Long he stood there and pondered, not that he had need to take himself to task, because his course was already mapped out, but the gates of the past had been opened by these discoveries, and he could in imagination see his mother walking about these scenes she had so often described to him, a fair young girl, with golden hair and blue eyes, so like the cherub who was doubtless still in the loving arms of her doting grandfather, the stern czar of the Hudson Bay post.