Indian with me. There was darkness day after day, and because the
Esquimaux and Indians hadn't come up to the fort that winter, it was
lonely as a tomb. One by one the men got melancholy and then went mad,
and I had to tie them up, and care for them and feed them. The Indian
was all right, but he got afraid, and wanted to start to a mission
station three hundred miles on. It was a bad look-out for me, but I told
him to go. I was left alone. I was only twenty-one, but I was steel to
my toes--good for wear and tear. Well, I had one solid month all alone
with my madmen. Their jabbering made me sea-sick some times. At last
one day I felt I'd go staring mad myself if I didn't do something
exciting to lift me, as it were. I got a revolver, sat at the opposite
end of the room from the three lunatics, and practised shooting at them.
I had got it into my head that they ought to die, but it was only fair,
I thought, to give them a chance. I would try hard to shoot all round
them--make a halo of bullets for the head of every one, draw them in
silhouettes of solid lead on the wall.

"I talked to them first, and told them what I was going to do. They
seemed to understand, and didn't object. I began with the silhouettes,
of course. I had a box of bullets beside me. They never squealed. I
sent the bullets round them as pretty as the pattern of a milliner. Then
I began with their heads. I did two all right. They sat and never
stirred. But when I came to the last something happened. It was Jock
Lawson."

Sir William interposed:

"Jock Lawson--Jock Lawson from here?"

"Yes. His mother keeps 'The Whisk o' Barley.'"