dan-
gerous post in the service is the most .important just now."
"I am satisfied," explained Rae, "but Eloise I hate to expose her." It was the old fear, a white woman in an Indian country.
"William," said Eloise, rising like a queen, "do you not think I shall be safe if you are there? Do not hesitate if my father thinks it best. Perhaps you can do more than any other toward reducing that district to order. They send only the most trusted men to posts like that."
"Spoken like McLoughlin's daughter," said Douglas, coming through the door. "These Hudson's Bay girls inherit heroic blood." The words were both a compliment to Eloise and a tribute to his own brave wife, who at that moment approached from the other end of the long veranda.
So during that winter preparations were made for the trip in the early spring. Arrangements for the lease were yet to be perfected, so an opportunity offered for Rae and Eloise to accompany Douglas to Sitka before settling to the dangers of dreary Stikine. Rae carefully completed his accounts to hand over to Dugald McTavish, his successor in the head-clerkship. Douglas looked after sundries for the new forts. Mrs. Douglas assisted Eloise in overhauling her boxes of v London dresses preparatory to meeting the Russian grandees at Sitka castle.
How did they dress when Eloise was young? Vandyck puffs and wing bretelles, everything just as it is now, was in fashion sixty years ago. Noah's ark, a massive cedar chest bound with copper and lined with zinc, was hauled out of a capacious closet of the governor's residence. Noah's ark came from over the
