Young Morse began to tell stories of instances that had come under his own observation, of others that he had heard from reliable sources.  Presently he found himself embarked on the tale of his adventures with Sleeping Dawn.

The fur-trader heard him patiently.  The dusty wrinkled boots of the merchant rested on the desk.  His chair was tilted back in such a way that the weight of his body was distributed between the back of his neck, the lower end of the spine, and his heels.  He looked a picture of sleepy, indolent ease, but Tom knew he was not missing the least detail.

A shadow darkened the doorway of the office.  Behind it straddled a huge, ungainly figure.

“’Lo, West!  How’re tricks?” C.N.  Morse asked in his lazy way.  He did not rise from the chair or offer to shake hands, but that might be because it was not his custom to exert himself.

West stopped in his stride, choking with wrath.  He had caught sight of Tom and was glaring at him.  “You’re here, eh?  Sneaked home to try to square yourself with the old man, did ya?” The trail foreman turned to the uncle.  “I wanta tell you he double-crossed you for fair, C.N.  He’s got a heluva nerve to come back here after playin’ in with the police the way he done up there.”

“I’ve heard something about that,” the fur-trader admitted cautiously.  “You told me Tom an’ you didn’t exactly gee.”

“He’ll never drive another bull-team for me again.”  West tacked to his pronouncement a curdling oath.

“We’ll call that settled, then.  You’re through bull-whackin’, Tom.”  There was a little twitch of whimsical mirth at the corners of the old man’s mouth.

“Now you’re shoutin, C.N.  Threw me down from start to finish, he did.  First off, when the breed girl busted the casks, he took her home ‘stead of bringin’ her to me.  Then at old McRae’s camp when I was defendin’ myself, he jumped me too.  My notion is from the way he acted that he let on to the red-coat where the cache was.  Finally when I rode out to rescue him, he sided in with the other fellow.  Hadn’t been for him I’d never ‘a’ had this slug in my leg.”  The big smuggler spoke with extraordinary vehemence, spicing his speech liberally with sulphurous language.

The grizzled Yankee accepted the foreman’s attitude with a wave of the hand that dismissed any counterargument.  But there was an ironic gleam in his eye.

“’Nough said, West.  If you’re that sot on it, the boy quits the company pay-roll as an employee right now.  I won’t have him annoyin’ you another hour.  He becomes a member of the firm to-day.”

The big bully’s jaw sagged.  He stared at his lean employer as though a small bomb had exploded at his feet and numbed his brains.  But he was no more surprised than Tom, whose wooden face was expressionless.

“Goddlemighty!  Ain’t I jus’ been tellin’ you how he wrecked the whole show—­how he sold out to that bunch of spies the Canadian Gov’ment has done sent up there?” exploded West.