blood left in his face, and he was staring
straight ahead, as though the girl still stood there, and he gave
another of those grunts--it wasn't a laugh--as if something was choking
him. And then he said:

"'Sergeant, I've forgotten something important. I must go back to see
Dr. Cardigan. You have my authority to give McTrigger his liberty at
once!'"

O'Connor paused, as if expecting some expression of disbelief from
Kent. When none came, he demanded,

"Was that according to the Criminal Code? Was it, Kent?"

"Not exactly. But, coming from the S.O.D., it was law."

"And I obeyed it," grunted the staff-sergeant. "And if you could have
seen McTrigger! When I told him he was free, and unlocked his cell, he
came out of it gropingly, like a blind man. And he would go no farther
than the Inspector's office. He said he would wait there for him."

"And Kedsty?"

O'Connor jumped from his chair and began thumping back and forth across
the room again. "Followed the girl," he exploded. "He couldn't have
done anything else. He lied to me about Cardigan. There wouldn't be
anything mysterious about it if he wasn't sixty and she less than
twenty. She was pretty enough! But it wasn't her beauty that made him
turn white there in the path. Not on your life it wasn't! I tell you he
aged ten years in as many seconds. There was something in that girl's
eyes more terrifying to him than a leveled gun, and after he'd looked
into them, his first thought was of McTrigger, the man you're saving
from the hangman. It's queer, Kent. The whole business is queer. And
the queerest of it all is your confession."

"Yes, it's all very funny," agreed Kent. "That's what I've been telling
myself right along, old man. You see, a little thing like a bullet
changed it all. For if the bullet hadn't got me, I assure you I
wouldn't have given Kedsty that confession, and an innocent man would
have been hanged. As it is, Kedsty is shocked, demoralized. I'm the
first man to soil the honor of the finest Service on the face of the
earth, and I'm in Kedsty's division. Quite natural that he should be
upset. And as for the girl--"

He shrugged his shoulders and tried to laugh. "Perhaps she came in this
morning with one of the up-river scows and was merely taking a little
constitutional," he suggested. "Didn't you ever notice, O'Connor, that
in a certain light under poplar trees one's face is sometimes ghastly?"

"Yes, I've noticed it, when the trees are in full