ey have strengthened the cordon round the Fort,
so that now it is impossible to reach it."

"It's not pleasant, dad, to go back again and leave the
others, is it?"

"It can't be helped, dear. I wish Pasmore would hurry up
and come. He said, however, we were not to wait for him.
That half-breed doesn't look too friendly, does he?"

"Pepin Quesnelle is, so I fancy it doesn't matter about
the other," replied Dorothy.

The rancher turned to the others, who had evidently just
finished a serious argument.

"Pepin," he observed, "I'm glad to find you're not one
of those who forget their old friends."

"Did you ever think I would? Eh? What?" asked the manikin
cynically, with his head on one side.

"I don't suppose I ever thought about the matter in that
way," said Douglas, "but if I'd done so, I'm bound to
say that I should have had some measure of faith in you,
Pepin Quesnelle. You have known me for many years now,
and you know I never say what I do not mean."

"So!... that is so. _Bien!_" remarked Pepin obviously
pleased. "But the question we have had to settle is this.
If we let your daughter go now, how is Bastien here to
account for his prisoner in the morning? He knows that
one day he will have to stand on the little trap-door in
the scaffold floor at Regina, and that he will twirl
round and round so--like to that so"--picking up a hobble
chain and spinning it round with his hand--"while his
eyes will stick out of his head like the eyes of a
flat-fish; but at the same time he does not want to be
shot by order of Riel or Gabriel Dumont to-morrow for
losing a prisoner."

"Yees, they will shoot--shoot me mooch dead!" observed
Bastien feelingly.

"So we have think," continued the dwarf, "that he should
disappear also; that he go with you. I will tell them
to-morrow that the girl here she was sit by the fire and
she go up the chimney like as smoke or a speerit, so,
and that Bastien he follow, and when I have go out I see
them both going up to the sky. They will believe, and
Bastien perhaps, if he keep away with you, or go hide
somewhere else, he may live yet to get drown, or get
shot, or be keel by a bear, and not die by the rope. You
follow?"

"Where ees ze sleighs?" asked the breed, taking time by
the forelock.

They told him and he rose with alacrity.

"Zen come on quick, right now," he said.

Douglas was pressing some gold into the old dame's hand,
but Pepin saw it.

"Ah, non!" he said. "There a