We remained at Victoria until the Hudson's Bay Company brought along father's outfit. Helping in all matters around the Mission kept us busy with hands and head and heart. While we were at Victoria my eldest sister, Eliza, was married to Richard Hardisty, of the Hudson's Bay Company's service, who was then in charge of the Mountain House. Immediately after the marriage they and Nellie, one of my younger sisters, started on their long overland trip to the distant trading-post. Some of us accompanied them out for a few miles, enjoying some good shooting by the way, for the fowl were now starting south. Hardisty and Philip Tait, another Hudson's Bay Company officer, challenged my brother David and myself as to size and quality of our several hunts, and we kept about even up to almost the last minute, when David and I luckily saw a flock of geese light in a shallow swamp at some distance from us. There was no cover whatever to aid our approach, so I said to David, "Let us separate and charge that swamp at full speed from two sides. Perhaps we will bamboozle those geese by so doing." This we proceeded to do, and urging our steeds to full speed, we came upon the birds so suddenly that they did not know what to do. When they rose on David's side he knocked two down; that sent them over to me, and I was equally successful, so that we were thus put four birds ahead of our competitors. This sport gave us a good time in giving our newly-married friends a "send-off" on their honeymoon trip. Away up at the foot of the Rockies, among the wild tribes of the mountains, my sisters were to make their home for a time; but we all had great faith in our new brother, so we wished them a hearty God-speed and returned to Victoria. When the goods came, father helped us all he could, and we soon were on the way back to Pigeon Lake. As I hoped to build a small church, I took with me an English half-breed, Francis Whitford by name, a handy fellow with an axe and saw, to aid in the building operations. It was now late in September, and we had a house to build for my man, and a stable for a couple of oxen I had secured and for the calf, whose mother we found had committed suicide while we were away! The foolish old thing had started off in search of a mate, and despairing of finding one, went into a miry lake some thirty-five miles from home and there died. And now that our Mission was permanently established, the Indians came from long distances to sojourn for a little time with us, to attend our meetings and listen to our message. Stonies and Crees and mixed bloods, pagan and Roman Catholic and Protestant, all came to us and were eager to learn. We were busy all day long and on into the night, when by the light of the camp or chimney fire we preached and lectured and sang and prayed, till out of the old life and old faith men and women came into the light of the Gospel and into the life that is born of the kingdom of Christ. CHAPTER XVIII.