she saw
them exhibit her little rifle, and heard them explain in Cree, that
they had followed the man swimming. Then she knew that the cause was
lost, and fled as swiftly as she could through the forest.

_Chapter Fifteen_

Galen Albret had chosen to interrogate his recaptured prisoner alone.
He sat again in the arm-chair of the Council Room. The place was
flooded with sun. It touched the high-lights of the time-darkened,
rough furniture, it picked out the brasses, it glorified the
whitewashed walls. In its uncompromising illumination Me-en-gan, the
bowsman, standing straight and tall and silent by the door, studied
his master's face and knew him to be deeply angered.

For Galen Albret was at this moment called upon to deal with a problem
more subtle than any with which his policy had been puzzled in thirty
years. It was bad enough that, in repeated defiance of his authority,
this stranger should persist in his attempt to break the Company's
monopoly; it was bad enough that he had, when captured, borne himself
with so impudent an air of assurance; it was bad enough that he should
have made open love to the Factor's daughter, should have laughed
scornfully in the Factor's very face. But now the case had become
grave. In some mysterious manner he had succeeded in corrupting one of
the Company's servants. Treachery was therefore to be dealt with.

Some facts Galen Albret had well in hand. Others eluded him
persistently. He had, of course, known promptly enough of the
disappearance of a canoe, and had thereupon dispatched his Indians to
the recapture. The Reverend Archibald Crane had reported that two
figures had been seen in the act of leaving camp, one by the river, the
other by the Woods Trail. But here the Factor's investigations
encountered a check. The rifle brought in by his Indians, to his
bewilderment, he recognized not at all. His repeated cross-questionings,
when they touched on the question of Ned Trent's companion, got no
farther than the Cree wooden stolidity. No, they had seen no one,
neither presence, sign, nor trail. But Galen Albret, versed in the
psychology of his savage allies, knew they lied. He suspected them of
clan loyalty to one of their own number; and yet they had never failed
him before. Now, his heavy revolver at his right hand, he interviewed
Ned Trent, alone, except for the Indian by the portal.

As with the Indians, his cross-examination had borne scant results.
The best of his