A low cry broke from Kent’s lips.  It was the great, gray ghost of a man he had seen in the lightning flare that night from the window of his hiding-place in Kedsty’s bungalow.

“My brother,” said McTrigger chokingly.  “I loved him.  For forty years we were comrades.  And Marette belonged to us, half and half.  It was he—­who killed—­John Barkley.”  And then, after a moment in which McTrigger fought to speak steadily, he added, “And it was he—­my brother—­who also killed Inspector Kedsty.”

For a matter of seconds there was a dead silence between them.  McTrigger looked into the fireplace instead of at Kent.  Then he said: 

“He killed those men, but he didn’t murder them, Kent.  It couldn’t be called that.  It was justice, single-man justice, without going to law.  If it wasn’t for Marette, I wouldn’t tell you about it—­ not the horrible part of it.  I don’t like to bring it up in my memory. ...  It happened years ago.  I was not married then, but my brother was ten years older than I and had a wife.  I think that Marette loves you as Marie loved Donald.  And Donald’s love was more than that.  It was worship.  We came into the new mountain country, the three of us, even before the big strikes at Dawson and Bonanza.  It was a wild country, a savage country, and there were few women in it, but Marie came with Donald.  She was beautiful, with hair and eyes like Marette’s.  That was the tragedy of it.

“I won’t tell you the details.  They were terrible.  It happened while Donald and I were out on a hunt.  Three men—­white men—­ remember that, Kent; white men—­came out of the North and stopped at the cabin.  When we returned, what we found there drove us mad.  Marie died in Donald’s arms.  And leaving her there, alone, we set out after the white-skinned brutes who had destroyed her.  Only a blizzard saved them, Kent.  Their trail was fresh when the storm came.  Had it held off another two hours, I, too, would have killed.

“From that day Donald and I became man-hunters.  We traced the back trail of the three fiends and discovered who they were.  Two years later Donald found one of the three on the Yukon, and before he killed him he made him verify the names of the other two.  It was a long search after that, Kent.  It has covered thirty years.  Donald grew old faster than I, and I knew, after a time, that he was strangely mad.  He would be gone for months at a time, always searching for the two men.  Ten years passed, and then, one day, in the deep of Winter, we came on a cabin home that had been stricken with the plague—­the smallpox.  It was the home of Pierre Radisson and his wife Andrea.  Both were dead.  But there was a little child still living, almost a babe in arms.  We took her, Donald and I. The child was—­Marette.”

McTrigger had spoken almost in a monotone.  He had not raised his eyes from the ash of the fireplace.  But now he looked up suddenly at Kent.