Mercer, for instance, should have held a petty clerical job of some kind in a city, and here he was acting 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 mouths of guns on a black night.