“Mornin’, Thompson,” he said, peering keenly into the pale, haggard face of the money-lender’s employee.  “What’s up with you?  You look positively ill.  Have you heard how the arrest went off last night?”

There was a blunt directness about the doctor which generally drove straight to the point.  The clerk wearily passed his hand across his forehead.  He seemed half asleep, and, as the doctor had asserted, thoroughly ill.

“Arrest, doctor?  Precious little arrest there’s been.  I’ve been out on the prairie all night.  What, haven’t you heard about the governor?  Good lor’!  I don’t know what’s going to happen to us all.  Do you think we’re safe here?”

“Safe here?  What do you mean, man?” the doctor answered, noting the other’s fearful glances round.  “Why, what ails you?  What about Lablache?”

Others had now appeared upon the market-place and Doctor Abbot saw “Lord” Bill, dressed in a gray tweed suit, and looking as fresh as if he had just emerged from the proverbial bandbox, coming leisurely towards him.

“What about Lablache, eh?” replied Thompson, echoing the doctor’s question ruefully.  “A pretty nice thing Horrocks and his fellows have let themselves, and us, in for.”

Bill had come up now and several others had joined the group.  They stood by and listened while the clerk told his story.  And what a story it was too.  It was vividly sanguinary, and enough to strike terror into the hearts of his audience.

He told with great gusto of how Lablache had been abducted.  How the police horses and the money-lender’s had been stolen from the stables at the store.  He dwelt on the frightful horrors committed up at the Breed camp.  How he had seen the police shot down before his very eyes, and he became expansive on the fact that, with his own hands, Retief had carried off Horrocks, and how he had heard the raider declare his intention of hanging him.  It was a terrible tale of woe, and his audience was thrilled and horrified.  “Lord” Bill alone appeared unmoved.  A close observer even might have noticed the faintest suspicion of a smile at the corners of his mouth.  The smile broadened as the sharp doctor launched a question at the narrator of terrible facts.

“How came you to see all this, and escape?”

Thompson was at no loss.  He told how he had been sent up by “Poker” John to find Horrocks and tell him about Lablache.  How he arrived in time to see the horrors perpetrated, and how he only managed to escape with his own life by flight, under cover of the darkness, and how, pursued by the bloodthirsty Breeds, he had managed to hide on the prairie, where he remained until daylight, and then by a circuitous route got back to the settlement.

“I tell you what it is, doctor,” he finished up consequentially, “the Breeds are in open rebellion, and, headed by that devil, Retief, intend to clear us whites out of the country.  It’s the starting of another Riel rebellion, and if we don’t get help from the Government quickly, it’s all up with us.  That’s my opinion,” and he gazed patronizingly upon the crowd, which by this time had assembled.