t forthcoming when they were asked to
produce him, the lives of his gaolers would more than
likely pay the penalty. True, for Katie's sake they had
made an exchange, but that did not matter--no one would
know. Yes, they were ready to shoot him like a dog if he
made the slightest attempt to escape.

And she, Dorothy--well, he didn't mind dying for her.
Within the last twenty-four hours he had realised how
fully she had come into his life. And he had striven
against it, but it was written in the book. He could not
altogether understand her. At one moment she would be
kind and sympathetic, and then, when he unbent and tried
to come a step nearer to her, she seemed to freeze and
keep him at arm's length. And he thought he had known
women once upon a time, in the palmy days across the
seas. He wondered what she would think on finding out
the truth about her father's release.

It was cold sitting on an upturned pail with his moccasins
resting on the frozen clay, and breathing an atmosphere
which was like that of a sepulchre. He wished the dawn
would break, even although it meant a resumption of that
awful riot and bloodshed.

Yes, they would certainly shoot him when they discovered
that he was one of the hated red-coats who represented
the might and majesty of Great Britain. Why they should
now hate the Mounted Police, who had indeed always been
their best friends, was one of those problems that can
only be explained by the innate perversity of what men
call human nature.

He was becoming drowsy, but he heard a strange scraping
on the low roof over his head, and that kept him awake
for some little time speculating as to whether or not it
could be a bear. It seemed a silly speculation, but then,
in wild regions, inconvenient prisoners have often been
quietly disposed of through roofs and windows during
their sleep. As he did not intend to be taken unawares
like that, he groped around and found the neck yoke of
a bullock. It would do to fell a man with, anyhow.

He could hear the voices of his two guards at the door
only indistinctly, for, as has been said, it was a long,
narrow room. He wished it were a little lighter so that
he might see what he was doing. When the thing on the
roof once broke through, he would be in the shadow, while
it would be against the light That would give him the
advantage.

At length the unseen intruder reached the straw that
covered the thin poles laid one alongside the other. The
st