was collecting peltries from Michilimackinac to Detroit in those early days before recorded history began. One summer morning, as he had done every summer for fourteen years, Alexander McKay set out with his brigade of furs for Montreal. That was the last time Madame ever saw him.
For at Montreal McKay met John Jacob Astor. Astor was starting a Pacific fur company. He had come to Canada for men skilled in all the mysteries of the fur trade. McKay pleased Astor was made a partner. He flew around Montreal engaging his men, and by the return boats to Sault Ste. Marie sent a good-bye to his wife, and a request to the commander of the northwest post to care for her "till his return." It was a sudden leave-taking, but not uncommon in the ups and downs of fur-trading life. Margaret sat day after day with her arms around her little girl and wept. The boy Tom had gone with his father. How bravely he stood in the boat that summer day, waving good-byes to his mother! In fancy she saw their birchen barks fly down the Richelieu, up Lake Champlain, and down the glittering Hudson. She dreamed that they tossed in Astor's ship around Cape Horn. Then came the war of 1812. The Americans burnt Sault Ste. Marie, and the little house in which Margaret's wedded life had sped so happily. Those blue-coated soldiers waited for the annual fur brigade due from the North; watched and waited and went away. One afternoon a fleet of forty-seven boats, freighted with a million dollars' worth of furs, slid down the Sault Ste. Marie, and passed unharmed to Montreal. She was glad they had missed the furs, those vandals that had burnt her house! But, to fill up the measure of disaster, word was brought by returning voya-
