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Updated: May 24, 2025
Outside, the varied life of the Post went forward under his eyes. He even noted with a surface interest the fact that out across the river a loon was floating, and remarked that never before had he seen one of those birds so far north. Galen Albret struck the table with the flat of his hand. "Done!" he cried, "This is the last chance I shall give you.
"Then a means shall be found to make you!" threatened the Factor, his anger blazing at last. "Ah," said the stranger softly. Galen Albret raised his hand and let it fall. The bronzed and gaudily bedecked men filed out. In the open air the men separated in quest of their various families or friends.
Galen Albret did not stir, but the others hitched nearer the long, narrow table, and two or three leaned both elbows on it the better to catch what should ensue. Me-en-gan stopped by the door, but the stranger walked steadily the length of the room until he faced the Factor. Then he paused and waited collectedly for the other to speak.
He turned away with a little gesture. "Well!" cried Albret. Ned Trent locked his lips in a purposeful straight line of silence. To such an outrage there could be nothing to say. The Factor jerked his watch to the table. "I said five minutes," he repeated. "I mean it." The young man leaned against the side of the window, his arms folded, his back to the room.
The interview had been baffling, the threats real and unjust, the turn of affairs when Virginia Albret entered the room most exasperating on the side of the undesirable and unforeseen. In foiled escape, in thwarted expedient, his emotions had been many times excited, and then eddied back on themselves. The potentialities of as blind an anger as that of Galen Albret were in him.
But Galen Albret said nothing, made no sign. Silently and steadily, run up by some invisible hand, the blood-red banner of the Company fluttered to the mast-head. Before it, alone, bulked huge against the sky, dominating the people in the symbolism of his position there as he did in the realities of everyday life, the Factor stood, his hands behind his back.
Before them, for the dealing, was a problem of the sort whose solution had earned for Galen Albret a reputation in the north country. They glanced at one another to obtain the sympathy of attention, then back toward their chief in anxious expectation of his next words. The stranger, however, remained unmoved. A faint smile had sketched the outline of his lips when first the Factor began to speak.
Galen Albret snarled like a wild beast, throwing aside the girl, as he did the chair in which he had been sitting. Ned Trent caught her, reeling, in his arms. For, as is often the case with passionate but strong temperaments, though the Factor had attained a certain calm of control, the turmoil of his deeper anger had not been in the least stilled.
"Oh, if it amuses you," conceded the stranger. "The thing is not even worth discussion." "Remarkable sensation among our friends here for so idle a tale." Galen Albret considered. "You will remember that throughout you have forced this interview," he pointed out. "Now I must ask your definite promise to get out of this country and to stay out." "No," replied Ned Trent.
You'd take it quick enough, I dare say. Here is where I should receive aid. I may have to get it where I should not. You a man of God! Why, you poor little insect, I can't even get angry at you!" He stood for a moment looking at the confused and troubled clergyman. Then he went out. Almost immediately the door opened again. "You, Miss Albret!" cried Crane.
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