“I wonder if they’ll try to come down on you for the disorder,” asked Wayland.

The old frontiersman chuckled.  “A wish t’ God they would,” he said.  “What A’m wonderin’ is what y’ fat Bat fellow’s doin’?”

“Oh, I can tell you that,” answered the news editor.  “Bat is singing small!  I’ll bet you a five there won’t be a line nor the fraction of a line of all this in the local papers; nor as much as a blank space about it in any other paper.  My God, if I could only lay my hand on a moneyed man who would back a paper thro’ a fight like this and tell the counting rooms to go to the Devil!  I know a score of editors would jump for the job and work their heads off!  You needn’t think we are specially keen for eating dog on this kind of a job!  ’Tisn’t the men inside the office bedevil us:  ’tis y’r outside interest—­”

Eleanor gave him a quick queer look.  She was learning to think fast and decide quickly.  But the news editor was quite right.  Not a word of the disgraceful attempt to pervert justice appeared in either the local or any other paper.  MacDonald’s death was briefly recorded as accidental and the coroner’s verdict given in a four line paragraph.  Do not ask me the why of this, dear reader; or I shall ask you the why of a hundred other equally mysterious silences.  Don’t forget, as Wayland has already informed you, there are other countries besides Russia where everything is not given out to the press.  And do not curse the press!  It is not the fault of the press in Russia.  Is it here?

[1] I can find no authority for the old frontiersman’s use of the word but in a certain Elizabethan dramatist; and as he uses the word “scut” for the bobtail of a fleeing rabbit or sheep, perhaps the meanings of the word as used are identical.—­Author.

[2] It need scarcely be explained these are the old frontiersman’s sentiments, not the writer’s; but on investigation I found his statement of facts as to what transformed little Wandering Spirit into a blood-thirsty monster was absolutely true.  This, of course, did not justify the Rebellion, but helps to explain it, to explain why a worthless scamp like Riel could rouse the peaceful natives to blood thirst and rapine.—­Author.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE AWAKENING CONTINUED

It was all over, the inquest, the coroner’s finding, the reading of the will, the revelation of the real errand on which the old frontiersman had come from Saskatchewan.  The parting of the ways had come to her, as it comes to us all.  The death of her father had shut the door on opportunity in the Valley; and the little old lady, waiting for Matthews up in Prince Albert, Canada, to take her back to the inheritance of her father’s family in Scotland, opened elsewhere another door of opportunity.  As one door had swung shut, another had swung open.  Were we creatures of circumstances, as the fatalists