already discovered. He examined the door which Croisset had barred on
him, and gave up all hope of escape in that direction. He could barely
thrust his arm through the aperture that opened out on the
plague-stricken cabin. For the first time since the stirring beginning
of his adventures at Prince Albert a sickening sense of his own
impotency began to weigh on Howland. He was a prisoner--penned up in a
desolate room in the heart of a wilderness. And he, Jack Howland, a man
who had always taken pride in his physical prowess, had allowed one man
to place him there.

His blood began to boil as he thought of it. Now, as he had time and
silence in which to look back on what had happened, he was enraged at
the pictures that flashed one after another before him. He had allowed
himself to be used as nothing more than a pawn in a strange and
mysterious game. It was not through his efforts alone that he had been
saved in the fight on the Saskatchewan trail. Blindly he had walked into
the trap at the coyote. Still more blindly he had allowed himself to be
led into the ambush at the Wekusko camp. And more like a child than a
man he had submitted himself to Jean Croisset!

He stamped back and forth across the room, smoking viciously, and his
face grew red with the thoughts that were stirring venom within him. He
placed no weight on circumstances; in these moments he found no excuse
for himself. In no situation had he displayed the white feather, at no
time had he felt a thrill of fear. His courage and recklessness had
terrified Meleese, had astonished Croisset. And yet--what had he done?
From the beginning--from the moment he first placed his foot in the
Chinese cafe--his enemies had held the whip-hand. He had been compelled
to play a passive part. Up to the point of the ambush on the Wekusko
trail he might have found some vindication for himself. But this