ar up the grade now, shooting among the trees. Torrance was fighting
it out alone on that dizzy height.

As the light broke, Ignace Koppowski, too, took stock. He knew he had
only to maintain the siege long enough to win; but he also realised
that his followers had little stomach for a long struggle. The rising
sun, too, was against every precedent as a time to attack authority.
The doctrine of his kind was to stab in the dark, to hit and run--a
foundation on which was based the successes of his organisation.

As he reviewed the risk of failure through nothing but the cowardice of
his men, he found himself hating them with an intensity he could
scarcely conceal. The transition from that to an appreciation of his
own superiority was natural enough. Perhaps not so natural, a return
of the twinges of conscience that had been afflicting him of late at
inopportune moments. When he realised the existence of these thoughts,
he read in them only weakening nerve, and to steady himself he moved
about among his followers, cheering them on. But the glowering,
vacillating looks he received here and there succeeded in impressing
him only with the extent of his responsibility. Success in this, his
grandest effort, assumed monstrous proportions. He dare not fail.
Present and future demanded that.

Grimly he summoned his lieutenants to a hasty conference, not to hear
quakings or objections, but to give and receive the stimulus necessary
to wage the battle to the bitter end.

Werner hesitatingly advised raising the siege. In former tilts with
the Mounted Police during his trapping days he had experienced their
intrepidity, the hopelessness of winning against them in the long run.

"Oh?" Koppy gloomed at him beneath heavy eyebrows, giving little clue
to the thoughts behind. "What next?"

What he really meant was of what profit to the leaders to yield now.
Werner's keen wits read it. Volubly he suggested a rearguard of the
better fighters to cover the retreat of the leaders and the rest; the
besieged would not dare press them.

In reality a personal inspiration lay behind it all. Werner himself
would creep away west and join himself to one of the construction gangs
where questions were not asked. He could await his chance of slipping
across the border to the States. His idea of geography was somewhat
hazy.

Koppy listened to the end with veiled eyes. He read Werner much more
accurately than Werner read him. But