his forgiveness could not be
evoked by even the most extenuating of circumstances, but not that
his anger had ever been baseless or the punishment undeserved. Thus he
had held always his own self-respect, and from his self-respect had
proceeded his iron and effective rule.

So in the case of the young man with whom now his thoughts were
occupied. Twice he had warned him from the country without the
punishment which the third attempt rendered imperative. The events
succeeding his arrival at Conjuror's House warmed the Factor's anger
to the heat of almost preposterous retribution perhaps--for after all
a man's life is worth something, even in the wilds--but it was
actually retribution, and not merely a ruthless proof of power. It
might be justice as only the Factor saw it, but it was still
essentially justice--in the broader sense that to each act had
followed a definite consequence. Although another might have
condemned his conduct as unnecessarily harsh, Galen Albret's
conscience was satisfied and at rest.

Nor had his resolution been permanently affected by either the girl's
threat to make away with herself or by his momentary softening when
she had fainted. The affair was thereby complicated, but that was all.
In the sincerity of the threat he recognized his own iron nature, and
was perhaps a little pleased at its manifestation. He knew she
intended to fulfil her promise not to survive her lover, but at the
moment this did not reach his fears; it only aroused further his
dogged opposition.

The Free Trader's speech as he left the room, however, had touched the
one flaw in Galen Albret's confidence of righteousness. Wearied with
the struggles and the passions he had undergone, his brain numbed,
his will for the moment in abeyance, he seated himself and
contemplated the images those two words had called up.

Graehme Stewart! That man he had first met at Fort Rae over twenty
years ago. It was but just after he had married Virginia's mother. At
once his imagination, with the keen pictorial power of those who have
dwelt long in the Silent Places, brought forward the other scene--that
of his wooing. He had driven his dogs into Fort la Cloche after a hard
day's run in seventy-five degrees of frost. Weary, hungry,
half-frozen, he had staggered into the fire-lit room. Against the
blaze he had caught for a moment a young girl's profile, lost as she
turned her face toward him in startled question of his entrance. Men
had c