world of thousands and tens of thousands of the bravest and best-blooded men of England and France, and how these thousands had continued to come, bringing with them the names of kings, of princes, and of great lords, until out of the savagery of the north rose an aristocracy of race built up of the strongest men of the earth.  And these men of later days he had called Lords of the North—­men who had held power of life and death in the hollow of their hands until the great company yielded up its suzerainty to the Government of the Dominion in 1870; men who were kings in their domains, whose word was law, who were more powerful in their wilderness castles than their mistress over the sea, the Queen of Britain.

And Carrigan, after writing of these things, had stuffed his manuscript away in the bottom of his chest at barracks, for he believed that it was not in his power to do justice to the people of this wilderness world that he loved.  The powerful old lords were gone.  Like dethroned monarchs, stripped to the level of other men, they lived in the memories of what had been.  Their might now lay in trade.  No more could they set out to wage war upon their rivals with powder and ball.  Keen wit, swift dogs, and the politics of barter had taken the place of deadlier things.  Le FACTEUR could no longer slay or command that others be slain.  A mightier hand than his now ruled the destinies of the northern people—­the hand of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.

It was this thought, the thought that Law and one of the powerful forces of the wilderness had met in this cabin of the big bateau, that came to Carrigan as he drew himself still higher against his pillow.  A greater thrill possessed him than the thrill of his hunt for Black Roger Audemard.  Black Roger was a murderer, a wholesale murderer and a fiend, a Moloch for whom there could be no pity.  Of all men the Law wanted Black Roger most, and he, David Carrigan, was the chosen one to consummate its desire.  Yet in spite of that he felt upon him the strange unrest of a greater adventure than the quest for Black Roger.  It was like an impending thing that could not be seen, urging him, rousing his faculties from the slough into which they had fallen because of his wound and sickness.  It was, after all, the most vital of all things, a matter of his own life.  Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain had tried to kill him deliberately, with malice and intent.  That she had saved him afterward only added to the necessity of an explanation, and he was determined that he would have that explanation and settle the present matter before he allowed another thought of Black Roger to enter his head.