There was no sound now.  A mental and a vocal paralysis seized upon the inhabitants of Lac Bain.  Never had they seen fighting like this fighting of Reese Beaudin.  Until now had they lived to see the science of the sawdust ring pitted against the brute force of Brobdingnagian, of Antaeus and Goliath.  For Reese Beaudin’s fighting was a fighting without tricks that they could see.  He used his fists, and his fists alone.  He was like a dancing man.  And suddenly, in the midst of the miracle, they saw Jacques Dupont go down.  And the second miracle was that Reese Beaudin did not leap on him when he had fallen.  He stood back a little, balancing himself in that queer fashion on the balls and toes of his feet.  But no sooner was Dupont up than Reese Beaudin was in again, with the swiftness of a cat, and they could hear the blows, like solid shots, and Dupont’s arms waved like tree-tops, and a second time he was off the platform.

He was staggering when he rose.  The blood ran in streams from his mouth and nose.  His beard dripped with it.  His yellow teeth were caved in.

This time he did not leap upon the platform—­he clambered back to it, and the hooded stranger gave him a lift which a few minutes before Dupont would have resented as an insult.

“Ah, it has come,” said the stranger to Delesse.

“He is the best close-in fighter in all—­”

He did not finish.

“I could kill you now—­kill you with a single blow,” said Reese Beaudin in a moment when the giant stood swaying.  “But there is a greater punishment in store for you, and so I shall let you live!”

And now Reese Beaudin was facing that part of the crowd where the woman he loved was standing.  He was breathing deeply.  But he was not winded.  His eyes were black as night, his hair wind-blown.  He looked straight over the heads between him and she whom Dupont had stolen from him.

Reese Beaudin raised his arms, and where there had been a murmur of voices there was now silence.

For the first time the stranger threw back his hood.  He was unbuttoning his heavy coat.

And Joe Delesse, looking up, saw that Reese Beaudin was making a mighty effort to quiet a strange excitement within his breast.  And then there was a rending of cloth and of buttons and of pins as in one swift movement he tore the shirt from his own breast—­exposing to the eyes of Lac Bain blood-red in the glow of the winter sun, the crimson badge of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police!

And above the gasp that swept the multitude, above the strange cry of the woman, his voice rose: 

“I am Reese Beaudin, the Yellow-back.  I am Reese Beaudin, who ran away.  I am Reese Beaudin,—­Sergeant in His Majesty’s Royal Northwest Mounted Police, and in the name of the law I arrest Jacques Dupont for the murder of Francois Bedore, who was killed on his trap-line five years ago!  Fitzgerald—­”

The hooded stranger leaped upon the platform.  His heavy coat fell off.  Tall and grim he stood in the scarlet jacket of the Police.  Steel clinked in his hands.  And Jacques Dupont, terror in his heart, was trying to see as he groped to his knees.  The steel snapped over his wrists.