a searching examination, which Frona followed closely, but which
elicited little new.

"You have the right to cross-examine the witness," the chairman
informed St. Vincent. "Any questions you want to ask?"

The correspondent shook his head.

"Go on," Frona urged.

"What's the use?" he asked, hopelessly. "I'm fore-doomed. The verdict
was reached before the trial began."

"One moment, please." Frona's sharp command arrested the retiring
witness. "You do not know of your own knowledge who committed this
murder?"

The Scandinavian gazed at her with a bovine expression on his leaden
features, as though waiting for her question to percolate to his
understanding.

"You did not see who did it?" she asked again.

"Aw, yes. That feller there," accusative finger to the fore. "She say
he did."

There was a general smile at this.

"But you did not see it?"

"I hear some shooting."

"But you did not see who did the shooting?"

"Aw, no; but she said--"

"That will do, thank you," she said sweetly, and the man retired.

The prosecution consulted its notes. "Pierre La Flitche!" was called
out.

A slender, swart-skinned man, lithe of figure and graceful, stepped
forward to the open space before the table. He was darkly handsome,
with a quick, eloquent eye which roved frankly everywhere. It rested
for a moment on Frona, open and honest in its admiration, and she
smiled and half-nodded, for she liked him at first glance, and it
seemed as though they had met of old time. He smiled pleasantly back,
the smooth upper lip curling brightly and showing beautiful teeth,
immaculately white.

In answer to the stereotyped preliminaries he stated that his name was
that of his father's, a descendant of the _coureurs du bois_. His
mother--with a shrug of the shoulders and flash of teeth--was a
_breed_. He was born somewhere in the Barrens, on a hunting trip, he
did not know where. Ah, _oui_, men called him an old-timer. He had
come into the country in the days of Jack McQuestion, across the
Rockies from the Great Slave.

On being told to go ahead with what he knew of the matter in hand, he
deliberated a moment, as though casting about for the best departure.

"In the spring it is good to sleep with the open door," he began, his
words sounding clear and flute-like and marked by haunting memories of
the accents his forbears put into the tongue. "And so I sleep last
night. But I sleep like the cat. The fall of