“It is enough!  He is of the Police.  He has also been found spying in camp, and the penalty for that is death.  I hear he is one of the men who ran down and shot Heinault, who was one of the people.  Let him be taken to the same spot and shot also.  He took the blood of the metis—­let the metis now take his!  Away with him!”

Such a wild yelling, whooping, and brandishing of guns took place at these words that Pasmore thought there would be little necessity to take him to the spot where “Wild Joe” of tender memory slept.  When an antiquated fowling-piece actually did go off, and shot an Indian in the legs, the uproar was inconceivable.  Pasmore thought of Rory’s dogs having a sporting five minutes, and smiled, despite the gravity of the situation.  But order was restored, and with Riel and two of his so-called “generals” in the lead, and a straggling crowd of human beings and dogs following, the prisoner was led slowly towards the spot fixed for his execution.

Past the piles of smouldering ashes, and tracks strewn, with all sorts of destroyed merchandise, they went.  They had looted the stores to their hearts’ content, and were now rioting in an excess of what to them was good living; but where those short-sighted creatures expected to get fresh supplies from is a question they probably never once put to themselves.

Silent and powerless in King Frost’s embrace lay the great river.  How like beautiful filagree work some of the pine-boughs looked against the snow banks and the pale blue sky!  How lovely seemed the whole world!  Pasmore was thinking about many things, but most he was thinking of some one whom he hoped was now making her way over the snow, and for whose sake he was now here.  No, he did not grudge his life, but it was a strange way to die after all his hopes—­mostly shattered ones; to be led like a brute beast amongst a crowd of jeering half-breeds who, only a few days before, were ready to doff their caps at sight of him; and to be shot dead by them with such short shrift, and because he had only done his duty!...

They were coming to the rise now.  How like a gallows that tall, dead, scraggy pine looked against the pale grey!  How the hound-like mob alongside yelled and jeered!  One of them—­he knew him well—­he of the evil Mongolian-like eyes and snaky locks—­whom he had spoken a timely word to a year ago and saved from prison—­from some little distance took the opportunity of throwing a piece of frozen snow at Pasmore.  It struck the policeman behind the ear, causing him to feel sick and dizzy.  He felt the hot blood trickling down his neck, and he heard one or two of the pack laughing.

“He will be plenty dead soon,” said one.  “What does it matter?”