Elinor had never talked much about her visit, except to describe the scenery and the life, which in that day was rough indeed. Not even to me, who had grown up next door to her and who had always seemed more a sister than a friend, did she speak of other than the merest commonplaces. But when Tom Blair made a flying trip back home, some ten years later, there were one or two of us to whom he related the story of Jerome Carey,—a story revealing only too well the reason for Elinor's sad eyes and utter indifference² to masculine attentions. I can recall almost his exact words and the inflections of his voice, and I remember, too, that it seemed to me a far cry from the tranquil³, pleasant scene before us, on that lovely summer day, to the elemental life of the Flats.

 

The Flats was a forlorn little trading station fifteen miles up the river from Prince Albert, with a scanty⁴ population of half-breeds and three white men. When Jerome Carey was sent to take charge of the telegraph office there, he cursed his fate in the picturesque⁵ language permissible⁶ in the far Northwest.

 

Not that Carey was a profane⁷ man, even as men go in the West. He was an English gentleman, and he kept both his life and his vocabulary pretty clean. But—the Flats!

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