ur innocent companions, but you have the effrontery to
bring the evidence of your guilt into this fort along with you."

As McLeod spoke, he laid hold of a scalp which still dropped fresh blood
as it hung at the hunter's saddle-bow.

"If I'm to answer to you for every scalp I choose to lift in
self-defence, the sooner I quit you the better," answered Larocque
sulkily.

"Was there any occasion to lift this scalp at all?" demanded McLeod, as
he seized the man by the collar.

"Who talks of lifting scalps?" growled a loud, deep-toned voice.

All eyes were instantly turned on the speaker, and the crowd fell back
to permit Mr Macgregor, the person in command of the Mountain Fort, to
approach the scene of action.

The man who now appeared on the scene was a sad and a terrible sight to
behold. He was one of that wretched class of human beings who, having
run a long course of unbridled wickedness, become total wrecks in body
and mind long before the prime of manhood has been passed. Macgregor
had been a confirmed drunkard for many years. He had long lost all
power of self-control, and had now reached that last fearful stage when
occasional fits of _delirium tremens_ rendered him more like a wild
beast than a man. Being a large and powerful man, and naturally
passionate, he was at these times a terror to all who came near him. He
had been many years in charge of the fur-trading establishment, and
having on many occasions maltreated the Indians, he was hated by them
most cordially.

One of his mad fits had been on him for some days before the arrival of
March Marston and his friends. He had recovered sufficiently to be able
to stagger out of his room just at the time the buffalo hunters, as
above described, entered the square of the fort. As he strode forward,
with nothing on but his shirt and trousers, his eyes bloodshot, his hair
matted and dishevelled, and his countenance haggard in the extreme, he
was the most pitiable, and, at the same time, most terrible specimen of
human degradation that the mind of man could conceive of.

"What now! who has been lifting scalps?" he growled between his set
teeth, striding up to Larocque, and glaring in his face, with his
bloodshot eyes, like a tiger.

McLeod held up the bloody scalp.

"Who did it?" roared Macgregor.

"I did," said Larocque with an attempt at a defiant air.

The words had barely passed his lips when he received a blow between the
eyes that felled him to