Without thinking of what he did, he dropped the object on the small table, and returned anxiously to the girl’s side, cursing the tardiness of the Indian woman.  But in a moment Wishkobun returned.

“Will she recover?” asked the Factor, distracted at the woman’s deliberate examination.

The latter smiled her indulgent, slow smile.  “But surely,” she assured him in her own tongue, “it is no more than if she cut her finger.  In a few breaths she will recover.  Now I will go to the house of the Cockburn for a morsel of the sweet wood[A] which she must smell.”  She looked her inquiry for permission.

[Footnote A:  Camphor.]

“Sagaamig—­go,” assented Albret.

Relieved in mind, he dropped into a chair.  His eye caught the little silver match-safe.  He picked it up and fell to staring at the rudely carved letters.

He found that he was alone with his daughter—­and the thoughts aroused by the dozen letters of a man’s name.

All his life long he had been a hard man.  His commands had been autocratic; his anger formidable; his punishments severe, and sometimes cruel.  The quality of mercy was with him tenuous and weak.  He knew this, and if he did not exactly glory in it, he was at least indifferent to its effect on his reputation with others.  But always he had been just.  The victims of his displeasure might complain that his retributive measures were harsh, that his forgiveness could not be evoked by even the most extenuating of circumstances, but not that his anger had ever been baseless or the punishment undeserved.  Thus he had held always his own self-respect, and from his self-respect had proceeded his iron and effective rule.

So in the case of the young man with whom now his thoughts were occupied.  Twice he had warned him from the country without the punishment which the third attempt rendered imperative.  The events succeeding his arrival at Conjuror’s House warmed the Factor’s anger to the heat of almost preposterous retribution perhaps—­for after all a man’s life is worth something, even in the wilds—­but it was actually retribution, and not merely a ruthless proof of power.  It might be justice as only the Factor saw it, but it was still essentially justice—­in the broader sense that to each act had followed a definite consequence.  Although another might have condemned his conduct as unnecessarily harsh, Galen Albret’s conscience was satisfied and at rest.

Nor had his resolution been permanently affected by either the girl’s threat to make away with herself or by his momentary softening when she had fainted.  The affair was thereby complicated, but that was all.  In the sincerity of the threat he recognized his own iron nature, and was perhaps a little pleased at its manifestation.  He knew she intended to fulfil her promise not to survive her lover, but at the moment this did not reach his fears; it only aroused further his dogged opposition.