boy escaped on a sledge after the crime. _Mon Dieu_, how
the forest people leaped in pursuit! Runners carried the word over the
mountains and through the swamps, and a hundred sledge parties searched
the forest trails for the man-fiend and his son. It was the Factor
himself and his youngest boy who found them, far out on the Churchill
trail. And what happened then, M'seur? Just this: While the man-fiend
urged on his dogs the son fired back with a rifle, and one of his
bullets went straight through the heart of the pursuing Factor, so that
in the space of one day and one night the little Meleese was made both
motherless and fatherless by these two whom the devil had sent to
destroy the most beautiful thing we have ever known in this North. Ah,
M'seur, you turn white! Does it bring a vision to you now? Do you hear
the crack of that rifle? Can you see--"

"My God!" gasped Howland. Even now he understood nothing of what this
tragedy might mean to him--forgot everything but that he was listening
to the terrible tragedy that had come to the woman who was the mother of
the girl he loved. He half rose from his seat as Croisset paused; his
eyes glittered, his death-white face was set in tense fierce lines, his
finger-nails dug into the board table, as he demanded, "What happened
then, Croisset?"

Jean was eying him like an animal. His voice was low.

"They escaped, M'seur."

With a deep breath Howland sank back. In a moment he leaned again toward
Jean as he saw come into the Frenchman's eyes a slumbering fire that a
few seconds later blazed into vengeful malignity when he drew slowly
from an inside pocket of his coat a small parcel wrapped and tied in
soft buckskin.

"They have sent you this, M'seur," he said. "'At the very last,' they
told me, 'let him read this.'"

With his eyes on the parcel, scarcely breathing, Howland waited while
with exasperating slowness Croisset's brown fingers untied the cord that
secured it.

"First you must understand what this meant to us in the North, M'seur,"
said Jean, his hands covering the parcel after he had finished with the
cord. "We are different who live up here--different from those who live
in Montreal, and beyond. With us a lifetime is not too long to spend in
avenging a cruel wrong. It is our honor of the North. I was fifteen
then, and had been fostered by the Factor and his wife since the day my
mother died of the smallpox and I dragged myself into the post, almost
dead of s