Owen felt conscience-stricken when he remembered that he never once thought of his angel mother without a feeling of bitter animosity toward the unrelenting parent who had driven her forth when she married against his will.
And now a new factor had been sprung upon him in the shape of this cousin!
Who was she and what could she be like?
He knew there had been another daughter, just as he had told Cuthbert, who had married the man her father picked out, only to suffer as all ill-used wives do; until matters went too far and Alexander Gregory had driven him out of the region.
This daughter then had enjoyed all that money could secure for her during the few years she lived after her child came, so that the little one must be looked upon as the heiress of all the old factor's wealth; and he was said to have accumulated much of this world's goods during his life on the Saskatchewan.
But this interested Owen not a particle, for he was quite free from any desire to share in the old man's money.
Whoever this girl might be, she was welcome to all the factor possessed, for he would never touch a penny, he was bound.
It made him writhe a little to think, however, that the child of one daughter was rolling in wealth, so to speak, while he, the only issue of the other marriage, was like the foxes and had hardly more than a hole wherein to lay his head.
Still, she was a girl, while he as a hardy boy felt no need of comfort—given a gun and some provisions and he feared not the desolate places of the Great North Land; he had wrested many of Nature's secrets from her bosom and could hold his own in the blizzard's blast as well as the animals.
But he must get by himself to think all this over and fight the battle again, this time for good and all—it might make a difference if there were some one else besides the stern old factor, in whose veins ran the same blood; yes, that was something he had never considered before.