arried with less fuss
about it. I am not going to stand this much longer. What do they
want to fight for anyway?"

"Oh," replied Murchuk lightly, "Polak not like Slovak, Slovak not
like Galician. Dey drink plenty beer, tink of someting in Old
Country, get mad, make noise, fight some."

"Come along with me," replied the Sergeant, and he squared his big
shoulders and set off down the street with the quick, light stride
that suggested the springing step of his Highland ancestors on the
heather hills of Scotland.

Just as they arrived at the house of feasting, a cry, wild, weird
and horrible, pierced through the uproar. The Interpreter stopped
as if struck with a bullet.

"My God!" he cried in an undertone, clutching the Sergeant by the
arm, "My God! Dat terrible!"

"What is it? What is the matter with you, Murchuk?"

"You know not dat cry? No?" He was all trembling. "Dat cry I
hear long ago in Russland. Russian man mak dat cry when he kill.
Dat Nihilist cry."

"Go back and get Dr. Wright. He will be needed, sure.
You know where he lives, second corner down on Main Street.
Get a move on! Quick!"

Meantime, while respectable Winnipeg lay snugly asleep under
snow-covered roofs and smoking chimneys, while belated revellers
and travellers were making their way through white, silent streets
and under avenues of snow-laden trees to homes where reigned love
and peace and virtue, in the north end and in the foreign colony
the festivities in connection with Anka's wedding were drawing to
a close in sordid drunken dance and song and in sanguinary fighting.

In the main room dance and song reeled on in uproarious hilarity.
In the basement below, foul and fetid, men stood packed close,
drinking while they could. It was for the foreigner an hour of rare
opportunity. The beer kegs stood open and there were plenty of tin
mugs about. In the dim light of a smoky lantern, the swaying crowd,
here singing in maudlin chorus, there fighting savagely to pay off
old scores or to avenge new insults, presented a nauseating spectacle.

In the farthest corner of the room, unmoved by all this din, about
a table consisting of a plank laid across two beer kegs, one empty,
the other for the convenience of the players half full, sat four
men deep in a game of cards. Rosenblatt with a big Dalmatian sailor
as partner, against a little Polak and a dark-bearded man. This man
was apparently very drunk, as was evident by his reckless playing
and h