nd was prepared to die. Contact with Jan had told him in a
flash things which could not be written in a page. He tasted in that
moment the cold-drawn, pitiless efficiency of the methods of the
northland wild, and realized that he could no more stand against this
new Jan than a lady's house-bred lap-dog could have stood against
himself. As his feet left the ground his life was ended, as Sourdough
saw it.

And then had come Jan's miraculous, shuddering withdrawal, wholly
inexplicable, chilling to the heart in its uncanny unexpectedness.
Sourdough mechanically regained his footing, and then with low-hung
head, inward-curling tail, and crouching shoulders he slunk away at the
heel of his bitterly disappointed master. The collapse of this old
invincible within a few seconds was a rather horrid sight and a very
strange and startling one.

From that hour Sourdough was never again seen in the precincts of the
R.N.W.M.P. barracks, and, though many people puzzled over the old dog's
disappearance, none ever knew what became of him. The sergeant had been
for some time entitled to retire from the service. That night he
obtained his commanding officer's permission to do so.

XXXIX

HOW JAN CAME HOME

Captain Arnutt proved himself a friend indeed to Dick Vaughan. Once he
had come to understand the position, he fully sympathized with Dick's
wish to leave the service at once and return to England. That sympathy
he proceeded forthwith to translate into action, and within the month
Sergeant-Inspector Dick Vaughan had received his discharge and booked
his passage--with Jan's--for England.

Despite his elation over the prospect before him, Dick found the actual
parting with his comrades in Regina a good deal of a wrench. They were
fond of him, and of Jan, and proud of both. And Dick found when the
packing was over and valedictory remarks begun that these men had
entered pretty deeply into his life and general scheme of things.

They were good fellows all, these hard, spare, long-limbed riders of the
plains, and they and the North-west had made of the Dick who was now
bidding them good-by a man radically different in a hundred ways from
the careless, irresponsible, light-hearted Dick who had come to them a
few years back direct from kindly, indulgent Sussex.

Dick had become a fit and proper part of his western environment and had
"made good" in it, as the saying is. We most of us like doing that which
we do well. Dick's ma