CHAPTER XII. THE MIDNIGHT SUN» ERGEANT LONG'S assertion must appear to have been founded on insufficient evidence. That there had been dancing no one could deny, but that the dancer was a Frenchman, however probable, could not be considered proved. However, the Lieutenant shared the opinion of his subordinate, which did not appear too positive to any of the party, who all agreed in feeling sure that some travellers, with at least one compatriot of Vestris amongst them, had recently encamped on this spot. Of course Lieutenant Hobson was by no means pleased at this : he was afraid of having been preceded by rivals in the north-western districts of English America ; and secret as the Company had kept its scheme, it had doubtless been divulged in the commercial centres of Canada and the United States. The Lieutenant resumed his interrupted march ; but he was full of care and anxiety, although he would not now have dreamed of retracing his steps. " Frenchmen are then sometimes met with in these high lati- tudes?" was Mrs Barnett's natural question after this incident.
- ' Yes, madam," replied the Lieutenant ; " or if not exactly
Frenchmen, the descendants of the masters of Canada when it belonged to France, which comes to much the same thing. These men are in fact our most formidable rivals." " But I thought," resumed Mrs Barnett, " that after the absorp- tion by the Hudson's Bay Company of the old North-West Company, that it had no longer any rivals on the American continent." " Although there is no longer any important association for trading in furs except our own, there are a good many perfectly independent private companies, mostly American, which have retained French agents or their descendants in their employ.*'
