t into tiny
bits that you shall not be made to pay, even as I have paid, for
listening to the words of his lips."

"But," faltered Chloe, "I don't--I don't understand. Surely, you, fear
MacNair. Surely, that night when he came into the room, carrying the
wounded policeman, you fled from him in terror."

"MacNair is a white man----"

"But why should you fear him?"

"I fear him," she answered, "because among the Indians--among the
Louchoux--the people of my mother, and among the Eskimoes, he is called
'The Bad Man of the North.' I hated him because Lapierre taught me to
hate him. I do not hate him now, nor do I fear him. But among the
Indians and among the free-traders he is both hated and feared. He
chases the free-traders from the rivers, and he kills them and destroys
their whiskey. For he has said, like the men of the soldier-police, that
the red man shall drink no whiskey. But the red men like the whiskey.
Their life is hard and they do not have much happiness, and the whiskey
of the white man makes them happy. And in the days before MacNair they
could get much whiskey, but now the free-traders fear him, and only
sometimes do they dare to bring whiskey to the land of the far-off rivers.

"At the posts my people may trade for food and for guns and for clothing,
but they may not buy whiskey. But the free-traders sell whiskey. Also
they will trade for the women. But MacNair has said they shall not trade
for the women. At times, when men think he is far away, he comes
swooping through the North with his Snare Lake Indians at his heels, and
they chase the free-traders from the rivers. And on the shores of the
frozen sea he chases the whalemen from the Eskimo villages even to their
ships which lie far out from the coast, locked in the grip of the
ice-pack.

"For these things I have hated and feared him. Since I have been here at
the school I have learned much. Both from your teachings, and from
talking with the women of MacNair's Indians. I know now that MacNair is
good, and that the factors and the soldier-police and the priest spoke
words of truth, and that Lapierre and the free-traders lied!"

As the Indian girl poured forth her story, Chloe Elliston listened as one
in a dream. What was this she was saying, that it was Lapierre who sold
whiskey to the Indians, and MacNair who stood firm, and struck mighty
blows for the right of things? Surely, this girl's mind was
unhinged--or, had something g