"We met a fellow named Clarke at the Windsor not long ago. What's he like?"
When Gardner described him, Harding frowned.
"That's the man," he said.
"Then I can't see what he was doing at the Windsor; an opium joint would have been more in his line."
"Does the fellow live at Sweetwater?" Blake asked.
"Has a farm—and runs it well—about three miles back; but he's away pretty often in the North, and at a settlement on the edge of the bush country. Don't know what he does there, and they're a curious crowd—Dubokars, Russians of sorts, I guess."
Blake had seen the Dubokars in other parts of Canada and had found them an industrious people, leading, from religious convictions, a remarkably primitive life. There were, however, fanatics among them, and he understood that these now and then led their followers into outbreaks of emotional extravagance.
"They make good settlers, as a rule," he commented. "But, as they don't speak English, how does the fellow get on with them?"
"Told me he was a philologist, when I asked him; then he allowed two or three of them were mystics, and he was something in that line. He was a doctor once and got fired out of England for something he shouldn't have done. Anyhow, the Dubokars are like the rest of us—good, bad, and pretty mixed—and the crowd back of Sweetwater belong to the last. At first, some of them didn't believe it was right to work horses, and made the women drag the plow; and they had one or two other habits that brought the police down on them. After that they've given no trouble, but they get on a jag of some kind now and then."
Blake nodded. He knew that the fanatic with untrained and unbalanced mind is liable under the influence of excitement to indulge in crude debauchery; but it was strange that a man of culture, such as Clarke appeared to be, should take part in these excesses. He had, however, no interest in the fellow; and he turned the talk on to other matters, until it got cold and they went to sleep.