Clarke's, hide and
bones--and that's all there'll be when the doctor gets through with
him. He's a sucker the doctor taught farming and then sold land to."

"Then, who's the doctor?" Harding inquired.

"That's not so easy to answer; but he's a man you want to be friends
with if you stay near the settlement. Teaches farming to tenderfoot
young Englishmen and Americans; finds them land and stock to start
with--and makes a mighty good thing out of it. Goes to Montreal now
and then, but whether it's to look up fresh suckers is more than I
know."

"We met a fellow named Clarke at the Windsor not long ago. What's he
like?"

When Gardner described him, Harding frowned.

"That's the man," he said.

"Then I can't see what he was doing at the Windsor; an opium joint
would have been more in his line."

"Does the fellow live at Sweetwater?" Blake asked.

"Has a farm--and runs it well--about three miles back; but he's away
pretty often in the North, and at a settlement on the edge of the bush
country. Don't know what he does there, and they're a curious
crowd--Dubokars, Russians of sorts, I guess."

Blake had seen the Dubokars in other parts of Canada and had found them
an industrious people, leading, from religious convictions, a
remarkably primitive life. There were, however, fanatics among them,
and he understood that these now and then led their followers into
outbreaks of emotional extravagance.

"They make good settlers, as a rule," he commented. "But, as they
don't speak English, how does the fellow get on with them?"

"Told me he was a philologist, when I asked him; then he allowed two or
three of them were mystics, and he was something in that line. He was
a doctor once and got fired out of England for something he shouldn't
have done. Anyhow, the Dubokars are like the rest of us--good, bad,
and pretty mixed--and the crowd back of Sweetwater belong to the last.
At first, some of them didn't believe it was right to work horses, and
made the women drag the plow; and they had one or two other habits that
brought the police down on them. After that they've given no trouble,
but they get on a jag of some kind now and then."

Blake nodded. He knew that the fanatic with untrained and unbalanced
mind is liable under the influence of excitement to indulge in crude
debauchery; but it was strange that a man of culture, such as Clarke
appeared to be, should take part in these excesses. He had, however,
no i