der his very nose. In his own phraseology, he felt
"sore." But his ill humor was not alone due to the brakeman's abuse.
He was thinking of something far more vital. He knew well enough that
his explanation would never satisfy the heads of his department. Then,
too, always hovering somewhere in the background, was the, to him,
sinister figure of Inspector Fyles of the Mounted Police.

CHAPTER IV

AT THE FOOT OF AN AGED PINE

Waiting for word from the agent, Huntly, Inspector Fyles had retreated
to the insignificant wooden shack which served the police as a Town
Station in Amberley. It consisted of two rooms and a loft in the pitch
of the roof. Its furniture was reduced to a minimum, and everything,
except the loft above where the two troopers and the corporal in
charge slept, was a matter of bare boards and bare wooden chairs.

The officer sat in the smaller inner room where the telephone was
close to his hand, while the non-commissioned officer and his men
occupied the outer room.

Fyles faced the window with his hard Windsor chair close beside the
office table. His elbow rested upon its chipped and discolored
surface, and his chin was supported on the palm of his hand. Just now
his busy thoughts were free to wander whithersoever they listed. This
was an interim of waiting, when all preparations were made for the
work in hand, and there was nothing to do but await developments. So
used was he to this work of seizing contraband spirits that its
contemplation had not power enough to quicken one single beat of his
pulse. And in this, too, he displayed that wondrous patience which was
so much a part of his nature.

Stanley Fyles's reputation in these wild regions was decidedly unique.
Scarcely a day passed but what some strenuous emergency arose
demanding quick thought and quicker action, where life, frequently his
own, hung in the balance. Yet the most strenuous of them found him
always easy, always deliberate, and, as his subordinates loved to
declare, he always managed to "beat the game by a second."

There were people outside, civilians, who confidently and
contemptuously declared him to be a bungler; a patient, hard-working
bungler. These were the men who saw few of his successes, and always
contrived to smell out his failures. These people were those who had
no understanding of the difficulties of a handful of men pitted
against a country eaten up with every form of criminal disease. There
were others