there was a sudden clattering in the porch. The young men were taking off their snow-shoes and stamping the snow from off their leggings and moccasined feet.
“Here we are, father!” cried a bright, sturdy youth, as he ushered in his followers. “Of course Elsie has prepared you for our sudden invasion. The fact is that we got up the match on the spur of the moment, because I found that Ian had a holiday.”
“No explanation required, Victor. Glad to see you all, boys. Sit down,” said Mr Ravenshaw, shaking hands all round.
The youths who were thus heartily welcomed presented a fine manly appearance. They were clad in the capotes, leggings, fur caps, moccasins, and fingerless mittens usually worn by the men of the settlement in winter.
That tall handsome fellow, with the curly black hair and flashing eyes, who bears himself so confidently as he greets the sisters, is Louis Lambert. The thickset youth behind him, with the shock of flaxen hair and imperceptible moustache, is Herr Winklemann, a German farmer’s son, and a famed buffalo-hunter. The ungainly man, of twenty-four apparently—or thereabouts—with the plain but kindly face, and the frame nearly as strong as that of the host himself, is Ian Macdonald. In appearance he is a rugged backwoodsman. In reality he is the schoolmaster of that part of the widely-scattered colony.
The invitation to sit down was not accepted. Daylight was short-lived in those regions at that season of the year. They sallied forth to the work in hand.