“The Manitou is pleased to remove His hand and to give us light again.”

Then, as it seemed more quickly than it had been darkened, the blackness was removed from the sun’s face, and the shadow passed.

The murmur and the shout that went up from the wondering throng must have been as music in the ears of the arrant fraud.  He looked down upon the deluded ones with triumph and a new sense of power.

“The Great Spirit has spoken!” he said with commendable dramatic brevity.

“Big is the Medicine of Riel!” cried the people.  “We are ready to do his bidding when the time comes.”

“The time has come,” said Riel.

Never perhaps in the history of impostors from Mahomet to the Mahdi had an almanac proved so useful.

CHAPTER I

IN THE GREAT LONE LAND

It was the finest old log house on the banks of the mighty Saskatchewan river, and the kitchen with its old-fashioned furniture and ample space was the best room in it.  On the long winter nights when the ice cracked on the river, when the stars twinkled coldly in the blue, and Nature slept under the snows, it was the general meeting-place of the Douglas household.

Henry Douglas, widower and rancher, was perhaps, one of the best-to-do men between Battleford and Prince Albert.  The number of his cattle and horses ran into four figures, and no one who knew him begrudged his success.  He was an upright, cheery man, who only aired his opinions round his own fireside, and these were always charitable.  But to-night he did not speak much; he was gazing thoughtfully into the flames that sprang in gusty jets from the logs, dancing fantastically and making strange noises.  At length he lifted his head and looked at that great good-natured French Canadian giant, Jacques St Arnaud, who sat opposite him, and said—­

“I tell you, Jacques, I don’t like it.  There’s trouble brewing oh the Saskatchewan, and if the half-breeds get the Indians to rise, there’ll be—­” he glanced sideways at his daughter, and hesitated—­“well, considerable unpleasantness.”

“That’s so,” said Jacques, also looking at the fair girl with the strangely dark eyes.  “It is all so queer.  You warned the Government two, three months ago, did you not, that there was likely to be trouble, but still they did not heed?  Is not that so?”

“I did, but I’ve heard no more about it.  And now the Police are beginning to get uneasy.  They’re a mighty fine body of men, but if the half-breeds and Indians get on the war-path, they’ll swamp the lot, and—­”

“Shoo!” interrupted the giant, again looking at the girl, but this time with unmistakable alarm on his face.  “Them Injuns ain’t going to eat us.  You’ve been a good friend to them and to the metis.  So!”

Jacques St. Arnaud had been in the rancher’s service since before the latter’s child had been born down in Ontario, some eighteen years ago, and followed him into the great North-West to help conquer the wilderness and establish his new home.  He had a big heart in a large body, and his great ambition was to be considered a rather terrible and knowing fellow, while, as a matter of fact, he was the most inoffensive of mortals, and as simple in some ways as a child.