e Albert, after six months' hunt for
him and a final capture in the Kowatin district, Foyle resigned the Force
before the Commissioner could reproach him or call him to account. Usually
so exact, so certain of his target, some care had not been taken, he had
miscalculated, and there had been the Error of the Day. Whatever it was,
it had seemed to him fatal; and he had turned his face from the
barrack-yard.

Then he had made his way to the Happy Land Hotel at Kowatin, to begin life
as "a free and independent gent on the loose," as Billy Goat had said. To
resign had seemed extreme; because, though the Commissioner was vexed at
Halbeck's escape, Foyle was the best non-commissioned officer in the
Force. He had frightened horse-thieves and bogus land-agents and
speculators out of the country; had fearlessly tracked down a criminal or
a band of criminals when the odds were heavy against him. He carried on
his cheek the scars of two bullets, and there was one white lock in his
brown hair where an arrow had torn the scalp away as, alone, he drove into
the Post a score of Indians, fresh from raiding the cattle of an immigrant
trailing north.

Now he was out of work, or so it seemed; he had stepped down from his
scarlet-coated dignity, from the place of guardian and guide to
civilization, into the idleness of a tavern stoop.

As the little group swayed round him, and Billy Goat started another song,
Foyle roused himself as though to move away--he was waiting for the
mail-stage to take him south--

"Oh, father, dear father, come home with me now,
The clock in the steeple strikes one;
You said you were coming right home from the shop
As soon as your day's work was done.
Come home--come home--"

The song arrested him, and he leaned back against the window again. A
curious look came into his eyes, a look that had nothing to do with the
acts of the people before him. It was searching into a scene beyond this
bright sunlight and the far green-brown grass, and the little oasis of
trees in the distance marking a homestead, and the dust of the
wagon-wheels out on the trail beyond the grain-elevator--beyond the blue
horizon's rim, quivering in the heat, and into regions where this crisp,
clear, life-giving, life-saving air never blew.

"You said you were coming right home from the shop
As soon as your day's work was done.
Come