ard them explain in Cree,
that they had followed the man swimming. Then she knew that the
cause was lost, and fled as swiftly as she could through the forest.
Chapter Fifteen
Galen Albret had chosen to interrogate his recaptured prisoner
alone. He sat again, in the arm-chair of the Council Room. The
place was flooded with sun. It touched the high-lights of the
time-darkened, rough furniture, it picked out the brasses, it
glorified the whitewashed walls. In its uncompromising
illumination Me-en-gan, the bows-man, standing straight and tall
and silent by the door, studied his master's face and knew him to
be deeply angered.
For Galen Albret was at this moment called upon to deal with a
problem more subtle than any with which his policy had been puzzled
in thirty years. It was bad enough that, in repeated defiance of
his authority, this stranger should persist in his attempt to break
the Company's monopoly; it was bad enough that he had, when
captured, borne himself with so impudent an air of assurance; it
was bad enough that he should have made open love to the Factor's
daughter, should have laughed scornfully in the Factor's very face.
But now the case had become grave. In some mysterious manner he
had succeeded in corrupting one of the Company's servants.
Treachery was therefore to be dealt with.
Some facts Galen Albret had well in hand. Others eluded him
persistently. He had, of course, known promptly enough of the
disappearance of a canoe, and had thereupon dispatched his Indians
to the recapture. The Reverend Archibald Crane had reported that
two figures had been seen in the act of leaving camp, one by the
river, the other by the Woods Trail. But here the Factor's
investigations encountered a check. The rifle brought in by his
Indians, to his bewilderment, he recognized not at all. His
repeated cross-questionings, when they touched on the question of
Ned Trent's companion, got no farther than the Cree wooden
stolidity. No, they had seen no one, neither presence, sign, nor
trail. But Galen Albret, versed in the psychology of his savage
allies, knew they lied. He suspected them of clan loyalty to one
of their own number; and yet they had never failed him before.
Now, his heavy revolver at his right hand, he interviewed Ned
Trent, alone, except for the Indian by the portal.
As with the Indians, his cross-examination had borne scant results.
The best of his questions but involved him in
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