A strange shuffling and peculiar deep breathing were heard in the passage; a bolt was withdrawn, Katie drew quickly back, and next moment the door was thrown open.  A flood of light streamed out, and two weird and startling figures were outlined sharply against it.  Instinctively Dorothy shrank backwards with a sense of wonder and fear.  Standing on its hind legs in the doorway was a bear, and by its side a dwarf with an immense head covered with a great crop of hair, and with long arms and a broad chest which indicated great strength.

“Whur-r!  What you want here and at this hour of night, you cut-throats, you?” asked the outspoken manikin in a voice of sufficient volume to have equipped half-a-dozen men.

“A sweetheart for you, Pepin.  A sweetheart, mon ami” answered the big breed, in a conciliatory voice.

Dorothy nearly sank to the ground in horror when she heard this rude jest.

“Bah!” cried the manikin, “it is another female you will want to foist off upon me, is it?  Eh?  What?  But no, coquin, Pepin has not been the catch of the Saskatchewan all these years without learning wisdom.  Who is she—­a prisoner?  Eh?  Is not that so?”

“That is so, Pepin, she is preesonar, and Riel has ordered her to be detained here.  Your house is the only quiet one in the town this night, and that is why we came.  Tell Antoine to be so good as to stand back.”

Antoine was the bear, which still stood swaying gently from one side to the other with a comical expression of inquiry and gravity on its old-fashioned face.

Pepin surveyed the mob with no friendly scrutiny.

“What you want here, you canaille, sans-culottes?” he demanded.  And then in no complimentary terms he bade them begone.

The crowd, however, still lingered, with that spirit of curiosity peculiar to most crowds; so the dwarf brought them to their senses.  Suddenly poking Antoine in the ribs, he brought him down on all fours, and then, brushing past Dorothy and her captors, and still leading the bear, he charged the mob with surprising agility, scattering it right and left.  It was evident that they stood in wholesome dread of Pepin and his methods.  Then, coming back with the bear, he put one hand on his heart, and with a bow of grotesque gallantry, bade Dorothy enter the house.  The Indian he promptly sent about his business with a sudden blow over the chest that would probably have injured a white man’s bones.  The red man looked for a moment as if he meditated reprisals, but Pepin merely blinked at the cudgel, and Man-of-might, with a disgusted “Ough! ough!” changed his mind and incontinently fled.  Dorothy’s captor, Pierre La Chene, and Katie, alone entered the dwarf’s abode.