the rail-head on the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Forty miles from Kowatin
he had been caught by, and escaped from, the tall, brown-eyed man with
the hard-bitten face who leaned against the open window of the tavern,
looking indifferently at the jeering crowd before him. For a police
officer he was not unpopular with them, but he had been a failure for
once, and, as Billy Goat had said: "It tickled us to death to see a rider
of the plains off his trolley--on the cold, cold ground, same as you and
me."

They did not undervalue him. If he had been less a man than he was,
they would not have taken the trouble to cover him with their drunken
ribaldry. He had scored off them in the past in just such sprees as
this, when he had the power to do so, and used the power good-naturedly
and quietly--but used it.

Then, he was Sergeant Foyle of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, on
duty in a district as large as the United Kingdom. And he had no greater
admirer than Billy Goat, who now reviled him. Not without cause, in a
way, for he had reviled himself to this extent, that when the prairie-
rover, Halbeck, escaped on the way to Prince Albert, after six months'
hunt for him and a final capture in the Kowatin district, Foyle resigned
the Force before the Commissioner could reproach him or call him to
account. Usually so exact, so certain of his target, some care had not
been taken, he had miscalculated, and there had been the Error of the
Day. Whatever it was, it had seemed to him fatal; and he had turned his
face from the barrack yard.

Then he had made his way to the Happy Land Hotel at Kowatin, to begin
life as "a free and independent gent on the loose," as Billy Goat had
said. To resign had seemed extreme; because, though the Commissioner was