nd? It's Hortense. Swear
you'll restore her--" and his breath came with a hard metallic rattle
that warned the end.

"Doctor Picot," said I, "if you have anything to say, say it quickly
and make your peace with God!"

"Swear you'll take her back to her people and treat her as a sister,"
he cried.

"I swear before God that I shall take Hortense back to her people, and
that I shall treat her like a sister," I repeated, raising my right
hand.

That seemed to quiet him. He closed his eyes.

"Sir," said I, "have you nothing more to say? Who are her people?"

"Is . . . is . . . any one listening?" he asked in short, hard breaths.

I motioned the others back.

"Listen"--the words came in quick, rasping breaths. "She is not
mine . . . it was at night . . . they brought her . . . ward o' the
court . . . lands . . . they wanted me." There was a sharp pause, a
shivering whisper. "I didn't poison her"--the dying man caught
convulsively at my hands--"I swear I had no thought of harming
her. . . . They . . . paid. . . . I fled. . . ."

"Who paid you to poison Hortense? Who is Hortense?" I demanded; for
his life was ebbing and the words portended deep wrong.

But his mind was wandering again, for he began talking so fast that I
could catch only a few words. "Blood! Blood! Colonel Blood!" Then
"Swear it," he cried.

That speech sapped his strength. He sank back with shut eyes and faint
breathings.

We forced a potion between his lips.

"Don't let Gillam," he mumbled, "don't let Gillam . . . have the furs."

A tremor ran through his stiffening frame. A little shuddering
breath--and M. Picot had staked his last pawn in life's game.

[1] In confirmation of Mr. Stanhope's record it may be stated that on
the western side of the northland in the Mackenzie River region are gas
and tar veins that are known to have been burning continuously for
nearly two centuries.

CHAPTER XXI

HOW THE PIRATES CAME

Inside our Habitation all was the confusion of preparation for leaving
the bay. Outside, the Indians held high carnival; for Allemand, the
gin-soaked pilot, was busy passing drink through the loopholes to a
pandemonium of savages raving outside the stockades. 'Tis not a pretty
picture, that memory of white-men besotting the Indian; but I must even
set down the facts as they are, bidding you to remember that the white
trader who besotted the Indian was the same white trader who befriended
all tribe