Old Ravenshaw, as his familiars styled him, was a settler, if we may use such a termin reference to one who was, perhaps, among the most unsettled of men. He hadsettled with his family on the banks of the Red River. The colony on that river isnow one of the frontier towns of Canada. At the time we write of, it was a mereoasis in the desert, not even an offshoot of civilisation, for it owed its existencechiefly to the fact that retiring servants of the Hudson's Bay Fur Companycongregated there to spend the evening of life, far beyond the Canadian boundary, in the heart of that great wilderness where they had spent their working days, andon the borders of that grand prairie where the red man and the buffalo roamed atwill, and the conventionalities of civilised life troubled them not.To this haven of rest Samuel Ravenshaw had retired, after spending an active life inthe service of the fur-traders, somewhat stiffened in the joints by age and a roughcareer, and a good deal soured in disposition because of promotion having, as hethought, been too long deferred