llness,
became blind, and was ordered to a warm climate for a year. He left his
idea, his invention, behind him--his complete idea. While he was gone
his bosom friend stole his perfected idea--yes, stole it, and sold it
for twenty thousand dollars. He was called a genius, a great inventor.
And then he married her. You don't know her, Bouche. You never saw
beautiful Rose Varcoe, who, liking two men, chose the one who was
handsome and brilliant, and whom the world called a genius. Why didn't
Jaspar Hume expose him, Bouche? Proof is not always easy, and then he
had to think of her. One has to think of a woman in such a case, Bouche.
Even a dog can see that."

He was silent for a moment, and then he said: "Come, Bouche. You will
keep secret what I show you."

He went to a large box in the corner, unlocked it, and took out a model
made of brass and copper and smooth but unpolished wood.

"After ten years of banishment, Bouche, Hume has worked out another
idea, you see. It should be worth ten times the other, and the world
called the other the work of a genius, dog."

Then he became silent, the animal watching him the while. It had seen
him working at this model for many a day, but had never heard him talk
so much at a time as he had done this last ten minutes. He was generally
a silent man--decisive even to severity, careless carriers and shirking
under-officers thought. Yet none could complain that he was unjust. He
was simply straight-forward, and he had no sympathy with those who had
not the same quality. He had carried a drunken Indian on his back for
miles, and from a certain death by frost. He had, for want of a more
convenient punishment, promptly knocked down Jeff Hyde, the sometime
bully of the fort, for appropriating a bundle of furs belonging to a
French half-breed, Gaspe Toujours. But he nursed Jeff Hyde through an
attack of pneumonia, insisting at the same time that Gaspe Toujours
should help him. The result of it all was that Jeff Hyde and Gaspe
Toujours became constant allies. They both formulated their oaths by
Jaspar Hume. The Indian, Cloud-in-the-Sky, though by word never thanking
his rescuer, could not be induced to leave the fort, except on some
mission with which Jaspar Hume was connected. He preferred living an
undignified, un-Indian life, and earning food and shelter by coarsely
labouring with his hands. He came at least twice a week to Hume's
log house, and, sitting down silent and cross-legged be