nth later before he presented himself, pale and haggard, before
Inspector MacGregor at Prince Albert. Again disappointment was awaiting
him. There had been delay in purchasing his discharge, and he found that
he would have to wait until August. MacGregor gave him a three weeks'
furlough, and his first move was to go up to Etomami and Le Pas. Colonel
Becker and Isobel had been at those places six weeks before. He could
find no trace of their having stopped at Prince Albert. He ran down to
Winnipeg and spent several days in making inquiries which proved the
hopelessness of any longer expecting to find Isobel in Canada. He
assured himself that by this time they were probably in London and he
made his plans accordingly. His discharge would come to him by the tenth
of August, and he would immediately set off for England.

Upon his return to Prince Albert he was detailed to a big prairie
stretch of country where there was little to do but wait. On the
first day of August he was at Hymers when the Limited plunged down the
embankment into Blind Indian River. The first word of it came over the
wire from Bleak House Station a little before midnight, while he and the
agent were playing cribbage. Pink-cheeked little Gunn, agent, operator,
and one-third of the total population of Hymers, had lifted a peg to
make a count when his hand stopped in mid-air, and with a gasping break
in his voice he sprang to his feet.

The instrument on the little table near the window was clicking
frantically. It was Billinger, at Bleak House, crying out for
headquarters, clear lines, the right of way. The Transcontinental--
engine, tender, baggage car, two coaches and a sleeper, had gone to the
devil. Those, in his excitement, where his first words. From fifty to a
hundred were dead. Gunn almost swore Billinger's next words to the line.
It was not an accident! Human hands had torn up three sections of rail.
The same human hands had rolled a two-ton boulder in the right of way.
He did not know whether the express car--or what little remained of it--
had been robbed or not.

From midnight until two o'clock the lines were hot. A wrecking train
was on its way from the east, another from division headquarters to the
west. Ceaselessly headquarters demanded new information, and bit by bit
the terrible tragedy was told even as the men and women in it died and
the few souls from the prairies around Bleak House Station fought to
save lives. Then a new word cre