“The men are moch mad,” Tole went on in his matter-of-fact way.  “They not listen to my fat’er no more.  Say he too old.  All come to meet to our house to-night.  There will be trouble.  My fat’er send me for you.  He say maybe you can stop the trouble.”

“I stop it?” said Ambrose, laughing harshly.  “What the devil can I do?”

Tole shrugged.  “My fat’er say nobody but you can stop it.”

It was clear to Ambrose that “trouble” signified danger to Colina.  “I’ll come,” he said apathetically.

“Where is your dugout?” asked Tole.

Ambrose explained.

“Bring all your things,” said Tole.  “You stay at our house now till you go back.  My mot’er got good medicine.  She cure mal de tete.”

Ambrose reflected bitterly that Mrs. Grampierre’s simples could hardly reach his complaint.  Nevertheless, he was not anxious to be left alone—­he was not one to nourish a sorrow.  He packed up what remained of his outfit, and Tole stowed it in the dugout.

The Grampierre house was a mile and a half above the Company’s establishment on the other side of the river.  The two young men had, therefore, a three-mile paddle against the current.

Landing, Ambrose saw before him a low, wide-spreading house built of squared logs and whitewashed.  Ample barns and outhouses spread around a rough square.  The whole picture brought to mind a manor-house of earlier and simpler times.

The patriarch himself waited at the door.  He was a fine figure of manhood—­lean, straight, rugged as a jack-pine.  He had the noble aquiline features of the red side of the house, and his dark face was wonderfully set off by a luxuriant, snowy thatch.

Ambrose, indifferent as he was, could not but be struck by the old man’s beauty, and his dignity was equal to his good looks.  Young Tole’s naive pride in his parent was explained.

Ambrose was introduced to a wide interior of a dignified bareness.  This was the main room of the house; the kitchen they called it, though the cooking was done outside.

It was spotlessly clean; none too common a thing in the north.  Clearly these people had their pride.

Still Ambrose was reminded of the difference between white and red, for the women of the house were ignored, and when later he sat down to sup with Simon and his five strong sons the wives waited humbly on the table.

Afterward the men sat before the door, smoking.  Simon kept Ambrose at his right hand, and conversed with him as with an honored guest.  He avoided all reference to what had brought him.

When Ambrose, not understanding the reason for his delicacy, asked about the coming meeting, Simon said: 

“When all come you learn what every man thinks.  I not want to shape your mind to my mind until all are here.”

They came by ones and twos, a little company of twenty-odd.  Many anomalies of race were exhibited.  Some showed a Scotch cast of feature, some French, some purely Indian.