"Do not urge your suit now time will do wonders," said the chief factor to the impatient American. But that Rogers should marry his daughter became the chief wish of the factor's life. He discussed it with Dr. Whitman, he consulted Dr. McLoughlin; he made a will bequeathing a thousand pounds sterling to Cornelius Rogers.
Every autumn of her life Maria Pambrun had walked the ramparts of Fort Walla Walla, watching for the Montreal express. Somehow, in her romantic little heart, she believed that a knight would come out of that north from some castle beside a distant sea, and then then - Day after day she sat there and dreamed, beading the moccasins in her lap. Along the northern wall rolled the wild Columbia, sucking in the lesser Walla Walla in its mighty sweep to the sea. Eastward, the Blue Mountains purpled in the sun. The bunchgrass prairies were covered with horses. Close around the fort lay the ever drifting, shifting, changing sands of the peninsula, darkening the sky in summer and sweeping in gales at night. And now, with such dreams in her head, she had come down to Christmas at Fort Vancouver.
At this Christmas festivity, Douglas and his wife Nelia, Rae and Eloise, Maria and the clerks, and the Birnie girls and Victoire, the daughter of La Bonte from the valley, all whirled in the dance together. Dr. Barclay lifted his eyes to the unexpected beauty of Maria Pambrun "in her kirtle green and a rosebud in her hair." She danced with David McLoughlin. David's long black locks had a careless grace; he had his father's fine, straight nose, and his mother's square-set mouth; there was a ring on his finger and a sword at his belt. Dr. Barclay's eyes followed the pair with
