Still later, up these same waterways and along these trails came settlers singly or in groups, the daring vanguard of an advancing civilization, and planted themselves as pleased their fancy in choice spots, in sunny nooks sheltered by bluffs, by gem-like lakes or flowing streams, but mostly on the banks of the great rivers, the highways for their trade, the shining links that held them to their kind.  Some there were among those hardy souls who, severing all bonds behind them, sought only escape from their fellow men and from their past.  These left the great riverways and freighting trails, and pressing up the streams to distant head waters, there pitched their camp and there, in lonely, lordly independence, took rich toll of prairie, lake and stream as they needed for their living.

Such a man was Jack French, and such a spot was Night Hawk Lake, whose shining waters found a tortuous escape four miles away by Night Hawk Creek into the South Saskatchewan, king of rivers.

The two brothers, Jack and Herbert French, of good old English stock, finding life in the trim downs of Devon too confined and wearisome for their adventurous spirits, fell to walking seaward over the high head lands, and to listening and gazing, the soft spray dashing wet upon their faces, till they found eyes and ears filled with the sights and sounds of far, wide plains across the sea that called and beckoned, till in the middle seventies, with their mother’s kiss trembling on their brows and on their lips, and their father’s almost stern benediction stiffening their backs, they fared forth to the far West, and found themselves on the black trail that wound up the Red River of the North and reached the straggling hamlet of Winnipeg.

There, in one of Winnipeg’s homes, they found generous welcome and a maiden, guarded by a stern old timer for a father and four stalwart plain-riding brothers, but guarded all in vain, for laughing at all such guarding, the two brothers with the hot selfishness of young love, each unaware of the other’s intent, sought to rifle that house of its chief treasure.

To Herbert, the younger, that ardent pirate of her heart, the maiden struck her flaming flag, and on the same night, with fearful dismay, she sought pardon of the elder brother that she could not yield him like surrender.  With pale appealing face and kind blue eyes, she sought forgiveness for her poverty.

“Oh, Mr. French,” she cried, “if I only could!  But I cannot give you what is Herbert’s now.”

“Herbert!” gasped Jack with parched lips.

“And oh, Jack,” she cried again with sweet selfishness, “you will love Herbert still, and me?”

And Jack, having had a moment in which to summon up the reserves of his courage and his command, smiled into her appealing eyes, kissed her pale face, and still smiling, took his way, unseeing and unheeding all but those appealing, tearful eyes and that pleading voice asking with sweet selfishness only his life.