d herself
together, and said, 'I must conquer this shrinking body of mine by my
will. How shall I do it?' Something within her said, 'Think and do for
others. Forget yourself.' And so, as they got her ready for her torture,
she visited hospitals, agonized cripple as she was, and smiled and talked
to the sick and broken, telling them of her own miseries endured and
dangers faced, of the boundary of human suffering almost passed; and so
she got her courage for her own trial. And she came out all right in the
end. Well, that's the way I've felt sometimes. But I'm ready for my
operation now whenever it comes, and it's coming, I know. Let it come when
it must." He smiled.

There came a knock at the door, and presently Sewell entered. "The
Commissioner wishes you to come over, sir," he said.

"I was just coming, Sewell. Is all ready for the start?"

"Everything's ready, sir, but there's to be a change of orders.
Something's happened--a bad job up in the Cree country, I think."

A few minutes later Jim was in the Commissioner's office. The murder of a
Hudson's Bay Company's man had been committed in the Cree country. The
stranger whom Jim and Sally had seen riding across the plains had brought
the news for thirty miles, word of the murder having been carried from
point to point. The Commissioner was uncertain what to do, as the Crees
were restless through want of food and the absence of game, and a force
sent to capture Arrowhead, the chief who had committed the murder, might
precipitate trouble. Jim solved the problem by offering to go alone and
bring the chief into the post. It was two hundred miles to the Cree
encampment, and the journey had its double dangers.

Another officer was sent on the expedition for which Jim had been
preparing, and he made ready to go upon his lonely duty. His wife did not
know till three days after he had gone what the nature of his mission
was.

IV

Jim made his journey in good weather with his faithful dogs alone, and
came into the camp of the Crees armed with only a revolver. If he had gone
with ten men, there would have been an instant melee, in which he would
have lost his life. This is what the chief had expected, had prepared for;
but Jim was more formidable alone, with power far behind him which could
come with force and destroy the tribe, if resistance was offered, than
with fifty men. His tongue had a gift of terse and picturesque speech,
powerful with a people who had the gift