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"Now you're human, Mercer She was pretty, wasn't she?"

"Er--yes--stunningly so, Mr Kent," agreed Mercer, reddening suddenly to the roots of his pasty, blond hair "I don'tthat in this unusual place her appearance was quite upsetting"

"I agree with you, friend Mercer," nodded Kent "She upset est favor he ever asked in his life?"

"I should be most happy, sir, most happy"

"It's this," said Kent "I want to know if that girl actually leaves on the down-river scow tonight If I', will you tell me?"

"I shall doman, Mercer But I want to be humored in it And I'an to know There's an old Indian named Mooie, who lives in a shack just beyond the sawmill Give him ten dollars and tell hih, and reports properly to you, and keeps his mouth shut afterward Here--the money is under my pillow"

Kent pulled out a wallet and put fifty dollars in Mercer's hands

"Buy cigars with the rest of it, old man It's of noto pull off is worth it It's ht say"

"Thank you, sir It is very kind of you"

Mercer belonged to a class of wandering Englishmen typical of the Canadian West, the sort that solorious country like their own should cling to theand obsequiously polite at all ti had splendid training as a servant, yet had this intinant Kent had learned their ways pretty well He had met them in all sorts of places, for one of their inexplicable characteristics was the recklessness and apparent lack of judgment hich they located themselves Mercer, for instance, should have held a petty clerical job of so as nurse in the heart of a wilderness!

After Mercer had gone with the breakfast things and the money, Kent recalled a number of his species And he knew that under their veneer of apparent servility was a thing of courage and daring which needed only the right kind of incentive to rouse it And when roused, it was peculiarly efficient in a secretive, artful-dodger sort of way It would not stand up before a gun But it would creep under the ht And Kent was positive his fifty dollars would bring him results--if he lived