"Rum for Indians, when they come,Rum for the beggars, when they go,That's the trick my grizzled ladsTo catch the cash and snare the foe."
"Rum for Indians, when they come,Rum for the beggars, when they go,That's the trick my grizzled ladsTo catch the cash and snare the foe."
"What's your plan?" I asked with a vague feeling the trader had some shady purpose in mind.
"Squeamish? Eh? You'll get over that, boy. I'll trap your trapper and spy your spy, and Nor'-Wester your H. B. C.! You come down to the sand between the forest and the beach in about an hour and I'll have news for you," and he brushed past me with his arms full of something I could not see in the half-light.
Then, as a trader, began my first compromisewith conscience, and the enmity which I thereby aroused afterwards punished me for that night's work. I knew very well my comrade, with the rough-and-ready methods of traders, had gone out to do what was not right; and I hung back in the tent, balancing the end against the means, our deeds against Louis' perfidy, and Nor'-Westers' interests against those of the Hudson's Bay. It is not pleasant to recall what was done between the cedars and the shore. I do not attempt to justify our conduct. Does the physician justify medical experiments on the criminal, or the sacrificial priest the driving of the scape-goat into the wilderness? Suffice it to say, when I went down to the shore, Louis Laplante was sitting in the midst of empty drinking-flasks, and the wily, old Nor'-Wester was tempting the silly boy to take more by drinking his health with fresh bottles. But while Louis Laplante gulped down his rum, becoming drunker and more communicative, the tempter threw glass after glass over his shoulder and remained sober. The Nor'-Wester motioned me to keep behind the Frenchman and I heard his drunken lips mumbling my own name.
"Rufush—prig—stuck-up prig—serve him tam right! Hamilton's—sh—sh—prig too—sho's his wife. Serve 'em all tam right!"
"Ask him where she is," I whispered over his head.
"Where's the gal?" demanded the trader, shoving more liquor over to Louis.
"Shioux squaw—Devil's wife—how you say itin English? Lah Grawnd Deeahble," and he mouthed over our mispronunciation of his own tongue "Joke, isn't it?" he went on. "That wax-face prig—slave to Shioux Squaw. Rufush—a fool. Stuffed him to hish—neck. Made him believe shmall-pox was Hamilton's wife. I mean, Hamilton's wife was shmall-pox. Calf bellowed with fright—ran home—came back—'tamme,' I say, 'there he come again' 'shmall-pox in that grave,' say I. Joke—ain't it?" and he stopped to drain off another pint of rum.
"Biggest joke out of jail," said the Nor'-Wester dryly, with meaning which Louis did not grasp.
"Ask him where she is," I whispered, "quick! He's going to sleep." For Louis wiped his beard on his sleeve and lay back hopelessly drunk.
"Here you, waken up," commanded the Nor'-Wester, kicking him and shaking him roughly. "Where's the gal?"
"Shioux—Pays d'En Haut," drawled the youth. "Take off your boots! Don't wear boots.Pays d'En Haut—moccasins—softer," and he rolled over in a sodden sleep, which defied all our efforts to shake him into consciousness.
"Is that true?" asked the Nor'-Wester, standing above the drunk man and speaking across to me. "Is that true about the Indian kidnapping a woman?"
"True—too terribly true," I whispered back.
"I'd like to boot him into the next world," said the trader, looking down at Louis in a manner that might have alarmed that youth for his safety."I've bagged H. B. dispatches anyway," he added with satisfaction.
"What'll we do with him?" I asked aimlessly. "If he had anything to do with the stealing of Hamilton's wife——"
"He hadn't," interrupted the trader. "'Twas Diable did that, so Laplante says."
"Then what shall we do with him?"
"Do—with—him," slowly repeated the Nor'-Wester in a low, vibrating voice. "Do—with—him?" and again I felt a vague shudder of apprehension at this silent, uncompromising man's purpose.
The camp fires were dead. Not a sound came from the men in the woods and there was a gray light on the water with a vague stirring of birds through the foliage overhead. Now I would not have any man judge us by the canons of civilization. Under the ancient rule of the fur companies over the wilds of the north, 'twas bullets and blades put the fear of the Lord in evil hearts. As we stooped to gather up the tell-tale flasks, the drunken knave, who had lightly allowed an innocent white woman to go into Indian captivity, lay with bared chest not a hand's length from a knife he had thrown down. Did the Nor'-Wester and I hesitate, and look from the man to the dagger, and from the dagger to the man; or is this an evil dream from a black past? Miriam, the guiltless, was suffering at his hands; should not he, the guilty, suffer at ours? Surely Sisera was not more unmistakably delivered into the powerof his enemies by the Lord than this man; and Sisera was discomfited by Barak and Jael. Heber's wife—says the Book—drove a tent nail—through the temples—of the sleeping man—and slew him! Day was when I thought the Old Volume recorded too many deeds of bloodshed in the wilderness for the instruction of our refined generation; but I, too, have since lived in the wilderness and learned that soft speech is not the weapon of strong men overmastering savagery.
I know the trader and I were thinking the same thoughts and reading each other's thoughts; for we stood silent above the drunk man, neither moving, neither uttering a word.
"Well?" I finally questioned in a whisper.
"Well," said he, and he knelt down and picked up the knife. "'Twould serve him right." He was speaking in the low, gentle, purring voice he had used in the tent. "'Twould serve him jolly right," and he knelt over Louis hesitating.
My eyes followed his slow, deliberate motions with horror. Terror seemed to rob me of the power of speech. I felt my blood freeze with the fear of some impending crime. There was the faintest perceptible fluttering of leaves; and we both started up as if we had been assassins, glancing fearfully into the gloom of the forest. All the woods seemed alive with horrified eyes and whisperings.
"Stop!" I gasped, "This is madness, the madness of the murderer. What would you do?" And I was trying to knock the knife out of hishand, when among the shadowy green of the foliage, an open space suddenly resolved itself into a human face and there looked out upon us gleaming eyes like those of a crouching panther.
"Squeamish fool!" muttered the Nor'-Wester, raising his arm.
"Stop!" I implored. "We are watched. See!" and I pointed to the face, that as suddenly vanished into blackness.
We both leaped into the thicket, pistol in hand, to wreak punishment on the interloper. There was only an indistinct sound as of something receding into the darkness.
"Don't fire," said I, "'twill alarm the camp."
At imminent risk to our own lives, we poked sticks through the thicket and felt for our unseen enemy, but found nothing.
"Let's go back and peg him out on the sand, where the Hudson's Bay will see him when they come this way," suggested the Nor'-Wester, referring to Laplante.
"Yes, or hand-cuff him and take him along prisoner," I added, thinking Louis might have more information.
But when we stepped back to the beach, there was no Louis Laplante.
"He was too drunk to go himself," said I, aghast at the certainty, which now came home to me, that we had been watched.
"I wash my hands of the whole affair," declared the trader, in a state of high indignation, and he strode off to his tent, I, following, withuncomfortable reflections trooping into my mind. Compunctions rankled in self-respect. How near we had been to a brutal murder, to crime which makes men shun the perpetrators. Civilization's veneer was rubbing off at an alarming rate. This thought stuck, but for obvious reasons was not pursued. Also I had learned that the worst and best of outlaws easily justify their acts at the time they commit them; but afterwards—afterwards is a different matter, for the thing is past undoing.
I heard the trader snorting out inarticulate disgust as he tumbled into his tent; but I stood above the embers of the camp fire thinking. Again I felt with a creepiness, that set all my flesh quaking, felt, rather than saw, those maddening, tiger eyes of the dark foliage watching me. Looking up, I found my morose canoeman on the other side of the fire, leaning so close to a tree, he was barely visible in the shadows. Thinking himself unseen by me, he wore such an insolent, amused, malicious expression, I knew in an instant, who the interloper had been, and who had carried Louis off. Before I realized that such an act entails life-long enmity with an Indian, I had bounded over the fire and struck him with all my strength full in the face. At that, instead of knifing me as an Indian ordinarily would, he broke into hyena shrieks of laughter. He, who has heard that sound, need hear it only once to have the echo ring forever in his ears; and I have heard it oft and know it well.
"Spy! Sneak!" I muttered, rushing upon him. But he sprang back into the forest and vanished. In dodging me, he let fall his fowling-piece, which went off with a bang into the fire.
"Hulloo! What's wrong out there?" bawled the trader's voice from the tent.
"Nothing—false alarm!" I called reassuringly. Then there caught my eyes what startled me out of all presence of mind. There, reflecting the glare of the firelight was the Indian's fowling-piece, richly mounted in burnished silver and chased in the rare design of Eric Hamilton's family crest. The morose canoeman was Le Grand Diable.
A few hours later, I was in the thick of a confused re-embarking. Le Grand Diable took a place in another boat; and a fresh hand was assigned to my canoe. Of that I was glad; I could sleep sounder and he, safer. TheBourgeoiscomplained that too much rum had been given out.
"Keep a stiffer hand on your men, boy, or they'll ride over your head," one of the chief traders remarked to me.
To unravel a ball of yarn, with which kittens have been making cobwebs, has always seemed to me a much easier task than to unknot the tangled skein of confused influences, that trip up our feet at every step in life's path. Here was I, who but a month ago had a supreme contempt for guile and a lofty confidence in uprightness and downrightness, transformed into a crafty trader with all the villainous tricks of the bargain-maker at my finger-tips. We had befooled Louis into a betrayal of his associates but how much reliance could be placed on that betrayal? Had he incriminated Diable to save himself? Then, why had Diable rescued his betrayer? Where was Louis in hiding? Was the Sioux wife with her white slave really in the north country, or was she near, and did that explain my morose Iroquois' all-night vigils? We had cheated Laplante; but had he in turn cheated us? Would I be justified in taking Diable prisoner, and would my company consent to the demoralization of their crews by such a step? Ah, if life were only made up of simple right and simple wrong, instead of half rights and half wrongs indistinguishably mingled,we could all be righteous! If the path to the goal of our chosen desire were only as straight as it is narrow, instead of being dark, mysterious and tortuous, how easily could we attain high ends! I was launched on the life for which I had longed, but strange, shadowy forms like the storm-fiends of sailors' lore, drunkenness, deceit and crime—on whose presence I had not counted—flitted about my ship's masthead. And there was not one guiding star, not one redeeming influence, except the utter freedom to be a man. I was learning, what I suppose everyone learns, that there are things which sap success of its sweets.
Such were my thoughts, as our canoes sped across the northern end of Lake Huron, heading for the Sault. The Nor'-Westers had a wonderful way of arousing enthusiastic loyalty among their men. Danger fanned this fealty to white-heat. In the face of powerful opposition, the great company frequently accomplished the impossible. With half as large a staff in the service as its rivals boasted, it invaded the hunting-ground of the Hudson's Bay Company, and outrunning all competition, extended fur posts from the heart of the continent to the foot-hills to the Rockies, and from the international boundary to the Arctic Circle. I had thought no crews could make quicker progress than ours from Lachine toPoint à la Croix; but the short delay during the storm occasioned faster work. Morevoyageurswere engaged from the Nipissangue tribes. As soon as one lot fagged fresh shifts came to the relief.Paddles shot out at the rate of modern piston rods, and the waters whirled back like wave-wash in the wake of a clipper. Except for briefest stoppages, speed was not relaxed across the whole northern end of those inland seas called the Great Lakes. With ample space on the lakes, the brigades could spread out and the canoes separated, not halting long enough to come together again till we reached the Sault. Here, orders were issued for the maintenance of rigid discipline. We camped at a distance from the lodges of local tribes. No grog was given out. Camp-fire conviviality was forbidden, and each man kept with his own crew. We remained in camp but one night; and though I searched every tent, I could not find Le Grand Diable. This worried and puzzled me. All night, I lay awake, stretching conscience with doubtful plans to entrap the knave.
Rising with first dawn-streak, I was surprised to find Little Fellow and La Robe Noire, two of my canoemen, setting off for the woods. They had laid a snare—so they explained—and were going to examine it. Of late I had grown distrustful of all natives. I suspected these two might be planning desertion; so I went with them. The way led through a dense thicket of ferns half the height of a man. Only dim light penetrated the maze of foliage; and I might easily have lost myself, or been decoyed—though these possibilities did not occur to me till we were at least a mile from the beach. Little Fellow wastrotting ahead, La Robe Noire jogging behind, and both glided through the brake without disturbing a fern branch, while I—after the manner of my race—crunched flags underfoot and stamped down stalks enough to be tracked by keen-eyed Indians for a week afterwards. Twice I saw Little Fellow pull up abruptly and look warily through the cedars on one side. Once he stooped down and peered among the fern stems. Then he silently signaled back to La Robe Noire, pointed through the undergrowth and ran ahead again without explanation. At first I could see nothing, and regretted being led so far into the woods. I was about to order both Indians back to the tent, when Little Fellow, with face pricked forward and foot raised, as if he feared to set it down—for the fourth time came to a dead stand. Now, I, too, heard a rustle, and saw a vague sinuous movement distinctly running abreast of us among the ferns. For a moment, when we stopped, it ceased, then wiggled forward like beast, or serpent in the underbrush. Little Fellow placed his forefinger on his lips, and we stood noiseless till by the ripple of the green it seemed to scurry away.
"What is it, Little Fellow, a cat?" I asked; but the Indian shook his head dubiously and turned to the open where the trap had been set.
Bending over the snare he uttered an Indian word, that I did not understand, but have since heard traders use, so conclude it was one of those exclamations, alien races learn quickest from oneanother, but which, nevertheless, are not found in dictionaries. The trap had been rifled of game and completely smashed.
"Wolverine!" muttered the Indian, making a sweep of his dagger blade at an imaginary foe. "No wolverine! Bad Indians!"
Scarcely had he spoken when La Robe Noire leaped into the air like a wounded rabbit. An arrow whizzed past my face and glanced within a hair's-breadth of the Indian's head. Both men were dumb with amazement. Such treachery would have been surprising among the barbarous tribes of the Athabasca. The Sault was the dividing line between Canada and the Wilderness, between the east and the west, and there were no hostiles within a thousand miles of us. Little Fellow would have dragged me pell-mell back to the beach, but I needed no persuasion. La Robe Noire tore ahead with the springs of a hunted lynx. Little Fellow loyally kept between me and a possible pursuer, and we set off at a hard run. That creature, I fancied, was again coursing along beneath the undergrowth; for the foliage bent and rose as we ran. Whether it were man or beast, we were three against one, and could drive it out of hiding.
"See here, Little Fellow!" I cried, "Let's hunt that thing out!" and I wheeled about so sharply the chunky little man crashed forward, knocking me off my feet and sending me a man's length farther on.
That fall saved my life. A flat spear pointhissed through the air above my head and stuck fast in the bark of an elm tree. Scrambling up, I promptly let go two or three shots into the fern brake. We scrutinized the underbrush, but there was no sign of human being, except the fern stems broken by my shots. I wrenched the stone spear-head from the tree. It was curiously ornamented with such a multitude of intricate carvings I could not decipher any design. Then I discovered that the medley of colors was produced by inlaying the flint with small bits of a bright stone; and the bright stones had been carved into a rude likeness of some birds.
"What are these birds, Little Fellow?" I asked.
He fingered them closely, and with bulging eyes muttered back, "L'Aigle! L'Aigle!"
"Eagles, are they?" I returned, stupidly missing the possible meaning of his suppressed excitement. "And the stone?"
"Agate,Monsieur."
Agate! Agate! What picture did agate call back to my mind? A big squaw, with malicious eyes and gaping upper lip and girdle of agates, watching Louis Laplante and myself at the encampment in the gorge.
"Little Fellow!" I shouted, not suppressing my excitement. "Who is Le Grand Diable's wife?"
And the Indian answered in a low voice, with a face that showed me he had already penetrated my discovery, "The daughter of L'Aigle, chief of the Sioux."
Then I knew for whom those missiles had been intended and from whom they had come. It was a clever piece of rascality. Had the assassin succeeded, punishment would have fallen on my Indians.
Beyond the Sault, the fascinations of the west beckoned like a siren. Vast waterways, where a dozen European kingdoms could be dropped into one lake without raising a sand-bar, seemed to sweep on forever and call with the voice of enchantress to the very ends of the earth. With the purple recesses of the shore on one side and the ocean-expanse of Lake Superior on the other, all the charms of clean, fresh freedom were unveiling themselves to me and my blood began to quicken with that fevered delight, which old lands are pleased to call western enthusiasm. Lake Huron, with its greenish-blue, shallow, placid waters and calm, sloping shores, seemed typical of the even, easy life I had left in the east. How those choppy, blustering, little waves resembled the jealousies and bickerings and bargainings of the east; but when one came to Lake Superior, with its great ocean billows and slumbering, giant rocks and cold, dark, fathomless depths, there was a new life in a hard, rugged, roomy, new world. We hugged close to the north coast; and the numerous rocky islands to our left stood guard like a wall of adamant betweenus and the heavy surf that flung against the barrier. We were rapidly approaching the headquarters of our company. When south-bound brigades, with prisoners in hand-cuffs, began to meet us, I judged we were near the habitation of man.
"Bad men?" I asked Little Fellow, pointing to the prisoners, as our crews exchanged rousing cheers with the Nor'-Westers now bound for Montreal.
"Non, Monsieur!Not all bad men," and the Indian gave his shoulders an expressive shrug, "Les traitres anglais."
To the Frenchvoyageur, English meant the Hudson's Bay people. The answer set me wondering to what pass things had come between the two great companies that they were shipping each other's traders gratuitously out of the country. I recalled the talk at the Quebec Club about Governor McDonell of the Hudson's Bay trying to expel Nor'-Westers and concluded our people could play their own game against the commander of Red River.
We arrived in Fort William at sundown, and a flag was flying above the courtyard.
"Is that in our honor?" I asked a clerk of the party.
"Not much it is," he laughed. "We under-strappers aren't oppressed with honors! It warns the Indians there's no trade one day out of seven."
"Is this Sunday?"
I suddenly recollected as far as we were concerned the past month had been entirely composed of week-days.
"Out of your reckoning already?" asked the clerk with surprise. "Wonder how you'll feel when you've had ten years of it."
Situated on the river bank, near the site of an old French post, Fort William was a typical traders' stronghold. Wooden palisades twenty feet high ran round the whole fort and the inner court enclosed at least two hundred square yards. Heavily built block-houses with guns poking through window slits gave a military air to the trading post. The block-houses were apparently to repel attack from the rear and the face of the fort commanded the river. Stores, halls, warehouses and living apartments for an army of clerks, were banked against the walls, and the main building with its spacious assembly-room stood conspicuous in the centre of the enclosure. As we entered the courtyard, one of the chief traders was perched on a mortar in the gate. The little magnate condescended never a smile of welcome till theBourgeoiscame up. Then he fawned loudly over the chiefs and conducted them with noisy ostentation to the main hall. Indians and half-breedvoyageursquickly dispersed among the wigwams outside the pickets, while clerks and traders hurried to the broad-raftered dining-hall. Fatigued from the trip, I took little notice of the vociferous interchange of news in passage-way and over door-steps. I remember, after supper I was strollingabout the courtyard, surveying the buildings, when at the door of a sort of barracks where residents of the fort lived, I caught sight of the most grateful object my eye had lighted upon since leaving Quebec. It was a tin basin with a large bar of soap—actual soap. There must still have been some vestige of civilization in my nature, for after a delightful half-hour's intimate acquaintance with that soap, I came round to the groups of men rehabilitated in self-respect.
"Athabasca, Rocky Mountain and Saskatchewan brigades here to-morrow," remarked a boyish looking Nor'-Wester, with a mannish beard on his face. Involuntarily I put my hand to my chin and found a bristling growth there. That was a land where young men could become suddenly very old; and many a trader has discovered other signs of age than a beard on his face when he first looked at a mirror after life in thePays d'En Haut.
"I say," blurted out another young clerk. "There's a man here from Red River, one of the Selkirk settlers. He's come with word if we'll supply the boats, lots of the colonists are ready to dig out. General Assembly's going to consider that to-morrow."
"Oh! Hang the old Assembly if it ships that man out! He's got a pretty daughter, perfect beauty, and she's here with him!" exclaimed the lad with the mannish beard.
"Go to, thou light-head!" declared the other youth, with the air of an elder in Israel. "Goto! You paraded beneath her window for an hour to-day and she never once laid eyes on you."
All the men laughed.
"Hang it!" said the first speaker. "We don't display our little amours——"
"No," broke in the other, "we just display our little contours and get snubbed, eh?"
The bearded youth flushed at the sally of laughter.
"Hang it!" he answered, pulling fiercely at his moustache. "She is a bit of statuary, so she is, as cold as marble. But there is no law against looking at a pretty bit of statuary, when it frames itself in a window in this wilderness."
To which, every man of the crowd said a hearty amen; and I walked off to stretch myself full length on a bench, resolving to have out a mirror from my packing case and get rid of those bristles that offended my chin. The men began to disperse to their quarters. The tardy twilight of the long summer evenings, peculiar to the far north, was gathering in the courtyard. As the night-wind sighed past, I felt the velvet caress of warm June air on my face and memory reverted to the innocent boyhood days of Laval. How far away those days seemed! Yet it was not so long ago. Surely it is knowledge, not time, that ages one, knowledge, that takes away the trusting innocence resulting from ignorance and gives in its place the distrustful innocence resulting from wisdom. I thought of the temptations that had come to me in the few short weeks I had beenadrift, and how feebly I had resisted them. I asked myself if there were not in the moral compass of men, who wander by land, some guiding star, as there is for those who wander over sea. I gazed high above the sloping roofs for some sign of moon, or star. The sky was darkling and overcast; but in lowering my eyes from heaven to earth, I saw what I had missed before—a fair, white face framed in a window above the stoop directly opposite my bench. The face seemed to have a background of gold; for a wonderful mass of wavy hair clustered down from the blue-veined brow to the bit of white throat visible, where a gauzy piece of neck wear had been loosened. Evidently, this was the statuary described by the whiskered youth. But the statuary breathed. A bloom of living apple-blossoms was on the cheeks. The brows were black and arched. The very pose of the head was arch, and in the lips was a suggestion of archery, too,—Cupid's archery, though the upper lip was drawn almost too tight for the bow beneath to discharge the little god's shaft. Why did I do it? I do not know. Ask the young Nor'-Wester, who had worn a path beneath the selfsame window that very day, or the hosts of young men, who are still wearing paths beneath windows to this very day. I coughed and sat bolt upright on the bench with unnecessarily loud intimations of my presence. The fringe of black lashes did not even lift. I rose and with great show of indifference paraded solemnly five times past that window; but, inspite of my pompous indifference, by a sort of side-signalling, I learned that the owner of the heavy lashes was unaware of my existence. Thereupon, I sat down again. Itwasa bit of statuary and a very pretty bit of statuary. As the youth said, there was no law against looking at a bit of statuary in this wilderness, and as the statuary did not know I was looking at it, I sat back to take my fill of that vision framed in the open window. The statuary, unknown to itself, had full meed of revenge; for it presently brought such a flood of longing to my heart, longings, not for this face, but for what this face represented—the innocence and love and purity of home, that I bowed dejectedly forward with moist eyes gazing at the ground.
"Hullo!" whispered a deep voice in my ear. "Are you mooning after the Little Statue already?"
When I looked up, the man had passed, but the head in the window was leaning out and a pair of swimming, lustrous, gray eyes were gazing forward in a way that made me dizzy. "Ah," they said in a language that needed no speaking, "there are two of us, very, very home-sick."
"The guiding star for my moral compass," said I, under my breath.
Then the statue in a live fashion suddenly drew back into the dark room. The window-shutter flung to, with a bang, and my vision was gone. I left the bench, made a shake-down on one of the store counters, and knew nothing more till thenoise of brigades from the far north aroused the fort at an early hour Monday morning. The arrival of the Athabasca traders was the signal for tremendous activity. An army returning from victory could not have been received with greater acclaim.Bourgeoisand clerks tumbled promiscuously from every nook in the fort and rushing half-dressed towards the gates shouted welcome to the men, who had come from the outposts of the known world. They were a shaggy, ragged-looking rabble, those traders from mountain fastnesses and the Arctic circle. With long white hair, hatless some of them, with beards like oriental patriarchs, and dressed entirely in skins of the chase, from fringed coats to gorgeous moccasins, the unkempt monarchs of northern realms had the imperious bearing of princes.
"Is it you, really you, looking as old as your great grandfather? By Gad! So it is," came from one quondam friend.
"Powers above!" ejaculated another onlooker, "See that old Father Abraham! It's Tait! As you live, it's Tait! And he only went to the Athabasca ten years ago. He was thirty then, and now he's a hundred!"
"That's Wilson," says another. "Looks thin, doesn't he? Slim fare! He's the only man from Great Slave Lake that escaped being a meal for the Crees,—year of the famine; and they hadn't time to pick his bones!"
A running fire of such comments went along the spectators lining each side of the path. Therewas a sad side to the clamorous welcomes and handshakes and surprised recognitions. Had not these men gone north young and full of hope, as I was going? Now, news of the feud with the Hudson's Bay brought them out old before their time and more like the natives with whom they had traded than the white race they had left. Here and there, strong men would fall in each other's arms and embrace like school-girls, covering their emotion with rounded oaths instead of terms of endearment.
All day the confusion of unloading boats continued. The dull tread of moccasined feet as Indians carried pack after pack from river bank to the fort, was ceaseless. Faster than the clerks could sort the furs great bundles were heaped on the floor. By noon, warehouses were crammed from basement to attic. Ermine taken in mid-winter, when the fur was spotlessly white, but for the jet tail-tip, otter cut so deftly scarcely a tuft of fur had been wasted along the opened seam, silver fox, which had made the fortune of some lucky hunter—these and other rare furs, that were to minister to the luxury of kings, passed from tawny carriers to sorters. Elsewhere, coarse furs, obtained at greater risk, but owing to the abundance of big game, less valuable for the hunter, were sorted and valued. With a reckless underestimate of the beaver-skin, their unit of currency, Indians hung over counters bartering away the season's hunt. I frankly acknowledge the Company's clerks on such occasions could do a rushingbusiness selling tawdry stuff at fabulous prices.
Meanwhile, in the main hall, theBourgeois, or partners, of the great North-West Company were holding their annual General Assembly behind closed doors. Clerks lowered their voices when they passed that room, and well they might; for the rulers inside held despotic sway over a domain as large as Europe. And what were they decreeing? Who can tell? The archives of the great fur companies are as jealously guarded as diplomatic documents, and more remarkable for what they omit than what they state. Was the policy, that ended so tragically a year afterwards, adopted at this meeting? Great corporations have a fashion of keeping their mouths and their council doors tight shut and of leaving the public to infer that catastrophes come causeless. However that may be, I know that Duncan Cameron, a fiery Highlander and one of the keenest men in the North-West service, suddenly flung out of the Assembly room with a pleased, determined look on his ruddy face.
"Are ye Rufus Gillespie?" he asked.
"That's my name, Sir."
"Then buckle on y'r armor, lad; for ye'll see the thick of the fight. You're appointed to my department at Red River." And he left us.
"Lucky dog! I envy you! There'll be rare sport between Cameron and McDonell, when the two forts up in Red River begin to talk back to each other," exclaimed a Fort William man to me.
"Are you Gillespie?" asked a low, mellow, musical voice by my side. I turned to face a tall, dark, wiry man, with the swarthy complexion and intensely black eyes of one having strains of native blood. Among thevoyageurs, I had become accustomed to the soft-spoken, melodious speech that betrays Indian parentage; and I believe if I were to encounter a descendant of the red race in China, or among the Latin peoples of Southern Europe, I could recognize Indian blood by that rhythmic trick of the native tongue.
"I'm Gillespie," I answered my keen-eyed questioner. "Who are you?"
"Cuthbert Grant, warden of the plains and leader of theBois-Brulés," was his terse response. "You're coming to our department at Fort Gibraltar, and I want you to give Father Holland a place in your canoes to come north with us. He's on his way to the Missouri."
At that instant Duncan Cameron came up to Grant and muttered something. Both men at once went back to the council hall of the General Assembly. I heard the courtyard gossips vowing that the Hudson's Bay would cease its aggressions, now that Cameron and Cuthbert Grant were to lead the Nor'-Westers; but I made no inquiry. Next to keeping his own counsel and giving credence to no man, the fur trader learns to gain information only with ears and eyes, and to ask no questions. The scurrying turmoil in the fort lasted all day. At dusk, natives were expelled from the stockades and work stopped.
Grand was the foregathering around the supper table of the great dining hall that night.Bourgeois, clerks and traders from afar, explorers, from the four corners of the earth—assembled four hundred strong, buoyant and unrestrained, enthusiastically loyal to the company, and tingling with hilarious fellowship over this, the first reunion for twenty years. Though their manner and clothing be uncouth, men who have passed a lifetime exploring northern wilds have that to say, which is worth hearing. So the feast was prolonged till candles sputtered low and pitch-pine fagots flared out. Indeed, before the gathering broke up, flagons as well as candles had to be renewed. Lanterns swung from the black rafters of the ceiling. Tallow candles stood in solemn rows down the centre of each table, showing that men, not women, had prepared the banquet. Stuck in iron brackets against the walls were pine torches, that had been dipped in some resinous mixture and now flamed brightly with a smell not unlike incense. Tables lined the four walls of the hall and ran in the form of a cross athwart the middle of the room. Backless benches were on both sides of every table. At the end, chairs were placed, the seats of honor for famousBourgeois. British flags had been draped across windows and colored bunting hung from rafter to rafter.
"Ah, mon! Is no this fine? This is worth living for! This is the company to serve!" Duncan Cameron exclaimed as he sank into one of the chairs at the head of the centre table. TheScotchman's heart softened before those platters of venison and wild fowl, and he almost broke into geniality. "Here, Gillespie, to my right," he called, motioning me to the edge of the bench at his elbow. "Here, Grant, opposite Gillespie! Aye! an' is that you, Father Holland?" he cried to the stout, jovial priest, with shining brow and cheeks wrinkling in laughter, who followed Grant. "There's a place o' honor for men like you, Sir. Here!" and he gave the priest a chair beside himself.
TheBourgeoisseated, there was a scramble for the benches. Then the whole company with great zest and much noisy talk fell upon the viands with a will.
"Why, Cameron," began a northern winterer a few places below me, "it's taken me three months fast travelling to come from McKenzie River to Fort William. By Jove! Sir, 'twas cold enough to freeze your words solid as you spoke them, when we left Great Slave Lake. I'll bet if you men were up there now, you'd hear my voice thawing out and yelling get-epp to my huskies, and my huskies yelping back! Used a dog train, whole of March. Tied myself up in bag of buffalo robes at night and made the huskies lie across it to keep me from freezing. Got so hot, every pore in my body was a spouting fountain, and in the morning that moisture would freeze my buckskin stiff. Couldn't stand that; so I tried sleeping with my head out of the bag and froze my nose six nights out of seven."
The unfortunate nose corroborated his evidence.
"Ice was sloppy on the Saskatchewan, and I had to use pack-horses and take the trail. I was trusting to get provisions at Souris. You can imagine, then, how we felt towards the Hudson's Bays when we found they'd plundered our fort. We were without a bite for two days. Why, we took half a dozen Hudson's Bays in our quarters up north last winter, and saved them from starvation; and here we were, starving, that they might plunder and rob. I'm with you, Sir! I'm with you to the hilt against the thieves! There's a time for peace and there's a time for war, and I say this is a very good time for war!"
"Here's confusion to the old H. B. C's! Confusion, short life, no prosperity, and death to the Hudson's Bay!" yelled the young whiskered Nor'-Wester, springing to his feet on the bench and waving a drinking-cup round his head. Some of the youthful clerks were disposed to take their cue from this fire-eater and began strumming the table and applauding; but theBourgeoisfrowned on forward conduct.
"Check him, Grant!" growled Cameron in disapproval.
"Sit down, bumptious babe!" said the priest, tugging the lad's coat.
"Here, you young show-off," whispered Grant, leaning across the priest, and he knocked the boy's feet from under him bringing him down to the bench with a thud.
"He needs more outdoor life, that young one! It goes to his head mighty fast," remarked Cameron. "What were you saying about your hard luck?" and he turned to the northern winterer again.
"Call that hard luck?" broke in a mountaineer, laughing as if he considered hardships a joke. "We lived a month last winter on two meals a day; soup, out of snow-shoe thongs, first course; fried skins, second go; teaspoonful shredded fish, by way of an entrée!"
The man wore a beaded buckskin suit, and his mellow intonation of words in the manner of the Indian tongue showed that he had almost lost English speech along with English customs. His recital caused no surprise.
"Been on short, rations myself," returned the northerner. "Don't like it! Isn't safe! Rips a man's nerves to the raw when Indians glare at him with hungry eyes eighteen hours out of the twenty-four."
"What was the matter?" drawled the mountaineer. "Hudson's Bay been tampering with your Indians? Now if you had a good Indian wife as I have, you could defy the beggars to turn trade away——"
"Aye, that's so," agreed the winterer, "I heard of a fellow on the Athabasca who had to marry a squaw before he could get a pair of racquets made; but that wasn't my trouble. Game was scarce."
"Game scarce on MacKenzie River?" A chorusof voices vented their surprise. To the outside world game is always scarce, reported scarce on MacKenzie River and everywhere else by the jealous fur traders; but these deceptions are not kept up among hunters fraternizing at the same banquet board.
"Mighty scarce. Some of the tribe died out from starvation. The Hudson's Bay in our district were in bad plight. We took six of them in—Hadn't heard of the Souris plunder, you may be sure."
"More fools they to go into the Athabasca," declared the mountaineer.
"Bigger fools to send another brigade there this year when they needn't expect help from us," interjected a third trader.
"You don't say they're sending another lot of men to the Athabasca!" exclaimed the winterer.
"Yes I do—under Colin Robertson," affirmed the third man.
"Colin Robertson—the Nor'-Wester?"
"Robertson who used to be a Nor'-Wester! It's Selkirk's work since he got control of the H. B."
"Robertson should know better," said the northerner. "He had experience with us before he resigned. I'll wager he doesn't undertake that sort of venture! Surely it's a yarn!"
"You lose your bet," cried the irrepressible Fort William lad. "A runner came in at six o'clock and reported that the Hudson's Baybrigade from Lachine would pass here before midnight. They're sooners, they are, are the H. B. C's.," and the clerk enjoyed the sensation of rolling a big oath from his boyish lips.
"Eric Hamilton passing within a stone's throw of the fort!" In astonishment I leaned forward to catch every word the Fort William lad might say.
"To Athabasca by our route—past this fort!" Such temerity amazed the winterer beyond coherent expression.
"Good thing for them they're passing in the night," continued the clerk. "The half-breeds are hot about that Souris affair. There'll be a collision yet!" The young fellow's importance increased in proportion to the surprise of the elder men.
"There'll be a collision anyway when Cameron and Grant reach Red River—eh, Cuthbert?" and the mountaineer turned to the dark, sharp-featured warden of the plains. Cuthbert Grant laughed pleasantly.
"Oh, I hope not—for their sakes!" he said, and went on with the story of a buffalo hunt.
The story I missed, for I was deep in my own thoughts. I must see Eric and let him know what I had learned; but how communicate with the Hudson's Bay brigade without bringing suspicion of double dealing on myself? I was turning things over in my mind in a stupid sort of way like one new at intrigue, when I heard a talker, vowing by all that was holy that he had seen therarest of hunter's rarities—a pure white buffalo. The wonder had appeared in Qu'Appelle Valley.
"I can cap that story, man," cried the portly Irish priest who was to go north in my boat. "I saw a white squaw less than two weeks ago!" He paused for his words to take effect, and I started from my chair as if I had been struck.
"What's wrong, young man?" asked the winterer. "We lonely fellows up north see visions. We leap out of our moccasins at the sound of our own voices; but you young chaps, with all the world around you"—he waved towards the crowded hall as though it were the metropolis of the universe—"shouldn't see ghosts and go jumping mad."
I sat down abashed.
"Yes, a white squaw," repeated the jovial priest. "Sure now, white ladies aren't so many in these regions that I'd be likely to make a mistake."
"There's a difference between squaws and white ladies," persisted the jolly father, all unconscious that he was emphasizing a difference which many of the traders were spelling out in hard years of experience.
"I've seen papooses that were white for a day or two after they were born——"
"Effect of the christening," interrupted the youth, whose head, between flattered vanity and the emptied contents of his drinking cup, was very light indeed.
"Take that idiot out and put him to bed, somebody," commanded Cameron.
"For a day or two after they were born," reiterated the priest; "but I never saw such a white-skinned squaw!"
"Where did you see her?" I inquired in a voice which was not my own.
"On Lake Winnipeg. Coming down two weeks ago we camped near a band of Sioux, and I declare, as I passed a tepee, I saw a woman's face that looked as white as snow. She was sleeping, and the curtain had blown up. Her child was in her arms, and I tell you her bare arms were as white as snow."
"Must have been the effect of the moonlight," explained some one.
"Moonlight didn't give the other Indians that complexion," insisted the priest.
It was my turn to feel my head suddenly turn giddy, though liquor had not passed my lips. This information could have only one meaning. I was close on the track of Miriam, and Eric was near; yet the slightest blunder on my part might ruin all chance of meeting him and rescuing her.
The men began arguing about the degrees of whiteness in a squaw's skin. Those, married to native women, averred that differences of complexion were purely matters of temperament and compared their dusky wives to Spanish belles. The priest was now talking across the table to Duncan Cameron, advocating a renewal of North-West trade with the Mandanes on the Missouri, whither he was bound on his missionary tour. To venture out of the fort through the Indian encampments, where natives and outlaws were holding high carnival, and my sleepless foe could have a free hand, would be to risk all chance of using the information that had come to me.
I did not fear death—fear of death was left east of the Sault in those days. On my preservation depended Miriam's rescue. Besides, if either Le Grand Diable or myself had to die, I came to the conclusion of other men similarly situated—that my enemy was the one who should go.
Violins, flutes and bag-pipes were striking up in different parts of the hall. Simple ballads, smacking of old delights in an older land, songs, with which home-sick white men comforted themselvesin far-off lodges—were roared out in strident tones. Feet were beating time to the rasp of the fiddles. Men rose and danced wild jigs, or deftly executed some intricate Indian step; and uproarious applause greeted every performer. The hall throbbed with confused sounds and the din deadened my thinking faculties. Even now, Eric might be slipping past. In that deafening tumult I could decide nothing, and when I tried to leave the table, all the lights swam dizzily.
"Excuse me, Sir!" I whispered, clutching the priest's elbow. "You're Father Holland and are to go north in my boats. Come out with me for a moment."
Thinking me tipsy, he gave me a droll glance. "'Pon my soul! Strapping fellows like you shouldn't need last rites——"
"Please say nothing! Come quickly!" and I gripped his arm.
"Bless us! It's a touch of the head, or the heart!" and he rose and followed me from the hall.
In the fresh air, dizziness left me. Sitting down on the bench, where I had lain the night before, I told him my perplexing mission. At first, I am sure he was convinced that I was drunk or raving, but my story had the directness of truth. He saw at once how easily he could leave the fort at that late hour without arousing suspicion, and finally offered to come with me to the river bank, where we might intercept Hamilton.
"But we must have a boat, a light cockle-shell thing, so we can dart out whenever the brigade appears," declared the priest, casting about in his mind for means to forward our object.
"The canoes are all locked up. Can't you borrow one from the Indians? Don't you know any of them?" I asked with a sudden sinking of heart.
"And have the whole pack of them sneaking after us? No—no—that won't do. Where are your wits, boy! Arrah! Me hearty, but what was that?"
We both heard the shutter above our heads suddenly thrown open, but darkness hid anyone who might have been listening.
"Hm!" said the priest. "Overheard! Fine conspirators we are! Some eavesdropper!"
"Hush!" and remembering whose window it was, I held him; for he would have stalked away.
"Are you there?" came a clear, gentle voice, that fell from the window in the breaking ripples of a fountain plash.
The bit of statuary had become suddenly animate and was not so marble-cold to mankind as it looked. Thinking we had been taken for an expected lover, I, too, was moving off, when the voice, that sounded like the dropping golden notes of a cremona, called out in tones of vibrating alarm:
"Don't—don't go! Priest! Priest! Father! It's you I'm speaking to. I've heard every word!"
Father Holland and I were too much amazed to do aught but gape from each other to the dark window. We could now see the outlines of a white face there.
"If you'd please put one bench on top of another, and balance a bucket on that, I think I could get down," pleaded the low, thrilling voice.
"An' in the name of the seven wonders of creation, what for would you be getting down?" asked the astonished priest.
"Oh! Hurry! Are you getting the bench?" coaxed the voice.
"Faith an' we're not! And we have no thought of doing such a thing!" began the good man with severity.
"Then, I'll jump," threatened the voice.
"And break your pretty neck," answered the ungallant father with indignation.
There was a rustling of skirts being gathered across the window sill and outlines of a white face gave place to the figure of a frail girl preparing for a leap.
"Don't!" I cried, genuinely alarmed, with a mental vision of shattered statuary on the ground. "Don't! I'm getting the benches," and I piled them up, with a rickety bucket on top. "Wait!" I implored, stepping up on the bottom bench. "Give me your hand," and as I caught her hands, she leaped from the window to the bucket, and the bucket to the ground, with a daintiness, which I thought savored of experience in such escapades.
"What do you mean, young woman?" demanded Father Holland in anger. "I'll have none of your frisky nonsense! Do you know, you baggage, that you are delaying this young man in a matter that is of life-and-death importance? Tell me this instant, what do you want?"
"I want to save that woman, Miriam! You're both so slow and stupid! Come, quick!" and she caught us by the arms. "There's a skiff down among the rushes in the flats. I can guide you to it. Cross the river in it! Oh! Quick! Quick! Some of the Hudson's Bay brigades have already passed!"
"How do you know?" we both demanded as in one breath.
"I'm Frances Sutherland. My father is one of the Selkirk settlers and he had word that they would pass to-night! Oh! Come! Come!"
This girl, the daughter of a man who was playing double to both companies! And her service to me would compel me to be loyal to him! Truly, I was becoming involved in a way that complicated simple duty. But the girl had darted ahead of us, we following by the flutter of the white gown, and she led us out of the courtyard by a sally-port to the rear of a block-house. She paused in the shadow of some shrubbery.
"Get fagots from the Indians to light us across the flats," she whispered to Father Holland. "They'll think nothing of your coming. You're always among them!"
"Mistress Sutherland!" I began, as the priest hurried forward to the Indian camp-fires, "I hate to think of you risking yourself in this way for——"
"Stop thinking, then," she interrupted abruptly in a voice that somehow reminded me of my first vision of statuary.
"I beg your pardon," I blundered on. "Father Holland and I have both forgotten to apologize for our rudeness about helping you down."
"Pray don't apologize," answered the marble voice. Then the girl laughed. "Really you're worse than I thought, when I heard you bungling over a boat. I didn't mind your rudeness. It was funny."
"Oh!" said I, abashed. There are situations in which conversation is impossible.
"I didn't mind your rudeness," she repeated, "and—and—you mustn't mind mine. Homesick people aren't—aren't—responsible, you know. Ah! Here are the torches! Give me one. I thank you—Father Holland—is it not? Please smother them down till we reach the river, or we'll be followed."
She was off in a flash, leading us through a high growth of rushes across the flats. So I was both recognized and remembered from the previous night. The thought was not displeasing. The wind moaned dismally through the reeds. I did not know that I had been glancing nervously behind at every step, with uncomfortable recollectionsof arrows and spear-heads, till Father Holland exclaimed:
"Why, boy! You're timid! What are you scared of?"
"The devil!" and I spoke truthfully.
"Faith! There's more than yourself runs from His Majesty; but resist the devil and he will flee from you."
"Not the kind of devil that's my enemy," I explained. I told him of the arrow-shot and spear-head, and all mirth left his manner.
"I know him, I know him well. There's no greater scoundrel between Quebec and Athabasca."
"My devil, or yours?"
"Yours, lad. Let your laughter be turned to mourning! Beware of him! I've known more than one murder of his doing. Eh! But he's cunning, so cunning! We can't trip him up with proofs; and his body's as slippery as an eel or we might——"
But a loon flapped up from the rushes, brushing the priest's face with its wings.
"Holy Mary save us!" he ejaculated panting to keep up with our guide. "Faith! I thought 'twas the devil himself!"
"Do you really mean it? Would it be right to get hold of Le Grand Diable?" I asked. Frances Sutherland had slackened her pace and we were all three walking abreast. A dry cane crushed noisily under foot and my head ducked down as if more arrows had hissed past.
"Mane it?" he cried, "mane it? If ye knew all the evil he's done ye'd know whether I mane it." It was his custom when in banter to drop from English to his native brogue like a merry-andrew.
"But, Father Holland, I had him in my power. I struck him, but I didn't kill him, more's the pity!"
"An' who's talking of killin', ye young cut-throat? I say get howld of his body and when ye've got howld of his body, I'd further advise gettin' howld of the butt end of a saplin'——"
"But, Father, he was my canoeman. I had him in my power."
Instantly he squared round throwing the torchlight on my face.
"Had him in your power—knew what he'd done—and—and—didn't?"
"And didn't," said I. "But you almost make me wish I had. What do you take traders for?"
"You're young," said he, "and I take traders for what they are——"
"But I'm a trader and I didn't——" Though a beginner, I wore the airs of a veteran.
"Benedicite!" he cried. "The Lord shall be your avenger! He shall deliver that evil one into the power of the punisher!"
"Benedicite!" he repeated. "May ye keep as clean a conscience in this land as you've brought to it."
"Amen, Father!" said I.
"Here we are," exclaimed Frances Sutherlandas we emerged from the reeds to the brink of the river, where a skiff was moored. "Go, be quick! I'll stay here! 'Twill be better without me. The Hudson's Bay are keeping close to the far shore!"
"You can't stay alone," objected Father Holland.
"I shall stay alone, and I've had my way once already to-night."
"But we don't wish to lose one woman in finding another," I protested.
"Go," she commanded with a furious little stamp. "You lose time! Stupids! Do you think I stay here for nothing? We may have been followed and I shall stay here and watch! I'll hide in the rushes! Go!" And there was a second stamp.
That stamp of a foot no larger than a boy's hand cowed two strong men and sent us rowing meekly across the river.
"Did ye ever—did ever ye see such a little termagant, such a persuasive, commanding little queen of a termagant?" asked the priest almost breathless with surprise.
"Queen of courage!" I answered back.
"Queen of hearts, too, I'm thinking. Arrah! Me hearty, to be young!"
She must have smothered her torch, for there was no light among the reeds when I looked back. We crossed the river slowly, listening between oar-strokes for the paddle-dips of approaching canoes. There was no sound but the lashingof water against the pebbled shore and we lay in a little bay ready to dash across the fleet's course, when the boats should come abreast.
We had not long to wait. A canoe nose cautiously rounded the headland coming close to our boat. Instantly I shot our skiff straight across its path and Father Holland waved the torches overhead.
"Hist! Hold back there—have a care!" I called.
"Clear the way!" came an angry order from the dark. "Clear—or we fire!"
"Fire if you dare, you fools!" I retorted, knowing well they would not alarm the fort, and we edged nearer the boat.
"Where's Eric Hamilton?" I demanded.
"A curse on you! None of your business! Get out of the way! Who are you?" growled the voice.
"Answer—quick!" I urged Father Holland, thinking they would respect holy orders; and I succeeded in bumping my craft against their canoe.
"Strike him with your paddle, man!" yelled the steersman, who was beyond reach.
"Give 'im a bullet!" called another.
"For shame, ye saucy divils!" shouted the priest, shaking his torch aloft and displaying his garb. "Shame to ye, threatenin' to shoot a missionary! Ye'd be much better showin' respect to the Church. Whur's Eric Hamilton?" he demanded in a fine show of indignation, andhe caught the edge of their craft in his right hand.
"Let go!" and the steersman threateningly raised a pole that shone steel-shod.
"Let go—is ut ye're orderin' me?" thundered the holy man, now in a towering rage, and he flaunted the torch over the crew. "Howld y'r imp'dent tongues!" he shouted, shaking the canoe. "Be civil this minute, or I'll spill ye to the bottom, ye load of cursin' braggarts! Faith an' ut's a durty meal ye'd make for the fush! Foine answers ye give polite questions! How d'y' know we're not here to warn ye about the fort? For shame to ye. Whur's Eric Hamilton, I say?"
Some of the canoemen recognized the priest. Conciliatory whispers passed from man to man.
"Hamilton's far ahead—above the falls now," answered the steersman.
"Then, as ye hope to save your soul," warned Father Holland not yet appeased, "deliver this young man's message!"
"Tell Hamilton," I cried, "that she whom he seeks is held captive by a band of Sioux on Lake Winnipeg and to make haste. Tell him that and he'll reward you well!"
"Vary by one word from the message," added the priest, "and my curses'll track your soul to the furnace."
Father Holland relaxed his grasp, the paddles dipped down and the canoe was lost in the darkness.
More than once I thought that a shadowy thing like an Indian's boat had hung on our rear and the craft seemed to be dogging us back to the flats. Father Holland raised his torch and could see nothing on the water but the glassy reflection of our own forms. He said it was a phantom boat I had seen; and, truly, visions of Le Grande Diable had haunted me so persistently of late, I could scarcely trust my senses. Frances Sutherland's torch suddenly appeared waving above the flats. I put muscle to the oar and before we had landed she called out—
"An Indian's canoe shot past a moment ago. Did you see it?"
"No," returned Father Holland.
"I think we did," said I.
"How can I thank you for what you have done?" I was saying to Frances Sutherland as we entered the fort by the same sally-port.
"Do you really want to know how?"
"Do I?" I was prepared to offer dramatic sacrifice.
"Then never think of it again, nor speak of it again, nor know me any more than if it hadn't happened——"
"The conditions are hard."
"And——"
"And what?" I asked eagerly.
"And help me back the way I came down. For if my father—oh! if my father knew—he would kill me!"
"Faith! So he ought!" ejaculated the priest. "Risking such precious treasure among vandals!"
Again I piled up the benches. From the bench, she stepped to the bucket, and from the bucket to my shoulder, and as the light weight left my shoulder for the window sill, unknown to her, I caught the fluffy skirt, now bedraggled with the night dew, and kissed it gratefully.
"Oh—ho—and oh-ho and oh-ho," hummed the priest. "DoIscent matrimony?"
"Not unless it's in your nose," I returned huffily. "Show me a man of all the hundreds inside, Father Holland, that wouldn't go on his marrow-bones to a woman who risks life and reputation, which is dearer than life, to save another woman!"
"Bless you, me hearty, if he wouldn't, he'd be a villain," said the priest.