unt-books. Evidently the Factor's private office,

Ned Trent returned to the main room and listened intently for
several minutes. After that he ran back to the office and began
hastily to open and rummage, one after another, the drawers of the
desk. He discovered and concealed several bits of string, a
desk-knife, and a box of matches. Then he uttered a guarded
exclamation of delight. He had found a small revolver, and with it
part of a box of cartridges.

"A chance!" he exulted: "a chance!"

The game would be desperate. He would be forced first of all to
seek out and kill the men detailed to shadow him--a toy revolver
against rifles; white man against trained savages. And after that
he would have, with the cartridges remaining, to assure his
subsistence. Still it was a chance.

He closed the drawers and the door, and resumed his seat in the
arm-chair by the council table.

For over an hour thereafter he awaited the next move in the game.
He was already swinging up the pendulum arc. The case did not
appear utterly hopeless. He resolved, through Me-en-gan, whom he
divined as a friend of the girl's, to smuggle a message to Virginia
bidding her hope. Already his imagination had conducted him to
Quebec, when in August he would search her out and make her his own.

Soon one of the Indian servants entered the room for the purpose of
conducting him to a smaller apartment, where he was left alone for
some time longer. Food was brought him. He ate heartily, for he
considered that wise. Then at last the summons for which he had
been so long in readiness. Me-en-gan himself entered the room, and
motioned him to follow.

Ned Trent had already prepared his message on the back of an
envelope, writing ft with the lead of a cartridge. He now pressed
the bit of paper into the Indian's palm.

"For O-mi-mi," he explained.

Me-en-gan, bored him through with his bead-like eyes of the surface
lights.

"Nin nissitotam," he agreed after a moment.

He led the way. Ned Trent followed through the narrow, uncarpeted
hall with the faded photograph of Westminster, down the crooked
steep stairs with the creaking degrees, and finally into the
Council Room once more, with its heavy rafters, its two fireplaces,
its long table, and its narrow windows,

"Beka--wait!" commanded Me-en-gan, and left him.

Ned Trent had supposed he was being conducted to the canoe which
should bear him on the first stage of his long journey,