Near the northern limits of the city the signs of life were more in evidence.  At the Canadian Pacific Railway station an engine, hoary with frozen steam, puffed contentedly as if conscious of sufficient strength for the duty that lay before it, waiting to hook on to Number Two, nine hours late, and whirl it eastward in full contempt of frost and snow bank and blizzard.

Inside the station a railway porter or two drowsed on the benches.  Behind the wicket where the telegraph instruments kept up an incessant clicking, the agent and his assistant sat alert, coming forward now and then to answer, with the unwearying courtesy which is part of their equipment and of their training, the oft repeated question from impatient and sleepy travellers, “How is she now?” “An hour,” “half an hour,” finally “fifteen minutes,” then “any time now.”  At which cheering report the uninitiated brightened up and passed out to listen for the rumble of the approaching train.  The more experienced, however, settled down for another half hour’s sleep.

It was a wearisome business, and to none more wearisome than to Interpreter Elex Murchuk, part of whose duty it is to be in attendance on the arrival of all incoming trains in case that some pilgrim from Central and Southern Europe might be in need of direction.  For Murchuk, a little borderland Russian, boasts the gift of tongues to an extraordinary degree.  Russian, in which he was born, and French, and German, and Italian, of course, he knows, but Polish, Ruthenian, and all varieties of Ukranian speech are alike known to him.

“I spik all European language good, jus’ same Angleesh,” was his testimony in regard to himself.

As the whistle of the approaching train was heard, Sergeant Cameron strolled into the station house, carrying his six feet two and his two hundred pounds of bone and muscle with the light and easy movements of the winner of many a Caledonian Society medal.  Cameron, at one time a full private in the 78th Highlanders, is now Sergeant in the Winnipeg City Police, and not ashamed of his job.  Big, calm, good-tempered, devoted to his duty, keen for the honour of the force as he had been for the honour of his regiment in other days, Sergeant Cameron was known to all good citizens as an officer to be trusted and to all others as a man to be feared.

Just at present he was finishing up his round of inspection.  After the train had pulled in he would go on duty as patrolman, in the place of Officer Donnelly, who was down with pneumonia.  The Winnipeg Police Force was woefully inadequate in point of strength, there being no spare men for emergencies, and hence Sergeant Cameron found it necessary to do double duty that night, and he was prepared to do it without grumbling, too.  Long watches and weary marches were nothing new to him, and furthermore, to-night there was especial reason why he was not unwilling to take a walk through the north end.  Headquarters had been kept fully