His business concerns had not prospered prodigiously, chiefly because his judgment, like his temper, had grown somewhat uncertain.

His popularity in the Hudson's Bay country had been at some tension since he had shipped his wife away to England.

Even the ordinary savage mind saw something unusual and undomestic in it, and the general hospitality declined a little.

Armour did not immediately guess the cause; but one day, about a year after his wife had gone, he found occasion to reprove a half-breed, by name Jacques Pontiac; and Jacques, with more honesty than politeness, said some hard words, and asked how much he paid for his English hired devils to kill his wife.

Strange to say, he did not resent this startling remark.