ame down to the last step.

"Phil," he whispered, "that fellow we found with a broken head played a
nice game on me. He was a criminal, and I've brought back to Fort Smith
no less person than the man sent out to arrest him, Corporal Dobson,
of the Mounted Police, and his driver, Francois Something-or-Other.
Heavens, ain't it funny?"

That same afternoon Corporal Dobson and the half-breed set out again in
quest of Falkner, and this time they were accompanied by Pierre Thoreau,
who learned for the first time what had happened in his cabin. The
doctor disappeared for the rest of the day, but early the next morning
he hunted Phil up and took him to a cabin half a mile down the river. A
team of powerful dogs, an unusually large sledge, and two Indians were
at the door.

"I bought 'em last night," explained the doctor, "and we're going to
leave for the south to-day."

"Giving up your hunt?" asked Philip.

"No, it's ended," replied McGill in a matter-of-fact way. "It ended
at Pierre Thoreau's cabin. Falkner was the third man to work out my
experiment."

Philip stopped in his tracks, and the doctor stopped, and turned toward
him.

"But the third--" Philip began.

The little doctor continued to smile.

"There are more things in Heaven and earth, Philip," he quoted, "than
are dreamed of in your philosophy. This love experiment has turned out
wrongly, as far as preconceived theories are concerned, but when I think
of the broader, deeper significance of it all I am--pleased is not the
word."

"What I can't see--" Philip was stopped by the doctor's lifted hand.

"You see, I am relying on your word of honor, Phil," he explained,
laughing softly at the amazement which he saw in the other's face. "It's
all so wonderful that I want you to know the end of it, and how happily
it has turned out for me--and the little woman waiting for me back
home. It was I and not Falkner who cried out just before you turned the
lamp-wick down. A letter had fallen from his coat pocket, and it was
one of my letters--sent through my agent. Understand? I sent you for the
ice, and while you were gone I told him who I was, and he told me why I
had never heard from him, and why he was in Pierre Thoreau's cabin. My
agent had sent him north with five hundred dollars as a first payment.
To cut a long story short, he got into a card game in Prince Albert--as
the best of us do at times--and as a result become mixed up in a
quarrel, in which he pretty