the Crossing?" asked Garth.

"Quite a crowd," said the old man; "eight or nine at the least. There's
the two traders, and Mert Haywood the farmer, and old Turner the J. P.,
and the priest, and the English missionary, and the school-master;
that's seven. Then there's old man Mackensie but you wouldn't hardly
call him a white man--smoked too deep, and squaw-ridden."

"Is that all?" said Garth, disappointed of his quest.

"Well, there's a sort of another. He doesn't regularly belong to the
Crossing but he comes into the store for his goods once or twict a year.
I forgot him--most everybody's forgot him now. It's Bert Mabyn."

Garth and Natalie pricked up their ears; and their hearts began to beat.

"I got good cause to know Bert Mabyn, too," continued old Tom innocently;
while the other two listened still as mice, and apprehensive of
disclosures to be made. "But that's all past. I don't bear him no ill-will
now. He's a cur'us chap, a little teched I guess; but as pleasant a spoken
and amoosin' a feller as another feller could want to have with him on the
road! Want to hear about him?"

Garth looked at Natalie dubiously.

"Yes," she said boldly.

"Well, it was three years ago," began Tom Lillywhite, with the zest of
the true story-teller. "The Gov'ment sent four surveyin' parties in; and
I had more'n I could do freightin' from the Settlement to the different
camps. It was rough haulin', you understand, over the lines they cut
through the bush, straight as a string over muskeg and coulee. You
couldn't load over twenty hundredweight, and sometimes you had to dump
half of that, and go back for it. But right good pay, Gov'ment pay is.

"I needed another team bad, and I see a good chance to get one on credit
from Dick Staley, with the wagon and all; but I couldn't get no white
men to drive it for me. A breed, you understand, soon kills your horses
on you!

"Well, it might be I was settin' outside the French outfit, talkin' it
over," he went on tranquilly, little suspecting with what meaning his
story was charged for the two strangers; "when along comes a feller and
asts for me. Say, he was a sight! He was wearin' black clothes, though
it were a workin'-day; and all muddied and tore, showin' the skin under;
and his coat was pinned acrost the neck, with a safety-pin 'cause he
hadn't no shirt. He had a Sunday hat on too--all busted. At the best
he weren't no beauty; his teeth was out."

Natalie shuddered.

Garth, suf