ese pelts as Marcel says?"

"Yes, they are there, these marks as he says."

The cowed Lelacs, their dark faces now twisted with fear, awaited the
next words of Gillies. Then the irate factor turned on them.

"Gaspard Lelac!" he roared. The face of Lelac paled to a sickly white as
his furtive eyes met the factor's.

"All this fur, here, you and your sons traded in last week; your own
fur, and the pelts of Beaulieu and Joe Piquet, dead men. I have held
them separate from the rest. You are thieves and liars!"

The bomb had exploded. At the words of the factor, the trade-room became
a bedlam of chattering and excited Indians. In the north, to steal the
fur of another is one of the cardinal sins. The supporters of Marcel
loudly exulted in the turn the hearing had taken, while the deluded
adherents of the Lelacs, maddened by the villainy of men who had stolen
from the dead and accused another, loudly cursed the half-breeds.

Nonplussed, paralyzed by the trick of the factor, instigated by the
adroit Marcel, the Lelacs sent murderous looks at Jean who smiled
contemptuously in their faces.

Gillies' deep bass quieted the uproar.

"Jules!" he called the second time. All were on tiptoe to learn what
further surprise the stalwart Jules had in store for them, when he
entered the room with two rifles, which he laid on the table, while the
Lelacs stared in wide-eyed amazement.

"Where did you get these rifles?" asked Gillies.

"In the tepee of Lelac, just now, hidden under blankets."

"Whose rifles were they, Marcel?"

Marcel examined the guns.

"This 30-30 gun belonged to Piquet. This is the rifle of Antoine."

With a cry, a tall half-breed roughly shouldered his way to the front of
the excited Crees.

"You thieves!" he cried, straining to reach the Lelacs with the knife
which he held in his hand. But sinewy arms seized him and the frenzied
uncle of Antoine Beaulieu was pushed, struggling, from the room.

It was the final straw. The mercurial Crees had turned as quickly from
the Lelacs to Marcel as, in the first instance, they had credited the
tale of the half-breeds. Now, with the Lelacs proven liars and thieves,
Jean's explanation of the deaths of his partners, as Gillies foresaw,
had, without corroboration, and on his word as a man, only, been at once
accepted.

Calling for silence Gillies again spoke to the hunters.

"You have heard the words of these men. You have judged who has spoken
with a double tongue;