remain in the Company, and the Company was
more to him than life or revenge. The little girl he left in Sacre
Coeur of Quebec; he himself took up his residence in the Hudson Bay
country. After a few years, becoming lonely for his own flesh and
blood, he sent for his daughter. There, as Factor, he gained a vast
power; and this power he turned into the channels of his hatred.
Graehme Stewart felt always against him the hand of influence. His
posts in the Company's service became intolerable. At length, in
indignation against continued injustice, oppression, and insult, he
resigned, broken in fortune and in prospects. He became one of the
earliest Free Traders on the Saskatchewan, devoting his energies to
enraged opposition of the Company which had wronged him. In the space
of three short years he had met a violent and striking death; for the
early days of the Free Trader were adventurous. Galen Albret's
revenge had struck home.

Then in after years the Factor had again met with Andrew Levoy. The
man staggered into Conjuror's House late at night. He had started from
Winnipeg to descend the Albany River, but had met with mishap and
starvation. One by one his dogs had died. In some blind fashion he
pushed on for days after his strength and sanity had left him.
Mu-hi-kun had brought him in. His toes and fingers had frozen and
dropped off; his face was a mask of black frost-bitten flesh, in which
deep fissures opened to the raw. He had gone snow-blind. Scarcely was
he recognizable as a human being.

From such a man in extremity could come nothing but the truth, so
Galen Albret believed him. Before Andrew Levoy died that night he told
of his deceit. The Factor left the room with the weight of a crime on
his conscience. For Graehme Stewart had been innocent of any wrong
toward him or his bride.

Such was the story Galen Albret saw in the little silver match-box.
That was the one flaw in his consciousness of righteousness; the one
instance in a long career when his ruthless acts of punishment or
reprisal had not rested on rigid justice, and by the irony of fate the
one instance had touched him very near. Now here before him was his
enemy's son--he wondered that he had not discovered the resemblance
before--and he was about to visit on him the severest punishment in
his power. Was not this an opportunity vouchsafed him to repair his
ancient fault, to cleanse his conscience of the one sin of the kind it
would acknowledge?

Bu