demoralized. I'm the first man to soil the honor of the finest
Service on the face of the earth, and I'm in Kedsty's division.
Quite natural that he should be upset. And as for the girl--"

He shrugged his shoulders and tried to laugh. "Perhaps she came in
this morning with one of the up-river scows and was merely taking
a little constitutional," he suggested. "Didn't you ever notice,
O'Connor, that in a certain light under poplar trees one's face is
sometimes ghastly?"

"Yes, I've noticed it, when the trees are in full leaf, but not
when they're just opening, Jimmy. It was the girl. Her eyes
shattered every nerve in him. And his first words were an order
for me to free McTrigger, coupled with the lie that he was coming
back to see Cardigan. And if you could have seen her eyes when she
turned them on me! They were blue--blue as violets--but shooting
fire. I could imagine black eyes like that, but not blue ones.
Kedsty simply wilted in their blaze. And there was a reason--I
know it--a reason that sent his mind like lightning to the man in
the cell!"

"Now, that you leave me out of it, the thing begins to get
interesting," said Kent. "It's a matter of the relationship of
this blonde girl and--"

"She isn't blonde--and I'm not leaving you out of it," interrupted
O'Connor. "I never saw anything so black in my life as her hair.
It was magnificent. If you saw that girl once, you would never
forget her again as long as you lived. She has never been in
Athabasca Landing before, or anywhere near here. If she had, we