of time. Finally abruptly
Galen Albret's cavernous voice boomed forth. Something there was
strangely mysterious, cryptic, in the virile tones issuing from a bulk
so massive and inert. Galen Albret did not move, did not even raise
the heavy-lidded, dull stare of his eyes to the young man who stood
before him; hardly did his broad arched chest seem to rise and fall
with the respiration of speech; and yet each separate word leaped
forth alive, instinct with authority.

"Once at Leftfoot Lake, two Indians caught you asleep," he
pronounced. "They took your pelts and arms, and escorted you to
Sudbury. They were my Indians. Once on the upper Abitibi you were
stopped by a man named Herbert, who warned you from the country, after
relieving you of your entire outfit. He told you on parting what you
might expect if you should repeat the attempt--severe measures, the
severest. Herbert was my man. Now Louis Placide surprises you in a
rapids near Kettle Portage and brings you here."

During the slow delivering of these accurately spaced words, the
attitude of the men about the long, narrow table gradually changed.
Their curiosity had been great before, but now their intellectual
interest was awakened, for these were facts of which Louis Placide's
statement had given no inkling. Before them, for the dealing, was a
problem of the sort whose solution had earned for Galen Albret a
reputation in the north country. They glanced at one another to obtain
the sympathy of attention, then back toward their chief in anxious
expectation of his next words. The stranger, however, remained
unmoved. A faint smile had sketched the outline of his lips when first
the Factor began to speak. This smile he maintained to the end. As the
older man paused, he shrugged his shoulders.

"All of that is quite true," he admitted.

Even the unimaginative men of the Silent Places started at these
simple words, and vouchsafed to their speaker a more sympathetic
attention. For the tones in which they were delivered possessed that
deep, rich throat timbre which so often means power--personal
magnetism--deep, from the chest, with vibrant throat tones suggesting
a volume of sound which may in fact be only hinted by the loudness the
man at the moment sees fit to employ. Such a voice is a responsive
instrument on which emotion and mood play wonderfully seductive
strains.

"All of that is quite true," he repeated after a second's pause; "but
what has it to do with m