father?"

"He will die unless the surgeon's knife it cure him before twenty-four
hours, and--"

"And Doctor Brydon is sick, and Doctor Hadley away at Winnipeg, and this
is two hundred miles from nowhere! It looks as if the police'll never
get him, eh?"

"You have not tell any one--never?"

Finden laughed. "Though I'm not a priest, I can lock myself up as tight
as anny. There's no tongue that's so tied, when tying's needed, as the
one that babbles most bewhiles. Babbling covers a lot of secrets."

"So you t'ink it better Meydon should die, as Hadley is away and Brydon
is sick-hein?"

"Oh, I think--"

Finden stopped short, for a horse's hoofs sounded on the turf beside the
house, and presently Varley, the great London surgeon, rounded the corner
and stopped his horse in front of the veranda.

He lifted his hat to the priest. "I hear there's a bad case at the
hospital," he said.

"It is ver' dangerous," answered Father Bourassa; "but, voila, come in!
There is something cool to drink. Ah yes, he is ver' bad, that man from
the Great Slave Lake."