"None o' that, now! Ye'll be puttin' yer hands up ower yer heids—the baith o' ye—or it'll be the waur f'r ye!"
"None o' that, now! Ye'll be puttin' yer hands up ower yer heids—the baith o' ye—or it'll be the waur f'r ye!"
As Prime laid his pipe aside and was about to speak, the dark backgrounding of shadows beyond the circle of firelight filled suddenly with a rush of men. Prime saw the glint of the firelight upon a pair of brown gun-barrels, and when he mechanically reached for his own weapon a harsh voice with a broad Scottish burr in it broke raggedly into the stillness.
"None o' that, now! Ye'll be puttin' yer hands up ower yer heids—the baith o' ye—or it'll be the waur f'r ye! I'd have ye know I'm an under-sheriff o' this deestrict, and ye'll be reseestin' the officers o' the law at yer eril!"
Primestood up, spreading his empty hands in reasonable token of submission.
"If you are an officer of the law we have no notion of resisting you," he said placably. "What is the charge against us?"
"Ye'll be knowin' that weel enough, I'm thinkin'. Whaur's Indian Jules and the Cambon man? Maybe ye can tell me that! Aiblins ye'd better not, though. I'll gie ye fair warnin' that whatever ye say'll be used against ye."
There seemed to be nothing for it but an unconditional surrender. Prime looked the posse over appraisively as the men composing it moved forward into the circle of firelight. The under-sheriff was what his speech declared him to be—a Scotchman; stubby, square-built, clean-shaven, with a graying fringe of hair over his ears, a hard-lined mouth, shrewd eyes under penthouse brows,and a portentous official frown. His posse men were apparently either "river hogs" or saw-mill hands—rough-looking young fellows giving the impression that they would obey orders with small regard for consequences. Prime saw nothing hopeful in the Scotchman's face, but it occurred to him that a too easy yielding might be construed as an admission of guilt.
"I take it that a false arrest and imprisonment is actionable in Canada, as well as in the United States," he threw out coolly, helping Lucetta to her feet. "We'll be glad to have you take us with you—but not as prisoners." And thereupon he briefed for the square-built one the story of the kidnapping and its results.
"And ye're expectin' me to believe any such fule's rubbish as that?" snapped the Scotchman wrathfully when the tale was told.
"You can believe it or not, as you choose; it is the plain truth. We'll go along with you cheerfully, and be grateful enough to you or to anybody who will show us the way out of this wilderness. But, as to the crimeyou are charging us with, there isn't a particle of evidence, and you know it."
"There's evidence to hang the baith of ye! Ye've admitted that the half-breeds are baith deid; and John Baptist will sweer that ye had their canoe and Cambon's gun. For the matter o' that, ye're not denyin' it, yerself."
"We are merely wasting time," put in Prime quietly. "You evidently have no wish to be convinced; and if you are willing to take the chance of making a false arrest you may have your own way. Let me say first, though, that this lady is just recovering from a severe attack of fever, and you will be held strictly accountable if you make her endure any unreasonable hardships."
"'Tis not for you to make terms," was the irascible rejoinder, and then to his men: "Tie their hands, and we'll be goin'."
"One moment," Prime interposed; and stooping swiftly he caught up the rifle. "You may do anything you please to me, but the first man who lays a hand on the lady is going to get himself killed."
The under-sheriff screwed out a bleak smile at the naïve simplicity of the threat."And if we say 'Yes,' and truss you up first," he suggested, "what'll ye be doin' then?"
"I shall take your word for it as from one gentleman to another," was Prime's quick concession, and with that he dropped the gun and held out his hands.
They bound him securely with buckskin thongs, and at a word from the Scotchman the camp dunnage was gathered up, the fire trodden out, and a shift was made to the river-bank. A three-quarter moon, riding high, showed the two captives a large birchbark drawn out upon the sands. The embarkation was quickly accomplished, the under-sheriff planting himself amidships with his two prisoners, and the four posse-men taking the paddles as if they had been bred to it.
After an hour or more of swift downstream gliding the current quickened and a sound like the wind sweeping through the tree-tops warned the voyagers that they were approaching a rapid. At this the canoe was sent ashore and the Scotchman changed places with his bow-man, letting the changestand even after the slight hazard of quick water was passed. Prime soon saw that his new guard was nodding, and bent to whisper to his fellow captive:
"This is mighty hard for you—after yesterday and last night," he protested. "Can't you shift a little and lean against me?"
"I am doing quite well," was the low-toned answer. And then: "What is going to come of all this, Donald?"
"We shall get out of the woods for one thing. And for another we are going to hope that a real court will not be so obstinately suspicious as this Scotchman. But, whatever lies ahead, we must just stand by and face it out—together. They can't punish us for a crime that we didn't commit."
There was silence for another half-hour, and then Lucetta whispered again.
"Which pocket is your penknife in?" she asked.
"The right-hand pocket of my waistcoat. What are you going to do?"
"I am going to cut the thongs. It is barbarously cruel for them to leave you tied this way!"
"No," he forbade. "That would only make matters worse. The buckskin is not hurting me much. Lean your head against my shoulder and see if you can't get a little sleep."
At the morning breakfast halt Prime tried to extract a bit of geographical information from the Scotchman. It was given grudgingly. During the night they had passed from their own river to the larger Rivière du Lièvres and they were still twenty-four hours or more from their destination—a place with a long French name that Prime did not catch and which the Scotchman would not repeat. For the first time in their wanderings the two castaways ate a meal that they had not prepared for themselves; and Prime, observing anxiously, was glad to note that Lucetta's wilderness appetite seemed to be returning.
Throughout the day, during which the crew took turns paddling and sleeping, the big birch-bark held to its down-stream course. But now the scenery was changing with each fresh looping of the crooked river, the River of the Hares. Recent timber-cuttings appeared;the river broadened into lake-like reaches; here and there upon the banks there were lumber camps; in the afternoon a small town was passed, and later the site of another that had been destroyed by a landslide.
With an eye single to his purpose, the Scotchman made no noon stop, and the supper fire was built on the right-hand bank of the broadened stream at a spot where there were no signs of human habitation. As at the breakfast, Prime's bonds were taken off to permit him to feed himself, and when the voyage was resumed they were not put on again.
"The wumman tells me ye can't swim, and I'm takin' her word for it," was the gruff explanation. "If ye go overboard in the night, I'll juist lat ye droon."
With his hands free, Prime asked if he might smoke. The permission was given, and, since they had confiscated Prime's store of tobacco with the remainder of the dunnage, the Scotchman opened his heart and his tobacco-pouch in the prisoner's behalf, filling his own pipe at the same time. Whenthe dottles were glowing, the under-sheriff thawed another degree or so.
"D'ye mean to tell me that ye're goin' to hold to that rideeculous story of yours in the coort?" he questioned. "It may do for auld Sandy Macdougal, the under-sheriff; but ye'll no be expectin' a jury to listen till it."
Prime laughed soberly. "I wish, for your sake and our own, Mr. Macdougal, that we had a more believable story to tell. But facts are hard matters to evade. Things have happened to us precisely as I have tried to tell you. We were drugged in Quebec and abducted—carried off in an air-machine, as well as we can reason it out—and that is all there is to it. We don't know any more than you do what we were kidnapped for—or by whom."
"Weel, ye're a main lang ways from Quebec the noo—some twa hunnerd miles or mair. And ye're not dressed for the timmer."
"Hardly," said Prime.
Macdougal jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward Lucetta. "Is the wumman yer wife?"
"No; we are distant cousins, though we had never met before the morning when we found ourselves on the shore of the big lake."
"Ye mean that ye were strangers to each ither?"
"Just that. Up to that moment neither had known of the existence of the other."
The Scotchman stared hard at Prime from beneath his shaggy brows.
"Young man, ye'll juist be tellin' me what's yer business, when ye're not trollopin' round in the timmer with a young wumman that's yer cousin, and that ye never saw or heard of before."
"I am a fiction-writer," Prime admitted, not without some little anxiety as to the effect the statement might have upon the hard-headed under-sheriff.
"Ou, ay! That's it, is it? A story-writer? And, besides that, ye're the biggest fule leevin' to tell it to me. Ye'll no be expectin' me to believe anything ye're sayin', after that! A novel-writer—losh!"
"One of the greatest Scotchmen the world ever saw was a novel-writer," Prime ventured to suggest.
"And it's varra little to his credit, let me tell ye that, young man! 'Tis mair becomin' to Sir Walter that he was sheriff depute o' Selkirkshire and clerk o' session for abune twenty-five year on end. That's a canty story for ye!"
Prime saw that he was making no headway with the Macdougal, and after the pipes were out he tried to compose himself to sleep. Some time later on, Macdougal changed places with one of the paddlers, and, seizing her opportunity, Lucetta crept back to take her place beside Prime. They talked in whispers for a while, each trying to cheer the other. The morning of new and more threatening involvements was only a short night distant, and in the light of the month of hardship and mystery they could only fear the worst and hope for the best.
"You must try to get what sleep you can," Prime urged at the last, arranging the nearest blanket-roll for her back-support. "We shall be up against it again in the morning, and we both ought to have clear heads and a good, cold nerve. Snuggle down andshut your eyes. I am going to do the same after I've smoked another pipe."
He kept his word, dropping off shortly after the big canoe had entered a long straight reach with twinkling lights on either shore to prove that the moving world was once more coming within shouting distance. How long he slept he did not know, but when he awoke the canoe was stopped in midstream, and was lying stem to stern beside a larger craft, in the hold of which throbbing machinery seemed to be running idle.
Vaguely he gathered the impression that the canoe had been held up by the motorcraft; then he realized that a fierce altercation was going on between a big man who was leaning over the side to grip the gunwale of the birch bark and Under-sheriff Macdougal.
"I'll fight it out with you in any court you like, you stubborn blockhead!" Prime heard the big man bellow at Macdougal, and then the canoe was passed swiftly aft, somebody reached over the side and lifted him bodily into the cockpit of the motorboat, and a moment later he found Lucettabeside him, staring wildly and clinging to him as if he were her only hope.
"Wha-what are they doing to us now?" she quavered, and as she spoke the grumbling machinery in the depths below roared a louder note, and the big motor-craft cut a careening half-circle in midstream, leaving the birch-bark to dance and wabble in the converging area of the furrowing bow wave. By this time Prime had shaken himself fully awake. The two deck-hands who had pulled him and Lucetta aboard had disappeared, and the big man who had been bullying Macdougal was at the wheel. There was a single electric bulb in the centre of the cockpit awning, and by its light Prime had his first good look at the big steersman.
"Grider!" he exploded, taking a step toward the man at the wheel; and at that Miss Lucetta Millington drew herself up icily and turned her back.
Primehad often made his fictional heroes "see red" in exceptionally vigorous crises, and he was now able to verify the colorful figure of speech in his own proper person. Like a submerging wave the recollection of all that the heartless joke might have meant to a pair of helpless victims—of all that it had actually entailed in hardships and peril and sickness—rushed over him as he faced the handsome young giant at the wheel of the motor-cruiser.
"So itwasyou, after all!" he gritted. Then: "There are some few things that won't keep, Grider. Put this boat ashore where we can have a little more room. The account between us is too long to wait for daylight!"
The barbarian's answer to this was a shout of derisive laughter, and he made a show of putting the small steering-wheel between himself and his belligerent passenger.
"Give me time, Don—just a little time to take it all in!" he gurgled. "Oh, my sainted grandmother! what a perfectly ripping fling you must have had, to make you turn loose all holds like this! And the lady—won't you—won't you introduce me?"
Lucetta faced about, and, if a look could have crippled, the motor-cruiser would have lost its steersman.
"Cousin Donald has tried to tell me about you, but the reality is worse than he or anybody could put into words!" she broke out in indignant scorn. "Of all the inhuman, dastardly things that have ever been done in the name of a practical joke, yours is certainly the climax, Mr. Grider!"
The young man at the wheel pursed his lips as if he were going to whistle; then he appeared to comprehend suddenly and went off in another gust of Hudibrastic mirth.
"I've been figuring it all out as I came along up river," he choked; "how you had tried to account for yourselves to each other—how you had been wrestling with the lack of all the little civilized knickknacks and notions—how you'd look when you cameout. Excuse me, but your—your clothes, you know; you're a pair to make a wooden idol hold his sides and chortle himself to death!"
This seemed to be adding insult to injury, and by this time Prime was speechless, Berserk-mad, as he himself would have written it. Nothing but Lucetta's restraining hand upon his arm kept him from hurling himself, reckless of consequences, upon the heartless jester. When he could control his symptoms sufficiently to find a few coherent words, he contrived to ease the soul-nausea—in some small measure.
"There is another day coming, Grider; don't you lose sight of that for a single minute!" he raged. "I'm not saying anything about myself; perhaps I have given you cause to assume that you can pull off your brutal initiation stunts on me whenever you feel like it. That's all right, but you've overdone the thing this time. Miss Millington's quarrel is my quarrel. If I can't get you in any other way, I'll post you in every club you belong to as the man who plays horse-laugh jokes on women!"
"The account between us is too long to wait for daylight!"
"The account between us is too long to wait for daylight!"
At this outburst Grider only laughed again, appearing to be entirely and quite joyously impervious to either scorn or red rage.
"Perhaps I do owe you both an apology—not for the joke—that is too ripping good to be spoiled—but for breaking your night's rest in that peppery Scotchman's birch-bark," he offered. "If you'll duck under the raised deck, you'll find two dog-kennel staterooms. The port-side kennel is yours, Don, and the other is Miss Millington's. Suppose you turn in and get your nap out. To-morrow morning, if you still feel in the humor for it, you can get together and give me what you seem to think is coming to me.Shoo!I can't steer this boat and play skittles with you at the same time. Run along to bed—both of you!"
With such a case-hardened barbarian for a host, there seemed to be nothing else to be done, and Prime took Lucetta's arm and helped her down into the tiny cabin. It was lighted, and the doors of the two box-like staterooms were open. Prime felt for the button on the jamb of the right-hand doorand Lucetta's sleeping-niche sprang alight. She looked in and gave a little cry of astonishment.
"My suitcases!" she exclaimed; "the ones I left in the Quebec hotel!"
Prime snapped the opposite switch and looked on his own side. "My auto trunk, too," he conceded sourly. "We didn't need any more evidence, but this is conclusive. Grider has had his horse-laugh, and the least he could do in the wind-up was to bring us our belongings. I suppose we are compelled to be indebted to him for getting us out of the scrape with Macdougal, much as it goes against the grain; but to-morrow we'll settle with him."
Lucetta braced herself in her doorway against the surge and swing of the racing cruiser.
"He doesn't look like a man who could be so wholly lost to all sense of—of the fitness of things, Donald," she ventured, as one who would not be immitigably vindictive.
"He looks, and acts, like a wild ass of the desert!" Prime stormed, in a fresh access ofresentment. And then: "You'd best go to bed and get what sleep you can. Heaven only knows what new piece of buffoonery will be sprung upon us to-morrow morning."
She looked up with the adorable little grimace, a copy of which he had long since resolved to wish upon his next and most bewitching heroine.
"I believe you are angry yet," she chided, half in mockery. "I like you best when you don't scowl so ferociously, Cousin Donald. You forget that we have agreed that it wasn't all bad. Good night." And she closed her door.
Turning out of his box-berth the next morning, Prime found the sun shining broadly in at the stateroom port-light. The motorboat was at rest and the machinery was stopped. A bath, a shave, and a complete change to fresh haberdashery made him feel somewhat less pugnacious, and stumbling up the companion to the cockpit he saw that the cruiser was tied up at a wharf on the river fringe of a considerable city; saw, also, that Lucetta, likewise renewed as to her outward appearance, was awaiting him.
"Where is Grider?" he demanded shortly.
"He has gone somewhere to get an auto to take us to a hotel."
"What city is this?"
"It is Ottawa. Don't you see the government buildings up there on the hill?"
Prime was silent for a moment. Then he said: "He needn't think he is going to smooth it all over by showing us a few little neighborly attentions. We are back in the good old civilized world once more, and we are not asking any favors of Watson Grider."
"Oh, I shouldn't feel that way, if I were you," she qualified. "He seems very humble and penitent this morning, though he is still twinkly-eyed, and I couldn't make him talk much. He said we'd want to be having our breakfast, and——"
"We don't breakfast with him," was the crabbed rejoinder.
"Why, Donald!" she protested, in a laughing mockery of deprecatory concern. "I believe you are still angry. You really mustn't hold spite, that way. It isn't nice—or Bankhead-y."
He looked her fairly in the eyes. "Don'tbegin by throwing the old minister ancestor up at me, Lucetta. I can't help the grouch, and I don't know as I want to help it. Every time I think of you lying there under the big spruces, sick and discouraged, suffering for the commonest necessities and with no possible chance of getting them, I want to go out and swear like a pirate and murder somebody. Why doesn't he bring that auto, if he is going to?"
As if the impatient demand had evoked him, Grider appeared on the wharf and beckoned to them. Prime helped his companion up to the string-piece, and had only a scowl for their late host as Grider led the way to the street and a waiting auto. The barbarian stood aside while Prime was putting Lucetta into the car and clambering in after her. Then he took the seat beside the driver, and no word was said until the car was stopped before the entrance of an up-town hotel, where Grider got down to open the tonneau door for the pair on the rear seat.
"You'll want to have your first civilized breakfast by yourselves and I shan't butt in," he offered good-naturedly. "Later on,say about ten o'clock, I'll be glad to see you both in the ladies' parlor—if you can forgive me that far."
Prime made no reply, but after they were seated in the comfortable breakfast-room and were revelling in their surroundings and in the efficient service he broke out again.
"Grider still has his brass-bound nerve with him; to ask us to meet him! I'd see him in kingdom come first, if I wasn't spoiling to tell him a few things."
"Perhaps he wishes to try to explain," came from the less vindictive side of the table-for-two. "Think a moment, Cousin Donald: you two have been friends and college chums, and—and Mr. Grider has been brotherly good to you in times past, hasn't he? And I don't want you to quarrel with him."
"Why don't you?"
"Because you have said enough to make me understand that you are doing it for my sake. That won't answer at all, you know."
"I don't see why it won't," Prime objected with sudden obtuseness.
"For the best possible reason; there isanother woman to be considered. Sooner or later she will hear that you have broken with your best friend on account of a—a person she has never even heard of, and there will be consequences."
"Oh, if that is all"—and then he laughed. "You are either the most childlike bit of femininity the world has ever seen—or the most wilfully blind, Lucetta."
"'Cousin Lucetta,'" she corrected. "We are back among the conventions, now."
He took the implied readjustment of their relations rather hard.
"That wasn't worthy of you," he protested warmly. "We have been too much to each other in the past month to go back of the returns in that way, don't you think?"
"I can tell better what I think after I have climbed down into my little groove in the girls' school," she returned half-absently, and beyond this the talk concerned itself with their plans for the immediate future, Prime still insisting that he meant to see his table companion safely home and setting the difficulties and objections aside as one who had a perfect right to do so.
When the leisurely meal was finished Prime pushed his chair back and glanced at his watch.
"It is nearly ten o'clock," he announced. "Shall we go and meet Grider? Or shall we give him the cold shoulder he so richly deserves and go hunt up the railroad timetables? It is for you to say."
She decided instantly.
"I think we ought to go and hear what Mr. Grider has to say for himself. We owe him that much for rescuing us from that terrible old Scotch under-sheriff."
And together they sought the hotel parlors.
Mr. Watson Griderwas not alone when they found him. He was sharing a sofa in the public parlor with an elderly little gentleman whose winter-apple face was decorated with mutton-chop whiskers and wreathed in smiles—the smiles of a listener who has just heard a story worth retailing at the dinner-table.
The two stood up when Prime led his companion into the room, and Grider did the honors.
"Miss Millington, let me introduce Mr. Shellaby, an old friend of my father's and the senior member of the firm of Shellaby, Grice, and Shellaby, solicitors. Mr. Shellaby—Miss Millington and Mr. Donald Prime."
The little gentleman adjusted his eyeglasses and looked the pair over carefully. Then the twinkling smile hovered again at the corners of the near-sighted eyes.
"Are you—ah—are you aware of yourrelationship to this young lady, Mr. Prime?" he asked.
Prime made a sign of assent. "We figured it out one evening over our camp-fire. We are third cousins, I believe."
"Exactly," said Mr. Shellaby, matching his slender fingers and making a little bow. "Now another question, if you please: Mr. Grider tells me that you have just returned from a most singular and adventurous experience in the wilds of the northern woods. This experience, I understand, was entirely involuntary on your part. Have you—ah—formulated any theory to account for your—ah—abduction?"
Prime glanced at Grider and frowned.
"We know all we need to know about that part of it," he rejoined curtly. "Mr. Grider is probably still calling it a practical joke; but we call it an outrage."
The little man smiled again. "Exactly," he agreed; and then: "Do you happen to know what day of the month this is?"
Prime shook his head.
"We have lost count of the days. I kept a notched stick for a while, but I lost it along toward the last."
Mr. Shellaby waved them to chairs, saying: "Be seated, if you please; we may as well be comfortable as we talk. This is the last day of July. Does that mean anything in particular to either of you?"
Lucetta gave a little cry of surprise.
"It does to me," she said quickly. "Did you—did you put an advertisement in a Cleveland newspaper addressed to me, Mr. Shellaby?"
"We did; and we also advertised for the heirs of Roger Prime, of Batavia, New York. We believed at the time that it was a mere matter of form; in fact, when we drew his will our client informed us that there would most probably be no results. He was of the opinion that neither Roger Prime nor Clarissa Millington had left any living children."
"Your client?" Prime interrupted. "May we ask who he is?"
"Was," corrected the small man gravely. "Mr. Jasper Bankhead died last January. You didn't know him, I'm sure; quite possibly you have never heard of him until this moment."
"We both know of him," Prime amended. "He was my great-uncle, and a cousin ofMiss Millington's grandmother. He was scarcely more than a family tradition to either of us, however. We had both been told that he went west as a young man and was never heard of afterward."
Mr. Shellaby nodded soberly.
"Mr. Bankhead was a rather peculiar character in some respects; quite eccentric, in fact. He accumulated a great deal of property in British Columbia—in mining enterprises—and it was only in his latter years that he came here to live. We drew his will, as I have said. He was without family, and he left the bulk of his estate—something over two millions—to various charities and hospitals. There were other legacies, to be sure, and among them one which was to be divided equally between, or among, the direct heirs, if any could be discovered, of Clarissa Millington and Roger Prime."
"And if no such heirs could be found?" Prime inquired.
"Our client was quite sure that they wouldn't be found. It seems that he had previously had some inquiries made on hisown account. For that reason he placed a comparatively short time limit upon our efforts and prescribed their form. We were to advertise in certain newspapers, and if there should be no answer within six months of the date of his death the legacy in question was to revert to his private secretary, a young man who had served him in many capacities, and who was, by the by, already generously provided for in a separate bequest."
Lucetta's gray eyes lighted suddenly and she spoke with a little catching of her breath.
"The name of that young man, Mr. Shellaby, is Horace Bandish, isn't it?" she suggested.
"Quite so," nodded the little man; and then, with the amused twinkle returning to point the bit of dry humor: "I am sorry to have to spoil your estimate of Mr. Grider's capabilities as a practical joker; yes, very sorry, indeed; but I'm afraid I must. Bandish was your kidnapper, you know, and it is owing entirely to Mr. Grider's energetic efforts that the fellow is at present safely lodged in the Ottawa jail awaiting indictmentand trial. In order that he might be certain of adding your legacy to his own, he meant to deprive you both of any possible opportunity of communicating with us before July thirty-first. The young woman who calls herself his wife was his accomplice, but she has disappeared. Mr. Grider can give you the details of the plot better than I can."
"Then Grider didn't—then the legacy is ours?" Prime stammered, clutching manfully for handholds in the grapple with this entirely new array of things incredible.
"Precisely, Mr. Prime; yours and Miss Millington's. There will be some legal formalities, to be sure, but Mr. Grider assures us that you can comply with them. Compared with Mr. Bankhead's undivided total, the amount of the legacy is not great; some two hundred thousand dollars, less the costs of administration, to be divided equally between you if you prove to be the only surviving heirs direct of the two persons named in the will."
Prime turned slowly upon his companion castaway.
"You said you wanted enough, but nottoo much," he reminded her solemnly. "I hope you're not disappointed, either way. At all events, you'll never have to cook for a man again unless you really wish to, and you can have your wish about the world travel, too."
"And you can have yours about the writing of the leisurely book," she flashed back; "about that, and—and——"
Prime's laugh ignored the presence of Grider and the lawyer.
"And the imaginary girl, you were going to say? Yes; I shall certainly marry her, if she'll have me."
Mr. Shellaby was on his feet and bowing again.
"I think I have said all that needs to be said here and now," he concluded mildly. "If you will excuse me, I'll go. We are a rather busy office. Later, Mr. Grider may bring you to us and we can set the legal machinery in motion. I congratulate you both very heartily, I'm sure," and he shook hands all around and backed away.
When they were left alone with the barbarian, Prime wheeled short upon him.
"Watson, will you raise your right hand and swear that this isn't another twist in your infernal joke?" he demanded. "Because, if it is——"
Grider fell back into the nearest chair and chuckled like a fat boy at a play.
"If it only were!" he gloated. "Wouldn't it be rich? Oh, Great Peter! why didn't I think of it in time and run a sham lawyer in on you? It would have been as easy as rolling off a log. Unhappily, Don, it's all too true. I didn't invent it—more's the pity!"
Prime stood over the joker, menacing him with a clenched fist. "If you want to go on living and spending your swollen fortune, you'll tell us all the ins and outs of it," he rasped, in well-assumed ferocity.
"I was only waiting for an invitation," was the laughing rejoinder. "When you didn't turn up in Boston to go motoring with me I ran over to New York and broke into your rooms. On your desk I found a telegram purporting to have come from me at Quebec. Since I hadn't wired you from Quebec, or anywhere else, I began to askquestions. Your janitor answered the first one: you had already gone to Canada. I couldn't imagine what was going on, but it seemed to be worth following up, so I took the next train for Quebec."
"And you didn't wire ahead?" said Prime.
"No; it didn't occur to me, but it wouldn't have done any good. Your disappearance was two days old when I reached Quebec. You weren't missed much, but Miss Millington was; the school-teachers were milling around and raising all sorts of a row. But in another day it quieted down flat. Somebody started the story that you two had run off together to get married; that it had been all cut and dried between you beforehand."
"That was probably a part of the plot—to account for us in that way," Lucetta put in.
"No doubt it was," Grider went on. "But the elopement story didn't satisfy me. I knew there wasn't any reason in the wide world why Don shouldn't get married openly, if he could find any girl foolish enough to say 'yes,' so I simply discounted the gossip and wired for detectives. A very little sleuthwork developed the fact that each of you had been seen last in company with one of the Bandishes. That gave us a sort of a clew, and we began to trail Mr. Horace Bandish and dig up his record."
"And while you were doing all this for us, we ... honestly, Mr. Grider, I am ashamed to tell you what we were saying of you," said the young woman in penitent self-abasement.
"Oh, that was all right. In times past I had given Don plenty of material of that sort to work on; only I wish I had known how you were looking at it—that you were charging it all up to me. It would have lightened the gloom immensely. But to get on: we trailed Bandish, as I say, and found that he had had an aeroplane shipped to him at Quebec a few days before your arrival there. That looked a bit suspicious, and a little more digging made it look more so. The 'plane had been unloaded and carted away, and a few days later had been brought back and shipped to Ottawa. That left a pretty plain trail, but still there was no evidence of criminality."
"Of course, you didn't know anything about the legacy, at that stage of it?" Prime threw in.
"Not a thing in the world. More than that, Bandish's record was decently good. We found that he had been a sort of general factotum for a rich old man, and had been left comfortably well off when his employer died. There was absolutely no motive in sight; no reason on earth why he should drug a couple of total strangers and blot them out. Just the same, I was confident that he had done it, and that I should eventually find you by keeping cases on him. So I dropped the detectives, who were beginning to give me the laugh for being so pig-headed about an ordinary elopement, gathered up your belongings on the chance that you'd need 'em if I should make good in the search for you, and came here to Ottawa to keep in touch with Bandish."
Prime's smile was grim. "You were taking a lot of trouble for two people who were just about that time calling you all the hard names in the category," he interposed.
"Wasn't I?" said the barbarian with agrin. "But never mind about that. I came here, as I said, and settled down to keep an eye on Horace. For quite some time I didn't learn anything new. I found that Bandish was a club man, well known and rather popular; also that he was an amateur aviator and had made a number of exhibition flights. Everybody knew him and everybody seemed to like him. In the course of time we met at one of the clubs, and I watched him carefully when we were introduced. If he had sent the forged telegram it was proof that he knew me by name, at least. But he never made a sign.
"It was about a week later than this when I stumbled upon Mr. Shellaby and got my first real clew in the story of the legacy muddle. Of course, that opened all the doors, and after that I laid for Horace like a cat watching a mouse. Before long I could see that he was growing mighty nervous about something, and the next thing I knew he turned up missing. Right there I lost my head and wasted two whole days trying to find out which railroad he had taken out of town. Late in the evening of the second dayI learned, by the merest bit of bull-headed luck, that he had gone up the Rivière du Lièvres in a motor-launch. I had a quick hunch that that motor-launch was pointing in your direction and that it was up to me to chase him and find you and get you back here before the thirty-first. Three hours later I had borrowed theSpriteand was after him."
"He found us," said Prime, rather grittingly. "We had stopped to patch our canoe, and he came up in the night and cut another hole in it. I mistook him for you—which was the chief reason why I didn't take a pot-shot at him as he was running away."
"I knew I had no chance to overtake him," Grider went on, "but it seemed a safe bet that I'd get him coming out. I did; captured him, took him ashore, built a fire, and told him I was going to roast him alive if he didn't come across with the facts. He held out for a while, but finally told me the whole of it: how he had figured to get you two together in Quebec after he had learned that you, Miss Millington, were due to be there with the teachers. You see, he knew allabout you—both of you. As Mr. Bankhead's secretary he had made, at Mr. Bankhead's dictation, all the former inquiries, and, of course, had carefully kept the answers from reaching the old gentleman. With a little more cooking he told me how he and the woman had drugged you both, after which he had carried you in the 'plane to the shore of some unpronounceable lake in the north woods."
"What did he mean to do?—let us starve to death?" Prime asked.
"Oh, no; nothing so murderous as that! He had it all doped out beforehand. There is a Hudson Bay post on one of the streams flowing into the lake, and he had arranged with a couple of half-breed canoe-men to happen along and pick you up and bring you back, stipulating only that they should kill time enough to make the return trip use up the entire month of July. As the fatal date drew near, he grew uneasy and made the launch trip to see to it personally that you were not getting along too fast. He found your camp and cut your canoe merely to add a little more delay for good measure.He couldn't tell me what had become of his half-breeds."
Prime laughed. "I suppose the old Scotch under-sheriff told you, didn't he?"
"He tried to tell me that you and Miss Millington had assassinated the two men and stolen their canoe and outfit. You didn't do that?—or did you?"
"Hardly," Prime denied. Then he told the story of the finding of the dead men, capping it with an account of the chance visit of Jean Ba'tiste.
Grider left his chair and took a turn up and down the room.
"It was a great adventure," he declared, coming back to them. "Some day you are going to tell me all about it, and the kind of a time you had. I'll bet it was fierce—some parts of it, anyway. I can't answer for you, Miss Millington; but what Don doesn't know about roughing it is—or used to be—good and plenty."
"You sent Bandish back to town after you were through with him?" Prime inquired.
"Yes. I had taken a pair of handcuffsalong, just on general principles, and I lent him my engineer to run the launch. Afterward, I kept on up-stream in theSprite, hoping to meet you coming down; and hoping against hope that we would be able to beat the calendar back to Ottawa."
"We never should have beaten it if the old Scotchman hadn't taken a hand," was Prime's comment. "He saved us at least a full day."
Grider was edging toward the door. "I guess you don't need me any more just now," he offered. "I'm due to go and thank the good-natured lumber king who lent me theSprite. By and by, after the dust has settled a bit, I'll come around and show you where Mr. Shellaby holds forth."
"One minute, Mr. Grider," Lucetta interposed hastily. "We can't let you go without asking your forgiveness for the way in which we have been vilifying you for a whole month, and for what we both said to you last night. I must speak for myself, at least, and——"
"Don't," said Grider, laughing again. "It's all in the day's work. As it happened,I wasn't the goat this time, but that isn't saying that I mightn't have done something quite as uncivilized if you had given me a chance. You two gave me one of the few perfect moments of a rather uneventful life last night when you made me understand that you were giving me credit for the whole thing—as a joke! I only wish I could invent one half as good. And that reminds me, Don; can you—er—do you think you'll be able to put a real woman into the next story?"
For some few minutes after the barbarian had ducked and disappeared a stiff little silence fell upon the two he had left behind. In writing about it Prime would have called it an interregnum of readjustment. He had gone to a window to stare aimlessly down into the busy street, and Lucetta was sitting with her chin in her cupped palms and her eyes fixed upon the rather garish pattern of the paper on the opposite wall. After a time Prime pulled himself together and went back to her.
"It is all changed, isn't it?" he said, in a rather flat voice. "Everything is changed.You are no longer a teacher, working for your living. You are an heiress, with a snug little fortune in your own right."
She looked up at him with the bright little smile which had been brought over intact from the days of the banished conventions.
"Whatever you say I am, you are," she retorted cheerfully. "Only I can't quite believe it yet—about the money, you know."
"You'd better," he returned gloomily. "Besides, it is just what you said you wanted—neither too little nor too much: one hundred thousand at a good, safe six per cent will give you an income of six thousand a year. You can travel on that for the remainder of your natural life."
"Easily," she rejoined. "And you can write the leisurely book and marry the girl. Perhaps you will be doing both while I am getting ready to go on my travels. You won't insist upon going back to Ohio with me now, will you? You—you ought to go straight to the girl, don't you think?"
"You are forgetting that I said she was an imaginary girl," he parried.
"You said so at first; but afterward you admitted that she wasn't. Also, you promised me you would show me her picture after we should get out of the woods."
"I have never had her picture," he denied. "I said I would show you what she looks like. Come to the window where the light is better."
She went with him half-mechanically. Between the two windows there was an old-fashioned pier-glass set in the wall. Before she realized what he was doing he had led her before the mirror.
"There she is, Lucetta," he said softly; "the only girl there is—or ever will be."
She started back with a little cry, putting out her hands as if to push him away.
"No, Donald—a thousand times no!" she flashed out. "Do you think I don't know that this is only another way of telling me how sorry you are for me? You know well enough what people will say when they hear how we have been together for a whole month, alone; and in your splendid chivalry you would——"
He did not let her finish. The hotel parlorwas supposed to be a public room, but he ignored that and took her in his arms.
"From the first day, Lucetta, dear—from the very first day!" he argued passionately. "And it grew and grew with your absolute, your simply angelic trust in me until I was half-mad with the desire to tell you. But I couldn't tell you then; I couldn't even let you suspect and still be what you were believing me to be. Don't you think you could learn, in time, you know, to—to——"
Her face was hidden, but she made her refusal quite positive.
"No, Donald, I can never learn it—again. Because, you see, in spite of the other girl I was believing in—that you made me believe in—I—Oh, it was wicked,wicked!—but I couldn't help it! And all the time I was sc-scared perfectly frantic for fear you would find it out!"
"You were, were you?" he laughed happily. "Perhaps I did find it out—just a little...."
It was something like an hour later, and an overruling Providence had graciously preservedthe privacy of the public parlor for them during the entire length of the precious interval, when Prime looked at his watch and said: "Heavens, Lucetta! it's nearly noon! Let's go quickly and beard the Shellaby in his den before he goes to luncheon. The fairy fortune may escape us yet if we don't hurry up and nab it."
She had risen with him, and her eyes were shining when she lifted her face and let him see them.
"As if the money, or anything else in this world, could make any difference to either of us now, Donald, dear!" she protested, with a fine scorn of such inconsequent things as fairy fortunes.
And Prime, seeing the unashamed love in the shining eyes, joyously agreed with her.