Here, I had reason to believe, was now established no less a personage than Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson Bay Company. Rumor had it at the time that Lord Aberdeen of England himself was at Montreal. That was not true, but I established without doubt that his brother really was there, as well as Lieutenant William Peel of the Navy, son of Sir Robert Peel, England's prime minister. The latter, with his companion, Captain Parke, was one time pointed out to me proudly by my inn-keeper--two young gentlemen, clad in the ultra fashion of their country, with very wide and tall bell beavers, narrow trousers, and strange long sack-coats unknown to us in the States--of little shape or elegance, it seemed to me. There was expectancy in the air, that was sure. It was open secret enough in England, as well as in Montreal and in Washington, that a small army of American settlers had set out the foregoing summer for the valley of the Columbia, some said under leadership of the missionary Whitman. Britain was this year awakening to the truth that these men had gone thither for a purpose. Here now was a congress of Great Britain's statesmen, leaders of Great Britain's greatest monopoly, the Hudson Bay Company, to weigh this act of the audacious American Republic. I was not a week in Montreal before I learned that my master's guess, or his information, had been correct. The race was on for Oregon! All these things, I say, I saw go on about me. Yet in truth as to the inner workings of this I could gain but little actual information. I saw England's ships, but it was not for me to know whether they were to turn Cape Hope or the Horn. I saw Canada's _voyageurs_, but they might be only on their annual journey, and might go no farther than their accustomed posts in the West. In French town and English town, among common soldiers, _voyageurs_, inn-keepers and merchants, I wandered for more than one day and felt myself still helpless. That is to say, such was the case until there came to my aid that greatest of all allies, Chance. CHAPTER XIV THE OTHER WOMAN The world is the book of women.--_Rousseau_. I needed not to be advised that presently there would be a meeting of some of the leading men of the Hudson Bay Company at the little gray stone, dormer-windowed building on Notre Dame Street. In this old building--in whose vaults at one time of emergency was stored the entire currency of the Canadian treasury--there still remained some government records, and now under the steep-pitched roof affairs were to be transacted somewhat larger than the dimensions of the building might have suggested. The keeper of my inn freely made me a list of those who would be present--a list embracing so many scores of prominent men whom he then swore to be in the city of Montreal that, had the old Château Ramezay afforded twice its room, they could not all have been accommodated. For myself, it was out of the question to gain admittance.