e're on a branch line. There's the track--it might give
way. You never can tell on a branch line. The locomotive might drop
dead of senile decay. Maybe the train crew's got drunk, and is
raisin' hell at some wayside city. You never can tell on a branch
line. Then there's that cargo of liquor you're yearnin' to----"

"Cut it out, man," broke in the officer sharply. "You are sure about
the train? You know what you're talking about?"

The agent grinned harder than ever.

"This is a prohibition territory----" he began.

But again Fyles cut him short. The man's irrepressible love of
fooling, half good-humored, half malicious, had gone far enough.

"Anyway you don't usually get drunk before sundown, so I guess I'll
have to take your word for it."

Then Inspector Fyles smiled back into the other's face, which had
abruptly taken on a look of resentment at the charge.

"I tell you what it is," he went on. "You boys get mighty close to
the wind swilling prohibited liquor. It's against the spirit of the
law--anyway."

But the agent's good humor warmed again under the officer's admission
of his difficulties. He was an irrepressible fellow when opportunity
offered. Usually he lived in a condition of utter boredom. In fact,
there were only two things that made life tolerable for him in
Amberley. These were the doings of the Mounted Police, and the doings
of those who made their existence a necessity in the country.

Even while weighted down with the oppressive routine of his work, it
was an inspiriting thing to watch the war between law and lawlessness.
Here in Amberley, situated in the heart of the Canadian prairie lands,
was a handful of highly trained men pitted against almost a world of
crime. Perhaps the lightest of their duties was the enforcing of the
prohibition laws, formulated by a dear, grandmotherly government in an
excess of senile zeal for the welfare of the health and morals of
those far better able to think for themselves.

The laws of prohibition! The words stuck with Mr. Huntly as they stuck
with every full-grown man and woman in the country outside the narrow
circle of temperance advocates. The law was anathema to him. Under its
influence the bettering, the purification of life in the Northwestern
Territories had received a setback, which optimistic antagonists
of the law declared was little less than a quarter of a century.
Drunkenness had increased about one hundred per cent, since human
nature had be