rs or on the jag is
more than I know."

"We met a fellow called Clarke at the _Windsor_ not long since. What's
he like?"

Gardner described him and Harding said, "That's the man."

"Then I can't see what he was doing at the _Windsor_; an opium joint
would have been more in his line."

"Does the fellow live at Sweetwater?" Blake asked.

"Has a farm, and runs it well, about three miles back, but he's away
pretty often in the North and at a settlement on the edge of the bush
country. Don't know what he does there, and they're a curious crowd;
Dubokars, Russians of sorts, I guess."

Blake had seen the Dubokars in other parts of Canada and had found them
an industrious people, leading, from religious convictions, a
remarkably primitive life. There were, however, fanatics among them,
and he understood that these now and then led their followers into
outbreaks of emotional extravagance.

"They make good settlers, as a rule," he said. "But, as they don't
speak English, how does the fellow get on with them?"

"Told me he was a philologist, when I asked him; then he allowed two or
three of them were mystics and he was something in that line. He was a
doctor once and got fired out of England for something he shouldn't
have done. Anyhow, the Dubokars are like the rest of us, good, bad,
and pretty mixed, and the crowd back of Sweetwater belong to the last.
At first some of them didn't believe it was right to work horses and
made the women drag the plough, and they'd one or two other habits that
brought the North-West Police down on them. After that they've given
no trouble, but they get on a jag of some kind now and then."

Blake nodded. He knew that the fanatic with untrained and unbalanced
mind is liable under the influence of excitement to indulge in crude
debauchery; but it was strange that a man of culture, such as Clarke
appeared to be, should take a part in these excesses. He had, however,
no interest in the fellow and turned the talk on to other matters, and
when it got cold they went to sleep.

Starting early next morning, they reached Sweetwater after an
uneventful journey and found it by no means an attractive place. South
of it rolling prairie ran back, greyish white with withered grass, to
the skyline; to the north straggling poplar bluffs and scattered
Jack-pines crowned the summits of the ridges. A lake gleamed in a
hollow, a slow creek wound across the foreground in a deep ravine, and
here and