While viewing the sights of cosmopolitan Winnipeg with its wide streets and beautiful avenues, their progress was stopped in front of the City Hall by policemen, who held back a curious crowd, while they were unloading several patrol wagons filled with oddly dressed foreigners. Joe pushed himself close to one of the policemen and inquired the reason of their arrest, and the obliging guardian of the peace explained to him that they were "Doukhobors", a religious sect that on account of persecution had left Russia, and although they made first-class settlers, some of them had been arrested on account of queer practices which conflicted with the laws of Canada, and which, despite repeated warnings, they refused to discontinue. By this time the prisoners had been transferred into the city hall, and the officer volunteered to see to it that Joe and his friends would find a good vantage point from where they could watch a Canadian court trial. Joe accepted the officer's kind offer, and the latter opened a path through the densely crowded court room for the McDonalds, who were soon standing at the railing that separated the prisoners from the public. Amongst the more than a score of prisoners were several women, all of whom were old hags with the exception of one, who was really good looking considering that she wore the same homely, gray homespun dress and black shawl that did service for headwear, worn by all the women of her sect. All noise subsided when the judge entered the court room. He was a stern-faced gentleman, and wore a white wig and a black robe, which, although they gave him the appearance of a patriarch, also added greatly to the austerity of his exalted office. It was against the tenets of the Doukhobors to employ legal counsel to defend them, and so the trial was quickly finished. The young woman was the only one amongst them who could understand the English language, and she answered the judge's questions, and when the sentence had been passed, the others in their anxiety to hear from her how long a term they had been condemned to, almost mobbed her, and in the struggle the black shawl covering her head fell to the floor. "Look, Jim, look!" shouted Joe to his brother above the din the Doukhobors made, while at the same time he pointed towards the young woman's head, upon which one braid of white hair stood plainly out against a black braid on each side of it. "She is the first human being I ever saw or heard of that had the birth-mark of the McDonald's." Then a vague suspicion flashed through his mind and he asked the officer to bring the woman over to where he was standing so he could question her concerning her past.