“It is Ambrose Doane and Tole Grampierre,” cried Ambrose.

They heard an exclamation of astonishment from the door.

“What do you want?” demanded the voice.

“To help you defend yourselves.”

From the sounds that reached him, Ambrose gathered that the door was open and that Macfarlane stood within the hall.  From farther back Colina’s voice rang out: 

“How dare you!  Do you expect us to believe you?  Go back to your friends!”

“They are not my men,” Ambrose answered doggedly.

“Wait!” cried still another voice.  Ambrose recognized the smooth accents of Gordon Strange.  “We can’t afford to turn away any defenders.  I say let him come in.”

Ambrose was surprised, and none too well pleased to hear his part taken in this quarter.  There was a silence.  He apprehended that they were consulting in the hall.  Finally Macfarlane called curtly: 

“You may come in.”

As he went up the path Ambrose saw that the windows of the lower floor had been roughly boarded up.  The thought struck him oddly:  “How could they have had warning of what was going to happen?”

“There’s barbed wire around the porch,” said Macfarlane, “You’ll have to get over it the best way you can.”

Ambrose and Tole helped each other through the obstruction.  They found Macfarlane sitting on a chair in the doorway, with his rifle across his knees.

“Go into the library,” he said.

The door was on the right hand as one entered the hall.  Within a lamp had just been lighted; even as Ambrose entered Colina was turning up the wick.

Heavy curtains had been bung over the windows to keep any rays of light from escaping, and the door was instantly closed behind Ambrose and Tole.

Inside the little room that he already knew so well Ambrose found all the defenders gathered.  The only one strange to him was little Pringle, the missionary, who sat primly on the sofa.  It had much the look of an ordinary evening party, but the row of guns by the door told a tale.

John Gaviller sat in his swivel chair behind his desk, leaning his head on his hand.  Ambrose was shocked by the change that three months’ illness had worked in him.

The self-assured, the scornfully affable trader had become a mere pantaloon with sunken cheeks and trembling hands.  Ambrose looked with quick compassion toward Colina.

She went to her father and stood by his chair with a hand on his shoulder.  She coldly ignored Ambrose’s glance.

“What have you to say for yourself?” Gaviller demanded in a weak, harsh voice.

“Do you know the reason for this attack?” demanded Ambrose.

Several voices answered “No!”

“All the flour was stored in Michel Trudeau’s shack.  Some wretch set fire to it and destroyed it all.  Naturally they thought it was done by John Gaviller’s orders.  This is their reprisal.”