e plains or sat in the quiet
at King's House, spelling out little by little the man's life, from the
cues I found in his journal, in the Company's papers, and in that one
letter of the King's."

Pierre's eyes were now more keen than those of Lawless: for years he had
known vaguely of this legend of Point o' Bugles.

"You know it all," he said--"begin at the beginning: how and when you
first heard, how you got the real story, and never mind which is taken
from the papers and which from your own mind--if it all fits in it is
all true, for the lie never fits in right with the square truth. If you
have the footprints and the handprints you can tell the whole man;
if you have the horns of a deer you know it as if you had killed it,
skinned it, and potted it."

The stranger stretched himself before the fire, nodding at his hosts as
he did so, and then began:

"Well, a word about myself first," he said, "so you'll know just where
you are. I was full up of life in London town and India, and that's a
fact. I'd plenty of friends and little money, and my will wasn't equal
to the task of keeping out of the hands of the Jews. I didn't know what
to do, but I had to go somewhere, that was clear. Where? An accident
decided it. I came across an old journal of my great-grandfather, John
York,--my name's Dick Adderley,--and just as if a chain had been put
round my leg and I'd been jerked over by the tipping of the world, I
had to come to Hudson's Bay. John York's journal was a thing to sit
up nights to read. It came back to England after he'd had his fill of
Hudson's Bay and the earth beneath, and had gone, as he himself said on
the last page of the journal, to follow the king's buglers in 'the land
that is far off.' God and the devil were strong in old John York. I
didn't lose much time after I'd read the journal. I went to Hudson's Bay
house in London, got a place in the Company, by the help of the governor
himself, and came out. I've learned the rest of the history of old
John York--the part that never got to England; for here at King's House
there's a holy tradition that the real John York belongs to it and to it
alone."

Adderley laughed a little. "King's House guards John York's memory, and
it's as fresh and real here now as though he'd died yesterday; though
it's forgotten in England, and by most who bear his name, and the
present Prince of Wales maybe never heard of the roan who was a close
friend of the Prince Regent, the F