undred and forty-odd pounds of flesh
in Dirty Fingers' body, it was the quality of his brain that made
people hold him in a sort of awe. For Dirty Fingers was a lawyer, a
wilderness lawyer, a forest bencher, a legal strategist of the trail,
of the river, of the great timber-lands.

Stored away in his brain was every rule of equity and common law of the
great North country. For his knowledge he went back two hundred years.
He knew that a law did not die of age, that it must be legislated to
death, and out of the moldering past he had dug up every trick and trap
of his trade. He had no law-books. His library was in his head, and his
facts were marshaled in pile after pile of closely-written,
dust-covered papers in his shack. He did not go to court as other
lawyers; and there were barristers in Edmonton who blessed him for that.

His shack was his tabernacle of justice. There he sat, hands folded,
and gave out his decisions, his advice, his sentences. He sat until
other men would have gone mad. From morning until night, moving only
for his meals or to get out of heat or storm, he was a fixture on the
porch of the Good Old Queen Bess. For hours he would stare at the
river, his pale eyes never seeming to blink. For hours he would remain
without a move or a word. One constant companion he had, a dog, fat,
emotionless, lazy, like his master. Always this dog was sleeping at his
feet or dragging himself wearily at his heels when Dirty Fingers
elected to make a journey to the little store where he bartered for
food and necessities.

It was Father Layonne who came first to see Kent in his cell the
morning after Kent's unsuccessful attempt at flight. An hour later it
was Father Layonne who traveled the beaten path to the door of Dirty
Fingers' shack. If a visible emotion of pleasure ever entered into
Dirty Fingers' face, it was when the little missioner came occasionally
to see him. It was then that his tongue let itself loose, and until
late at night they talked of many things of which other men knew but
little. This morning Father Layonne did not come casually, but
determinedly on business, and when Dirty Fingers learned what that
business was, he shook his head disconsolately, folded his fat arms
more tightly over his stomach, and stated the sheer impossibility of
his going to see Kent. It was not his custom. People must come to him.
And he did not like to walk. It was fully a third of a mile from his
shack to barracks, possi