y had shaved the edge of disaster a dozen times.
But they had stuck to their guns like soldiers. They had fought it out
week after week, hanging to their man with bulldog pluck. And when at
last they were found almost starving in camp, they were dividing their
last rabbit with the fellow they were bringing out to be hanged.

The Inspector walked to the window and looked down the street after
them. His lips moved, but no sound came from them. The rhythmic motion
of them might have suggested, if there had been anybody present to
observe, that his mind was running on the old river song.

"Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre,
Mironton-ton-ton, mirontaine."

CHAPTER XLI

SENSE AND NONSENSE

Beresford speaking, to an audience of one, who listened with soft dark
eyes aglow and sparkling.

"He's the best scout ever came over the border, Jessie. Trusty as
steel, stands the gaff without whining, backs his friends to the
limit, and plays the game out till the last card's dealt and the last
trick lost. Tom Morse is a man in fifty thousand."

"I know another," she murmured. "Every word you've said is true for
him too."

"He's a wonder, that other." admitted the soldier dryly. "But we're
talking about Tom now. I tell you that iron man dragged West and me
out of the Barrens by the scruff of our necks. Wouldn't give up.
Wouldn't quit. The yellow in West came out half a dozen times. When
the ten-day blizzard caught us, he lay down and yelped like a cur. I
wouldn't have given a plugged six-pence for our chances. But Tom went
out into it, during a little lull, and brought back with him a timber
wolf. How he found it, how he killed it, Heaven alone knows. He was
coated with ice from head to foot. That wolf kept us and the dogs
alive for a week. Each day, when the howling of the blizzard died down
a bit, Tom made West go down with him to the creek and get wood.
It must have been a terrible hour. They'd come back so done up, so
frozen, they could hardly stagger in with their jags of pine for the
fire. I never heard the man complain--not once. He stood up to it the
way Tom Sayers used to."

The girl felt a warm current of life prickling swiftly through her. "I
love to hear you talk so generously of him."

"Of my rival?" he said, smiling. "How else can I talk? The scoundrel
has been heaping on me those coals of fire we read about. I haven't
told you half of it--how he nursed me like a woman and looked after me
so that I wou