sons of the long-legged and broad-shouldered generations. Imber glanced
from one to another, then he spoke aloud in the Whitefish tongue.

"What did he say?" asked Dickensen.

"Him say um all the same one man, dat p'liceman," Jimmy interpreted.

Little Dickensen was little, and what of Miss Travis, he felt sorry for
having asked the question.

The policeman was sorry for him and stepped into the breach. "I fancy
there may be something in his story. I'll take him up to the captain for
examination. Tell him to come along with me, Jimmy."

Jimmy indulged in more throaty spasms, and Imber grunted and looked
satisfied.

"But ask him what he said, Jimmy, and what he meant when he took hold of
my arm."

So spoke Emily Travis, and Jimmy put the question and received the
answer.

"Him say you no afraid," said Jimmy.

Emily Travis looked pleased.

"Him say you no _skookum_, no strong, all the same very soft like little
baby. Him break you, in um two hands, to little pieces. Him t'ink much
funny, very strange, how you can be mother of men so big, so strong,
like dat p'liceman."

Emily Travers kept her eyes up and unfaltering, but her cheeks were
sprayed with scarlet. Little Dickensen blushed and was quite
embarrassed. The policeman's face blazed with his boy's blood.

"Come along, you," he said gruffly, setting his shoulder to the crowd
and forcing a way.

Thus it was that Imber found his way to the Barracks, where he made full
and voluntary confession, and from the precincts of which he never
emerged.

* * * * *

Imber looked very tired. The fatigue of hopelessness and age was in his
face. His shoulders drooped depressingly, and his eyes were lack-luster.
His mop of hair should have been white, but sun--and weather-beat had
burned and bitten it so that it hung limp and lifeless and colorless. He
took no interest in what went on around him. The court-room was jammed
with the men of the creeks and trails, and there was an ominous note in
the rumble and grumble of their low-pitched voices, which came to his
ears like the growl of the sea from deep caverns.

He sat close by a window, and his apathetic eyes rested now and again on
the dreary scene without. The sky was overcast, and a gray drizzle was
falling. It was flood-time on the Yukon. The ice was gone, and the river
was up in the town. Back and forth on the main street, in canoes and
poling-boats, passed the people that never r