"Then, who's the doctor?" Harding inquired.

"That's not so easy to answer; but he's a man you want to be friends
with if you stay near the settlement. Teaches farming to tenderfoot
young Englishmen and Americans; finds them land and stock to start
with--and makes a mighty good thing out of it. Goes to Montreal now
and then, but whether it's to look up fresh suckers is more than I
know."

"We met a fellow named Clarke at the Windsor not long ago. What's he
like?"

When Gardner described him, Harding frowned.

"That's the man," he said.

"Then I can't see what he was doing at the Windsor; an opium joint
would have been more in his line."

"Does the fellow live at Sweetwater?" Blake asked.

"Has a farm--and runs it well--about three miles back; but he's away
pretty often in the North, and at a settlement on the edge of the bush
country. Don't know what he does there, and they're a curious
crowd--Dubokars, Russians of sorts, I guess."

Blake had seen the Dubokars in other parts of Canada and had found them
an industrious people, leading, from religious convictions, a
remarkably primitive life. There were, however, fanatics among them,
and he understood that these now and then led their followers into