ch reflected what he must have been
through, neither was sorry for Gerald Ainley or had any compunction at
the thought of what might happen to him.

The meal was finished without any further reference to the past, and
after a smoke, Anderton threw on his furs and went outside. Presently
he returned and announced his intention of going up the lake to the
Indian encampment.

"The weather is going to hold, and it really is of the utmost
importance for me to find out whether my man is here or not. I'm not in
the best form after my accident this morning, but there's nothing else
for it, and if the fellow has left, I shall have to follow at his
heels, and wear him down. It is the only way. Duty is duty in my force,
I can assure you."

Stane looked at Helen, then he said: "We will accompany you, Anderton.
You represent the law, and in your company we are much more likely to
receive attention and get what we want than if we go alone, whilst
further, if the mysterious visits we have had were hostile in
intention, the fact that we are known to you will tend to check them."

"Something in that!" agreed the policeman.

When Anderton had harnessed his dogs they started off, making directly
up the lake, and within two hours sighted about half a score of winter
tepees pitched near the store, and with sheltering woods on three sides
of them. As they came into view, with the smoke of the fires curling
upward in the still air, the policeman nodded.

"The end of a journey of two hundred miles; or the beginning of one
that may take me into the Barrens, and up to the Arctic. Lord, what a
life this is!"

He laughed as he spoke, and both those who heard him, knew that he
found the life a good one, and was without regret for the choice he had
made.

As they drew nearer the camp, two or three men, and perhaps a dozen
women, with twice that number of children came from the tepees to look
at them, and when the dogs came to a halt, one of the men stepped
forward. He was an old man, and withered-looking, but with a light of
cunning in his bleared eyes.

"What want," he asked. "Me, Chief George."

The policeman looked at the bent figure clothed in mangy-looking furs,
with a dirty capote over all, and then gave a swift glance at his
companions, the eyelid nearest to them fluttering down in a slow wink.
A second later he was addressing the chief in his own tongue.

"I come," he said, "from the Great White Chief, to take away one who is