th his handkerchief.
The danger he had undergone coolly, but this overcame his iron
self-control. Galen Albret, like an anxious bear, weaved back and
forth the length of the couch. In him the rumble of the storm was but
just echoing into distance.

"Go into the next room," he growled at the Free Trader, when finally
he noticed the latter's presence.

Ned Trent hesitated.

"Go, I say!" snarled the Factor. "You can do nothing here." He
followed the young man to the door, which he closed with his own hand,
and then turned back to the couch on which his daughter lay. In the
middle of the floor his foot clicked on some small object.
Mechanically he picked it up.

It proved to be a little silver match-safe of the sort universally
used in the Far North. Evidently the Free Trader had flipped it from
his pocket with his handkerchief. The Factor was about to thrust it
into his own pocket, when his eye caught lettering roughly carved
across one side. Still mechanically, he examined it more closely. The
lettering was that of a man's name. The man's name was Graehme
Stewart.

Without thinking of what he did, he dropped the object on the small
table, and returned anxiously to the girl's side, cursing the
tardiness of the Indian woman. But in a moment Wishkobun returned.

"Will she recover?" asked the Factor, distracted at the woman's
deliberate examination.

The latter smiled her indulgent, slow smile. "But surely," she assured
him in her own tongue, "it is no more than if she cut her finger. In a
few breaths she will recover. Now I will go to the house of the
Cockburn for a morsel of the sweet wood[A] which she must smell." She
looked her inquiry for permission.

[Footnote A: Camphor.]

"Sagaamig--go," assented Albret.

Relieved in mind, he dropped into a chair. His eye caught the little
silver match-safe. He picked it up and fell to staring at the rudely
carved letters.

He found that he was alone with his daughter--and the thoughts aroused
by the dozen letters of a man's name.

All his life long he had been a hard man. His commands had been
autocratic; his anger formidable; his punishments severe, and
sometimes cruel. The quality of mercy was with him tenuous and weak.
He knew this, and if he did not exactly glory in it, he was at least
indifferent to its effect on his reputation with others. But always he
had been just. The victims of his displeasure might complain that his
retributive measures were harsh, that