st as
the just if he had had the directing of the heavens. As Private Gellatly
put it: "Sergeant Fones has the fear o' God in his heart, and the law of
the land across his saddle, and the newest breech-loading at that!"
He was part of the great machine of Order, the servant of Justice, the
sentinel in the vestibule of Martial Law. His interpretation of duty
worked upward as downward. Officers and privates were acted on by the
force known as Sergeant Fones. Some people, like Old Brown Windsor,
spoke hardly and openly of this force. There were three people who never
did--Pretty Pierre, Young Aleck, and Mab Humphrey. Pierre hated him;
Young Aleck admired in him a quality lying dormant in himself--decision;
Mab Humphrey spoke unkindly of no one. Besides--but no!

What was Sergeant Fones's country? No one knew. Where had he come from?
No one asked him more than once. He could talk French with Pierre,--a
kind of French that sometimes made the undertone of red in the
Frenchman's cheeks darker. He had been heard to speak German to a German
prisoner, and once, when a gang of Italians were making trouble on a
line of railway under construction, he arrested the leader, and, in
a few swift, sharp words in the language of the rioters, settled the
business. He had no accent that betrayed his nationality.

He had been recommended for a commission. The officer in command had
hinted that the Sergeant might get a Christmas present. The officer
had further said: "And if it was something that both you and the
Patrol would be the better for, you couldn't object, Sergeant." But the
Sergeant only saluted, looking steadily into the eyes of the officer.
That was his reply. Private Gellatly, standing without, heard Sergeant
Fones say, as he passed into the open air, and slowly bared his forehead
to the winter sun:

"Exactly."

And Private Gellatly cried, with revolt in his voice, "Divils me own,
the word that a't to have been full o' joy was like the clip of a
rifle-breech."

Justice in a new country is administered with promptitude and vigour,
or else not administered at all. Where an officer of the Mounted
Police-Soldiery has all the powers of a magistrate, the law's delay and
the insolence of office have little space in which to work. One of
the commonest slips of virtue in the Canadian West was selling whisky
contrary to the law of prohibition which prevailed. Whisky runners were
land smugglers. Old Brown Windsor had, somehow, got the