d to be
respected at least while I was around. I looked at my watch; it was
past midnight. I suddenly got boiling hot clean through.

"Look here, Tom Barrett," I said, "I ain't a saint, as everybody
knows; but if you don't treat that girl right, you'll have to
square it up with me, d'you understand?"

He threw me a nasty look. "Keep your gallantry for some occasion
when it's needed, Dan McLeod," he sneered, and with a laugh I
didn't like, he followed the girl out into the rain.

I walked some distance behind them for two miles. When they reached
her father's house and went in, I watched her through the small
uncurtained window put something on the fire to cook, then arouse
her mother, who even at that late hour sat beside the stove smoking
a clay pipe. The old woman had apparently met with some accident;
her head and shoulders were bound up, and she seemed in pain.
Barrett talked with her considerably and once when I caught sight
of his face, it was devilish with some black passion I did not
recognize. Although I felt sure the girl was now all right for the
night, there was something about this meeting I didn't like; so I
lay around until just daylight when Jackson and Lige Smith came
through the bush as pre-arranged should I not return to Jake's.

It was not long before Elizabeth and Tom came out again and entered
a thick little bush behind the shanty. Lige lifted the axe off the
woodpile with a knowing look, and we all three followed silently.
I was surprised to find it a well beaten and equally well concealed
trail. All my suspicions returned. I knew now that Barrett was a
bad lot all round, and as soon as I had quit using him and his
coat, I made up my mind to rid my quarters of him; fortunately I
knew enough about him to use that knowledge as a whip-lash.

We followed them for something over a mile, when--heaven and hell!
The trail opened abruptly on the clearing where lay my recently
acquired cordwood with my five barrels of whiskey concealed in its
midst.

The girl strode forward, and with the strength of a man, pitched
down a dozen sticks with lightning speed.

"There!" she cried, turning to Tom. "There you find him--you find
him whiskey. You say you spill. No more my father he's drunk all
day, he beat my mother."

I stepped out.

"So, Tom Barrett," I said, "you've played the d----d sneak and
hunted it out!"

He fairly jumped at the sound of my voice; then he got white as
paper, and then--somethin