"It is obvious."
"The Nor'westers—directly?"
"Undoubtedly." The Factor laid down the report upon the council table. Dunvegan resumed his frantic walk, again pausing uncertainly.
"But the means—the means!" he exclaimed petulantly.
Macleod's teeth snapped shut and opened grudgingly for his speech.
"Ha!" he gritted. "God pity the means—if I discover it! We have had spies sneaking about Oxford House. Sometimes I think they must have been inside the stockades, although that is a wild thought. Be this fact as it may, the truth remains that Glyndon was approached directly by an agent of the Nor'westers. Under the powerful combination of the enemy's inducements and the girl's persuasions his desertion must have been a comparatively easy matter."
"Curse his soft eyes!" cried the chief trader. "We might have known better than trust him. Good Lord, and they sent him away from London temptations in order that the Company might give him a certificate of manhood! How, in heaven's name, could a man be made from a bit of slime, a rotten shell, and a colored rag? Betrayal must have been born in him! Did you order no pursuit?"
The Factor shook his shaggy hair as he gathered up the papers.
"They had twenty hours start and good dogs," he explained. "Besides, they fled while it was snowing and left no trail."
"Where's Brochet?" demanded Dunvegan suddenly and irrelevantly.