“Yes, boy, that’s her brother,” said Macmillan.  “But that is not himself any more than a mad dog.  Jimmy here has been filling him up,” shaking his finger at the culprit, “which he had no right to do, knowing Jack French as he does, by the same token.”

“Oh, come on, Mac,” said Jimmy apologetically.  “You know Jack French, and when he gets a-goin’ could I stop him?  No, nor you.”

Next morning when Kalman came forth from the loft which served Jimmy Green as store room for his marvellously varied merchandise, he found that Macmillan had long since taken the trail and was by this time miles on his journey toward Edmonton.  The boy was lonely and sick at heart.  Macmillan had been a friend to him, and had constituted the last link that held him to the life he had left behind in the city.  It was to Macmillan that the little white-faced lady who was to the boy the symbol of all that was high and holy in character, had entrusted him for safe deliverance to her brother Jack French.  Kalman had spent an unhappy night, his sleep being broken by the recurring vision of the fierce and bloated face of the man who had cursed him and threatened him on the previous evening.  The boy had not yet recovered from the horror and surprise of his discovery that this drunken and brutalized creature was the noble-hearted brother into whose keeping his friend and benefactress had given him.  That a man should drink himself drunk was nothing to his discredit in Kalman’s eyes, but that Mrs. French’s brother, the loved and honoured gentleman whom she had taught him to regard as the ideal of all manly excellence, should turn out to be this bloated and foul-mouthed bully, shocked him inexpressibly.  From these depressing thoughts he was aroused by a cheery voice.

“Hello! my boy, had breakfast?”

He turned quickly and beheld a tall, strongly made and handsome man of middle age, clean shaven, neatly groomed, and with a fine open cheery face.

“No, sir,” he stammered, with unusual politeness in his tone, and staring with all his eyes.

It was Jack French who addressed him, but this handsome, kindly, well groomed man was so different from the man who had reeled over him and poured forth upon him his abusive profanity the night before, that his mind refused to associate the one with the other.

“Well, boy,” said Jack French, “you must be hungry.  Jimmy, anything left for the boy?”

“Lots, Jack,” said Jimmy eagerly, as if relieved to see him clothed again and in his right mind.  “The very best.  Here, boy, set in here.”  He opened a door which led into a side room where the remains of breakfast were disclosed upon the table.  “Bacon and eggs, my boy, eggs! mind you, and Hudson’s Bay biscuit and black strap.  How’s that?”

The boy, still lost in wonder, fell to with a great access of good cheer, and made a hearty meal, while outside he could hear Jack French’s clear, cheery, commanding voice directing the packing of his buckboard.