Here, then, were three parties all at daggers drawn--the Hudson’s Bay Company standing stiffly for the old order of things and marking time till the negotiations in England gave some cue for a new policy; the colonists asking for a representative government, which meant union with Canada, waiting till negotiations for Confederation gave them some cue; the independents, furtive, almost nameless, working in the dark, hand in hand with that million dollar fund, watching for their opportunity. And there was a fourth party more inflammable than these--the descendants of the old Nor’Westers--the Plain Rangers, French Metis all of them, led by Louis Riel, son of the old miller, wondering restlessly what their part was to be in the reorganization. Were their lands to be taken away by these surveyors coming from Canada? Were they to be whistled by the independents under the Stars and Stripes? They and their fathers had found this land and explored it and ranged its prairies from time immemorial. Who had better right than the French Half-breeds to this country. Compared to them, the Scotch settlers were as newcomers. Of them, the other three parties were taking small thought. The Metis rallied to Louis Riel’s standard to protect their rights, whichever of the other three parties came uppermost in the struggle. Poor children of the wilds, of a free wilderness life forever past! Their leader was unworthy, and their stand a vain breakwater against the inward rolling tide of events resistless as destiny! * * * * * The Company had told the Parliamentary Committee of ’57 that it would willingly remit the burden of governing its enormous territory if adequate returns were made for its possessory rights. Without going into the question of these rights, a syndicate of capitalists, called the International Financial Association, jumped at the chance to buy out the old Hudson’s Bay. Chief negotiator was Edward Watkins, who was planning telegraph and railroad schemes for British America. “About what would the price be?” he had casually asked Ellice, now an old man--the same Ellice who had negotiated the union of Hudson’s Bay and Nor’Westers in ’21. “Oh, perhaps a million-and-a-half,” ruminated Ellice; but Berens, whose family had held Hudson’s Bay stock for generations, was of a different mind. “What?” he roared in a manner the quintessence of insult, “sequester our lands? Let settlers go in on our hunting ground?” But the cooler heads proved the wiser heads. It was “take what you can get now, or risk losing all later! Whether you will or not, charter or no charter, settlers are coming and can’t be stopped. Canadian politicians are talking of your charter as an outrage, as _spoliation_! Their surveyors are already on the ground! Judge for yourselves whether it is worth while to risk the repetition of Oregon; or attempt resisting settlement.”