, but I did not expect
to meet him up here."

"No?" She waited as if for further information which was not
immediately forthcoming, then she continued: "There are many men up
here whom one does not expect to meet, men who belong 'to the legion of
the lost ones, the cohort of the damned,' who have buried their old
selves for ever. I wonder if that man is one of them?"

Gerald Ainley's face had regained its natural colour. Again he laughed
as he replied: "If he is the man I knew he is certainly of the lost
legion, for he has been in prison."

"In prison?" echoed the woman quickly. "He does not look like a
gaol-bird. What was the crime?"

"Forgery! The judge was merciful and gave him three years' penal
servitude."

"What is his name?"

"Stane--Hubert Stane!" replied the man shortly. As he spoke he glanced
back over his shoulder towards the man whom they were discussing, then
hastily averted his eyes.

The man from the river had turned round and was looking at him with
concentrated gaze. His face was working as if he had lost control of
his facial muscles, and his hands were tightly clenched. It was clear
that the meeting with Ainley had been something of a shock to him, and
from his attitude it appeared that he resented the other man's
aloofness.

"The hound!" he whispered to himself, "the contemptible hound!"

Then as Ainley and the factor's wife disappeared in the store, he
laughed harshly and relit his pipe. As he did so, his fingers shook so
that the match bobbed against the pipe-bowl, and it was very manifest
that he was undergoing a great strain. He stood there staring at the
store. Once he began to move towards it irresolutely, then changed his
mind and came to a standstill again.

"No!" he whispered below his breath. "I'll wait till the cad comes
out--I'll force him to acknowledge me."

But scarcely had he reached the decision, when on the quiet air came
the clear notes of a bugle sounding the alert and turning his thoughts
in a new direction. The notes came from the river, and were so alien to
that northern land that he swung round to discover their origin. At the
same moment the two half-breeds leapt from the bench and began to run
towards the wharf. John Rodwell, the factor and his wife, emerged from
the store and hurried in the same direction, followed by the Indian who
had been bartering. Two other men appeared at the warehouse door, and
as the strains of the bugle sounded again, also began to r