Caraquet, or even the last time he had been there. He was not a man any one would remember, anyhow, or one who had made friends. We put a notice of his death and the ci

y close his lips as though he kept back the same thought. But we gave old Thompson the best funeral we could, over at the Halfway, with a good g

yer book. I saw her notice Macartney when I did, and I think neither of us had guessed he had so much feeling. I stayed a minute or two behind the others, because I'd ri

n on earth but that to find them had been the last request o

o be found. It was queer, too, because he remembered replacing them in their prayer-book sort of case after he'd spread them by the stove to dry with

s not the scattered bones of two men that sickened me, or even that the long thighs and shanks of one of them were the measure of Collins. It was the top of a skull, with the hair still on it. I did not need the face that was missing. Dunn, with his eternal chuckle, had had stubbly fair hair without a part i

hem. If I said a kind of a prayer, too, it was no one's business but that of the God who heard me; the boys had be

nd find where they were cached and hike them out of it; and he kept at it all day. That would not have worried me much since it was only Dudley, and Macartney and the others believed my story; but everything else at La Chance began to go crooked, and every one's nerves got edgy. Marcia was unpleasantly silent, except when Macartney was there, when she sat in his pocket and they talked low like lovers,-only that I was always idiotically nervous the

bunk house. I ran the ore hauling as best I could, and Macartney doubled up the work in the mill. The ore-feeder acted as crusher-man, too, the engineer was his own fireman, which, with the battery man and the amalgamator, brought the mill staff down to four,-but they were the best of our men. The others Macartney turned to with the rockmen, and in the course of a fortnight he got a few more men from somewhere he wrote to outside. They were a rough lot; not troublesome, but the kind of rough that saves itself backache and elbow grease. Personally, I think they would not have work

d meant to hold up my gold, but I'd smashed it up, for myself, for a reason that made me wild: Paulette Brown, whose real name Marcia swore was something else, was still meeting a man in the dark! Where, I couldn't tell, but I knew she did meet him; and naturally I knew the man was not Collins, or ever had

cency I had not to do it, anyway. But if you think I just made an easy resignation of her and sat back meekly, you're wrong. I sat back because I was helpless and too stupid to formulate any way to deal with the situation. I don't know that I was any more silent than I always am, though Marcia said so. I did

omething, and Dudley was preaching to Macartney about the shortage of men in the bunk house. Marcia, cross as two sticks because she was only ther

under her eyes, and the tight look round the nostrils that only come to a woman's face when she is fighting something that is pretty nearly past her, and is next door to despair. She looked hunted; that was the only word there was for it. It struck me that look must stop. If I had to march her out into the bush

Dudley, heaven knows, and he was charming to her when he was himself. When he was not, he had a patronizing, half-threatening way of speaking to her, as if he knew something ugly about her, as Marcia had insinuated, that made me boil. She never resented it either, and that made me boil too. If I had ever seen her even shrink from him, I don't know that the curb bit

unn aren't dead, only laid up somewhere round and making the other men desert, and you ought to go and find them-and now he's worrying us

and Collins right enough," said I absently, with my thou

s you were ass enough to be taken in by some stray bones! But I do mean it about Thompson. There's no sense in saying there was nothing queer about the way he came back and was found dead-because there was! It was natural enough that the police couldn't trac

too," he said so quietly that I remembered Thompson had been his best friend, and that he had looked deadly sick beside his grave. "But I d

he was himself I should have been curious about what he had meant to say. But all he su

acartney ironically, since Billy Jones would not have murdered the meanest yellow pup that

to say that he mightn't have waylaid poor old Thompson for what money he had

have struck him, as it did me, that it was born of Dudley's drugs and not his intel

rtly. "You make me sick. Isn't it enough to have the ol

is, Macartney, and Stretton too-if any one within a hundred miles of this mine did murder Thompson, Bill

e found out," she added unexpectedly. She had made two false starts at her letter and torn them up, but she had evidently finished it to her liking now, for she sat

acartney. Why, you take the history of crimes generally-murders-jewel robberies-kidnapping for money

e to catch Macartney's eye, but for once his set gaze was on the floor. She got up, which I don't thi

the Houstons' country house this spring, with that dancing and circus-riding girl who used to be at the Hippodrome-the Russian, who did Russian dancing on her horse's back? What was her name? I ought to remember. I knew a poor devil of a cousin of hers out in British Columbia who was engaged to her when

name, though it had only reached me in the wilderness through a stray New York paper. But be

n Stretton mus

s found in Valenka's room, soaked with morphine and robbed-not only of the cash in his pocket in the good old way, but of an emerald necklace he had just bought at Tiffany's; and that, to this d

ing rage was beyond me. But

of a circus and was fair game, that's a lie, too! She was a lady, born and bred. Her mother was American, a Miss Bocqueraz; and her father was one of the best known men in Petrograd, and persona grata with one of the Grand Dukes till he got into some sort of political disgrace and died of it. His daughter came to America and danced and rode for her living. First because she wa

from her just after dinner saying that she returned them; only the case-in the time-honored method this time-was empty when he opened it! He was blazing. He went straight up to Valenka's room when he found it out, which was at two in the morning, and said he wanted his emeralds; and

l would have been justified when a man forced his way into her bedroom-for I bet Van Ruyne didn't let out the whole story of that, if he did let out that he bullied her when he found her alone! And he didn't lay any stress, either, on the fact that he was found

way-or what became of her," said Macartney

ad some one outside who had taken her clear away in a motor car. I said so, more because Dudley was glaring at Macartney like a maniac than anything else. And Dudley caugh

ionless as if she were a statue. Her lifted hand still held her pen poised over her unfinished letter; but it was rigid, as the rest of her was rigid. Whether it was from anger, surprise, or jealousy of Dudley, I had no idea, but she sat as if she had been struck dumb. And suddenly I was not sure if she were perfectly collected,-or absolutely abstracted. For-without even a glance to

n. It was Tatiana Paulina-that "queer Christian name, half Russian too," of th