ant later,
a long gun, with a muffled face behind it, appeared and covered
the three men.

"Here, you in the corner, get up, and let's see who you are?" said
the man with the gun, and Donald, before that uncompromising barrel,
stood.

"Well, by the great Lucifer," came the soft oath, "if it isn't
McTavish!"

"What do you want?" demanded Donald; "and who are you?" He resented
this intrusion. The time for letters was growing less and less.

"What, don't you recognize me?" The man thrust his head forward,
and worked his face out of the _capote_ that covered the features.
It was Seguis.

"Well, this is luck," the half-breed was saying to himself. "All
I have to do now is to take him out of here, and the coast is clear
for my own operations."

He said a few words in Ojibway, and a couple of men appeared behind
him in the doorway, as he stepped inside.

"Take off your snowshoes," he ordered Timmins, and the
under-storekeeper obeyed with real joy. Had Seguis known it, the
two men in front of him were much farther from resistance than was
their prisoner.

Under command, McTavish donned the rackets, and followed his new
captor out of doors. He was entirely prepared for traveling, even
to gauntlets, for the temperature of the cabin had been but a few
degrees higher than that of outdoors.

Seguis, with a few words to a couple of followers, gave Donald into
their charge, bidding him accompany them. Timmins and Buxton,
chuckling together, said nothing of the event that Seguis had
interrupted, and even McTavish, in his exalted nervous state, was
not fool enough to remark: "Don't take me away!--for I'm due to be
hanged in the morning."

Seguis and his free-traders had found the approaches to the camp
ridiculously easy. In fact, for the last few days sentries had been
withdrawn, Fitzpatrick resting assured that the free-traders would
not make an aggressive move. He had learned in a parley that all
Seguis and his men asked was peace, and a chance to follow their
own path. The factor was waiting for reinforcements from Fort
Severn, which he had asked Braithwaite to secure, if possible,
among the friendly trappers; and, until they should arrive, and
the present matter of discipline be off his hands, he had no desire
to make an attack. Consequently, Seguis's party had crept stealthily
closer and closer to the camp, undetected. It was the time when
sleep in the North country is almost a coma, and the quiet approach
aroused