's Bay. It was high and bold, and,
somehow, had a fine dignity and beauty. From it a path led away north to
a great log-fort called King's House.

Lawless saw Pierre half rise and turn his head, listening. Presently he,
too, heard the sound-the soft crash of crisp grass under the feet. He
raised himself to a sitting posture and waited.

Presently a tall figure came out of the dusk into the light of their
fire, and a long arm waved a greeting at them. Both Lawless and Pierre
rose to their feet. The stranger was dressed in buckskin, he carried a
rifle, and around his shoulder was a strong yellow cord, from which hung
a bugle.

"How!" he said, with a nod, and drew near the fire, stretching out his
hands to the blaze.

"How!" said Lawless and Pierre.

After a moment Lawless drew from his blanket a flask of brandy, and
without a word handed it over the fire. The fingers of the two men
met in the flicker of flames, a sort of bond by fire, and the stranger
raised the flask.

"Chin-chin," he said, and drank, breathing a long sigh of satisfaction
afterwards as he handed it back; but it was Pierre that took it, and
again fingers touched in the bond of fire. Pierre passed the flask to
Lawless, who lifted it.

"Chin-chin," he said, drank, and gave the flask to Pierre again, who did
as did the others, and said "Chin-chin" also.

By that salutation of the east, given in the far north, Lawless knew
that he had met one who had lighted fires where men are many and close
to the mile as holes in a sieve.

They all sat down, and tobacco went round, the stranger offering his,
while the two others, with true hospitality, accepted.

"We heard you over there--it was you?" said Lawless, nodding towards
Point o' Bugles, and glancing at the bugle the other carried.

"Yes, it was I," was the reply. "Someone always does it twice a year: on
the 25th September and the 25th March. I've done it now without a break
for ten years, until it has got to be a sort of religion with me, and
the whole thing's as real as if King George and John York were talking.
As I tramp to the point or swing away back, in summer barefooted, in
winter on my snowshoes, to myself I seem to be John York on the trail of
the king's bugles. I've thought so much about the whole thing, I've
read so many of John York's letters--and how many times one of the
King's!--that now I scarcely know which is the bare story, and which the
bit's I've dreamed as I've tramped over th