e.... Now what will we do, Larry, me boy?" this to
the broncho--"Go on without bite or sup, me achin' behind and empty
before, and you laggin' in the legs, or stay here for the slice of an
hour and get some heart into us? Stay here is it, me boy? then lave
go me fut with your teeth and push on to the Prairie Star there." So
saying, Sergeant Tom, whose language in soliloquy, or when excited,
was more marked by a brogue than at other times, rode away towards
Galbraith's Place.

In the tavern at that moment, Pretty Pierrre was sitting on the
bar-counter, where temperance drinks were professedly sold, singing to
himself. His dress was singularly neat, if coarse, and his slouch hat
was worn with an air of jauntiness according well with his slight make
and almost girlish delicacy of complexion. He was puffing a cigarette,
in the breaks of the song. Peter Galbraith, tall, gaunt, and
sombre-looking, sat with his chair tilted back against the wall, rather
nervously pulling at the strips of bark of which the yielding chair-seat
was made. He may or may not have been listening to the song which had
run through several verses. Where it had come from, no one knew; no one
cared to know. The number of its verses were legion. Pierre had a
sweet voice, of a peculiarly penetrating quality; still it was low and
well-modulated, like the colour in his cheeks, which gave him his name.

These were the words he was singing as Sergeant Tom rode towards the
tavern:

"The hot blood leaps in his quivering breast
Voila! 'Tis his enemies near!
There's a chasm deep on the mountain crest
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!
They follow him close and they follow him fast,
And he flies like a mountain deer;
Then a mad, wild leap and he's safe at last!
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!
A cry and a leap and the danger's past
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!"

At the close of the verse, Galbraith said: "I don't like that song. I--I
don't like it. You're not a father, Pierre."

"No, I am not a father. I have some virtue of that. I have spared the
world something, Pete Galbraith."

"You have the Devil's luck; your sins never get YOU into trouble."

A curious fire flashed in the half-breed's eyes, and he said, quietly:
"Yes, I have great luck; but I have my little troubles at times--at
times."

"They're different, though, from this trouble of Val's." There was
something like a fo