ad prepared them for his appearance. There was no liquor in
sight. If there had been bottles and glasses on the tables, they had
been cleared away--but no one had thought to wipe away certain liquid
stains that David saw shimmering wetly in the glow of the three big
lamps hanging from the ceiling. He looked the men over quickly as he
followed the free trader. Never, he thought, had he seen a rougher or
more unpleasant-looking lot. He caught more than one eye filled with the
glittering menace he had seen in Hauck's. Not a man nodded at him, or
spoke to him. He passed close to one raw-boned individual, so close that
he brushed against him, and there was an unconcealed and threatening
animosity in this man's face as he glared up at him. By the time he had
passed through the room his suspicion had become a conviction. Hauck had
purposely put him on parade, and there was a deep and sinister
significance in the attitude of these men.

They passed through the hall into which he and Marge had entered from
the opposite side of the Nest, and Hauck paused at the door of a room
almost opposite to the one which the girl had said belonged to her.

"This will be your room while you are our guest," he said. The glitter
in his eyes softened as he nodded at David. He tried to speak a bit
affably, but David felt that his effort was rather unsuccessful. It
failed to cover the hard note in his voice and the curious twitch of his
upper lip--a snarl almost--as he forced a smile. "Make yourself at
home," he added. "We'll have breakfast in the morning with my niece." He
paused for a moment and then said, looking keenly at David: "I suppose
you tried hard to make Brokaw understand he had made a mistake, and that
you wasn't McKenna? Brokaw is a good fellow when he isn't drunk."

David was glad that he turned away without waiting for an answer. He did
not want to talk with Hauck to-night. He wanted to turn over in his mind
what he had learned from Brokaw, and to-morrow act with the cool
judgment which was more or less characteristic of him. He did not
believe even now that there would be anything melodramatic in the
outcome of the affair. There would be an unpleasantness, of course; but
when both Hauck and Brokaw were confronted with a certain situation, and
with the peculiarly significant facts which he now held in his
possession, he could not see how they would be able to place any very
great obstacle in the way of his determination to take Mar