CHAPTER VI.

The day was duller now. The sun, in passing into the western sky, had entered under thicker veils of white. The film of ice on the bay, which had melted in the pale sunbeams of noon, would soon form again. The air was growing bitterly cold.

When Bates had moored his boat, he went up the hill heavily. The dog, which had been shut in the house to guard it, leaped out when he opened the door. Sissy was not there.

Bates went in and found one of her frocks, and, bringing it out, tried to put the animal on the scent of her track. He stooped, and held the garment under the dog's nose. The dog sniffed it, laid his nose contentedly on Bates's arm, looked up in his face, and wagged his tail with most annoying cheerfulness.

"Where is she?" jerked Bates. "Where is she? Seek her, good dog."

The dog, all alert, bounded off a little way and returned again with an inconsequent lightness in tail and eye. One of his ears had been torn in a battle with the strange dogs, but he was more elated by the conflict than depressed by the wound. When he came back, he seemed to Bates almost to smile as if he said: "It pleases me that you should pay me so much attention, but as for the girl, I know her to be satisfactorily disposed of." Bates did not swear at the animal; he was a Scotchman, and he would have considered it a sin to swear: he did not strike the dog either, which he would not have considered a sin at all. He was actually afraid to offend the only living creature who could befriend and help him in his search. Very patiently he bent the dog's nose to the frock and to the ground, begging and commanding him to seek. At length the dog trotted off by a circuitous route up the clearing, and Bates followed. He hoped the dog was really seeking, but feared he was merely following some fancy that by thus running he would be rid of his master's solicitude.

Bates felt it an odd thing that he should be wandering about with a girl's frock in his hands. It was old, but he did not remember that he had ever touched it before or noticed its material or pattern. He looked at it fondly now, as he held it ready to renew the dog's memory if his purpose should falter.

The dog went on steadily enough until he got to the edge of the woods, where his footsteps made a great noise on the brittle leaves. He kicked about in them as if he liked the noise they made, but offered to go no farther. Bates looked at them and knew that the dog was not likely to keep the scent among them if the girl had gone that way. He stood erect, looking up the drear expanse of the hill, and the desperate nature of his situation came upon him. He had been slow—slow to take it in, repelling it with all the obstinacy of an obstinate mind. Now he saw clearly that the girl had fled, and he was powerless to pursue at the distance she might now have reached, the more so as he could not tell which way she had taken. He would have left his live stock, but the helpless old woman, whose life depended on his care, he dared not leave. He stood and considered, his mind working rapidly under a stress of emotion such as perhaps it had never known before—certainly not since the first strong impulses of his youth had died within his cautious heart.

Then he remembered that Sissy had walked about the previous day, and perhaps the dog was only on the scent of yesterday's meanderings. He took the animal along the top of the open space, urging him to find another track, and at last the dog ran down again by the side of the stream. Bates followed to the vicinity of the house, no wiser than he had been at first.

The dog stopped under the end window of the house where old Cameron fell, and scratched among the leaves on the fresh fallen earth. Bates was reminded of the associations of the fatal spot. He thought of his old friend's deathbed, of the trust that had there been confided to him. Had he been unfaithful to that trust? With the impatience of sharp pain, he called the dog again to the door of the house, and again from that starting-point tried to make him seek the missing one. He did this, not because he had much hope in the dog now, but because he had no other hope.

This time the dog stood by, sobered by his master's soberness, but looking with teasing expectancy, ready to do whatever was required if he might only know what that was. To Bates, who was only anxious to act at the dumb thing's direction, this expectancy was galling. He tore off a part of the dress and fastened it to the dog's collar. He commanded him to carry it to her in such excited tones that the old woman heard, and fumbled her way out of the door to see what was going on. And Bates stood between the dumb animal and the aged wreck of womanhood, and felt horribly alone.

Clearly the sagacious creature not only did not know where to find the girl, but knew that she was gone where he could not find her, for he made no effort to carry his burden a step. Bates took it from him at last, and the dog, whose feelings had apparently been much perturbed, went down to the water's edge, and, standing looking over the lake, barked there till darkness fell.

The night came, but the girl did not come. Bates made a great torch of pine boughs and resin, and this he lit and hoisted on a pole fixed in the ground, so that if she was seeking to return to her home in the darkness she might be guided by it. He hoped also that, by some chance, the surveying party might see it and know that it was a signal of distress; but he looked for their camp-fire on the opposite hills, and, not seeing it, felt only too sure that they had gone out of sight of his. He fed and watched his torch all night. Snow began to fall; as he looked up it seemed that the flame made a globe of light in the thick atmosphere, around which closed a low vault of visible darkness. From out of this darkness the flakes were falling thickly. When the day broke he was still alone.



CHAPTER VII.

When Saul and the oxen were once fairly started, they plodded on steadily. The track lay some way from the river and above it, through the gap in the hills. Little of the hills did Saul see for he was moving under trees all the way, and when, before noon, he descended into the plain on the other side, he was still for a short time under a canopy of interlacing boughs. There was no road; the trees were notched to show the track. In such forests there is little obstruction of brushwood, and over knoll and hollow, between the trunks, the oxen laboured on. Saul sat on the front ledge of the cart to balance it the better. The coffin, wedged in with the potash barrel, lay pretty still as long as they kept on the soft soil of the forest, but when, about one o'clock, the team emerged upon a corduroy road, made of logs lying side by side across the path, the jolting often jerked the barrel out of place, and then Saul would go to the back of the cart and jerk it and the coffin into position again.

The forest was behind them now. This log road was constructed across a large tract which sometime since had been cleared by a forest fire, but was now covered again by thick brush standing eight or ten feet high. One could see little on either side the road except the brown and grey twigs of the saplings that grew by the million, packed close together. The way had been cut among them, yet they were forcing their sharp shoots up again between the seams of the corduroy, and where, here and there, a log had rotted they came up thickly. The ground was low, and would have been wet about the bushes had it not been frozen. Above, the sky was white. Saul could see nothing but his straight road before and behind, the impenetrable thicket and the white sky. It was a lonely thing thus to journey.

While he had been under the forest, with an occasional squirrel or chipmunk to arrest his gaze, and with all things as familiar to sight as the environments of the house in which he was accustomed to live, Saul had felt the vigour of the morning, and eaten his cold fat bacon, sitting on the cart, without discontent. But now it was afternoon—which, we all know, brings a somewhat more depressing air—and the budless thickets stood so close, so still, Saul became conscious that his load was a corpse. He had hoped, in a dull way, to fall in with a companion on this made road; the chances were against it, and the chances prevailed. Saul ate more bread and bacon. He had to walk now, and often to give the cart a push, so that the way was laborious; but, curiously enough, it was not the labour he objected to, but the sound of his own voice. All the way the silent thicket was listening to his "Gee-e, gee; haw then";—"yo-hoi-eest"; yet, as he and his oxen progressed further into the quiet afternoon, he gradually grew more and more timid at the shouts he must raise. It seemed to him that the dead man was listening, or that unknown shapes or essences might be disturbed by his voice and rush out from the thicket upon him. Such fears he had—wordless fears, such as men never repeat and soon forget. Rough, dull, hardy woodman as he was, he felt now as a child feels in the dark, afraid of he knew not what.

The way was very weary. He trudged on beside the cart. Something went wrong with one of his boots, and he stopped the oxen in order to take it off. The animals, thus checked, stood absolutely still, hanging down their heads in an attitude of rest. The man went behind the cart and sat on its edge. He leaned on the end of the coffin as he examined the boot. When that was put right he could not deny himself the luxury of a few minutes' rest. The oxen, with hanging heads, looked as if they had gone to sleep. The man hung his head also, and might have been dozing from his appearance. He was not asleep, however. What mental machinery he had began to work more freely, and he actually did something that might be called thinking on the one subject that had lain as a dormant matter of curiosity in his head all day—namely, how the girl would act when she woke to find the cart was actually gone and she left behind. He had seen old Cameron die, and heard Bates promise to do his best for his daughter; he remembered her tears and pleading on the preceding day; the situation came to him now, as perceptions come to dull minds, with force that had gathered with the lapse of time. He had not the refinement and acuteness of mind necessary to make him understand the disinterested element in Bates's tyranny, and while he sympathised cunningly with the selfishness of which, in his mind, he accused Bates, it seemed to him that the promise to the dead was broken, and he thought upon such calamities as might befall in token of the dead man's revenge.

How awfully silent it was! There was no breath in the chill, still air; there was no sound of life in all the dark, close brushwood; the oxen slept; and Saul, appalled by the silence that had come with his silence, appalled to realise more vividly than ever that he, and he alone, had been the instigator of voice in all that region, was cowed into thinking that, if the dead could rise from the grave for purposes of revenge, how much more easily could he rise now from so crude a coffin as he himself had helped to construct for him!

It was in this absolute silence that he heard a sound. He heard the dead man turn in his coffin! He heard, and did not doubt his hearing; it was not a thing that he could easily be deceived about as he sat with his elbow on the coffin. He sat there not one instant longer; the next moment he was twenty feet away, standing half-hidden in the edge of the brushwood, staring at the cart and the coffin, ready to plunge into the icy swamp and hide farther among the young trees if occasion required. Occasion did not require. The oxen dozed on; the cart, the barrel, and the coffin stood just as he had left them.

Perhaps for five minutes the frightened man was still. Gradually his muscles relaxed, and he ceased to stand with limbs and features all drawn in horror away from the coffin. He next pulled back his foot from the icy marsh; but even then, having regained his equilibrium on the road, he had not decided what to do, and it took him some time longer to turn over the situation in his mind. He had heard the dead man move; he was terribly frightened; still, it might have been a mistake, and, any way, the most disagreeable course, clearly, was to remain there till nightfall. He had run backward in his first alarm; so, to get to the nearest habitation, it would be necessary to pass the cart on the road, even if he left it there. Had any further manifestation of vitality appeared on the part of the corpse he would have felt justified in running back into the forest, but this was an extreme measure. He did not wish to go near the cart, but to turn his back upon it seemed almost as fearsome. He stood facing it, as a man faces a fierce dog, knowing that if he turns and runs the dog will pursue. He supposed that as long as he stared at the coffin and saw nothing he could be sure that the deceased remained inside, but that if he gave the ghost opportunity to get out on the sly it might afterwards come at him from any point of the compass. He was an ignorant man, with a vulgar mind; he had some reverence for a corpse, but none whatever for a ghost. His mind had undergone a change concerning the dead the moment he had heard him move, and he looked upon his charge now as equally despicable and gruesome.

After some further delay he discovered that the course least disagreeable would be to drive the oxen with his voice and walk as far behind the cart as he now was, keeping the pine box with four nails on its lid well in view. Accordingly, making a great effort to encourage himself to break the silence, he raised his shout in the accustomed command to the oxen, and after it had been repeated once or twice, they strained at the cart and set themselves to the road again. They did not go as fast as when the goad was within reach of their flanks; or rather; they went more slowly than then, for "fast" was not a word that could have been applied to their progress before. Yet they went on the whole steadily, and the "Gee" and "Haw" of the gruff voice behind guided them straight as surely as bit and rein.

At length it could be seen in the distance that the road turned; and round this turning another human figure came in sight. Perhaps in all his life Saul never experienced greater pleasure in meeting another man than he did now, yet his exterior remained gruff and unperturbed. The only notice that he appeared to take of his fellow-man was to adjust his pace so that, as the other came nearer the cart in front, Saul caught up with it in the rear. At last they met close behind it, and then, as nature prompted, they both stopped.

The last comer upon the desolate scene was a large, hulking boy. He had been plodding heavily with a sack upon his back. As he stopped, he set this upon the ground and wiped his brow.

The boy was French; but Saul, as a native of the province, talked French about as well as he did English—that is to say, very badly. He could not have written a word of either.—The conversation went on in the patois of the district.

"What is in the box?" asked the boy, observing that the carter's eyes rested uneasily upon it.

"Old Cameron died at our place the day before yesterday," answered Saul, not with desire to evade, but because it did not seem necessary to answer more directly.

"What of?" The boy looked at the box with more interest now.

"He died of a fall"—briefly.

The questioner looked at the pinewood box now with considerable solicitude. "Did his feet swell?" he asked. As Saul did not immediately assent, he added—"When the old M. Didier died, his feet swelled."

"What do you think of the coffin?" Saul said this eyeing it as if he were critically considering it as a piece of workmanship.

"M. Didier made a much better one for his little child," replied the boy.

"If he did, neither Mr. Bates nor me is handy at this sort of work. We haven't been used to it. It's a rough thing. Touch it. You will see it's badly made."

He gained his object. The boy fingered the coffin, and although he did not praise the handiwork, it seemed to Saul that some horrid spell was broken when human hands had again touched the box and no evil had resulted.

"Why didn't you bury him at home?" asked the boy. "He was English."

"Mr. Bates has strict ideas, though he is English. He wanted it done proper, in a graveyard, by a minister. He has wrote to the minister at St. Hennon's and sent money for the burying—Mr. Bates, he is always particular."

"You are not going to St. Hennon's?" said the boy incredulously. "I'll stay to-night at Turrifs, and go on in the morning. It's four days' walk for me and the cattle to go and come, but I shall take back a man to cut the trees."

"Why not send him by the new railroad?"

"It does not stop at Turrifs."

"Yes; they stop at the cross-roads now, not more than three miles from Turrifs, There's a new station, and an Englishman set to keep it. I've just brought this sack of flour from there. M. Didier had it come by the cars."

"When do they pass to St. Hennon's?" asked Saul meditatively,—"But anyway, the Englishman wouldn't like to take in a coffin."

"They pass some time in the night; and he must take it in if you write on it where it's going. It's not his business to say what the cars will take, if you pay."

"Well," said Saul. "Good-day. Yo-hoist! Yo, yo, ho-hoist!"

It did not seem to him necessary to state whether he was, or was not, going to take the advice offered. The straining and creaking of the cart, his shouts to the oxen, would have obliterated any further query the boy might have made. He had fairly moved off when the boy also took up his burden and trudged on the other way.



CHAPTER VIII.

When the blueberry bushes are dry, all the life in them, sucked into their roots against another summer, the tops turn a rich, brownish red; at this time, also, wild bramble thickets have many a crimson stalk that gives colour to their mass, and the twigs that rise above the white trunks of birch trees are not grey, but brown.

Round the new railway station at the cross-roads near Turrifs Settlement, the low-lying land, for miles and miles, was covered with, blueberry bushes; bramble thickets were here and there; and where the land rose a little, in irregular places, young birch woods stood. If the snow had sprinkled here, as it had upon the hills the night before, there was no sign of it now. The warm colour of the land seemed to glow against the dulness of the afternoon, not with the sparkle and brightness which colour has in sunshine, but with the glow of a sleeping ember among its ashes. Round the west there was metallic blue colouring upon the cloud vault. This colouring was not like a light upon the cloud, it was like a shadow upon it; yet it was not grey, but blue. Where the long straight road from Turrifs and the long straight road from the hills crossed each other, and were crossed by the unprotected railway track with its endless rows of tree-trunks serving as telegraph poles, the new station stood.

It was merely a small barn, newly built of pinewood, divided into two rooms—one serving as a store-room for goods, the other as waiting-room, ticket office, and living-room of the station-master. The station-master, who was, in fact, master, clerk, and porter in one, was as new to his surroundings as the little fresh-smelling pinewood house. He was a young Englishman, and at the first glance it could be seen he had not long been living in his present place. He had, indeed, not yet given up shaving himself, and his clothes, although rough, warm, and suited to his occupation, still suggested, not homespun, but an outfit bought of a tailor.

It was about four o'clock on that November afternoon when the new official of the new station looked out at the dark red land and the bright-tinted cloud. It was intensely cold. The ruts of the roads, which were not made of logs here, were frozen stiff. The young man stood a minute at his door with his hands in his pockets, sniffed the frost, and turned in with an air of distaste. A letter that had been brought him by the morning train lay on his table, addressed to "Alec Trenholme, Esq." It had seen vicissitudes, and been to several addresses in different cities, before it had been finally readdressed to this new station. Perhaps its owner had not found the path to fortune which he sought in the New World as easily accessible as he had expected. Whether he had now found it or not, he set himself to that which he had found in manly fashion.

Coming in from the cold without, and shutting himself in, as he supposed, for the evening, he wisely determined to alleviate the peculiar feeling of cold and desolation which the weather was fitted to induce by having an early tea. He set his pan upon a somewhat rusty stove and put generous slices of ham therein to fry. He made tea, and then set forth his store of bread, his plates and cup, upon the table, with some apparent effort to make the meal look attractive. The frying ham soon smelt delicious, and while it was growing brown, Alec Trenholme read his letter for the fifth time that day. It was not a letter that he liked, but, since the morning train, only two human beings had passed by the station, and the young station-master would have read and re-read a more disagreeable epistle than the one which had fallen to his lot. It was dated from a place called Chellaston, and was from his brother. It was couched in terms of affection, and contained a long, closely reasoned argument, with the tenor of which it would seem the reader did not agree, for he smiled at it scornfully!

He had not re-read his letter and dished his ham before sounds on the road assured him an ox-cart was approaching, and, with an eagerness to see who it might be which cannot be comprehended by those who have not lived in isolation, he went out to see Saul and his cattle coming at an even pace down the road from the hills. The cart ran more easily now that the road was of the better sort, and the spirits of both man and beasts were so raised by the sight of a house that they all seemed in better form for work than when in the middle of their journey.

Alec Trenholme waited till the cart drew up between his door and the railway track, and regarded the giant stature of the lumberman, his small, round head, red cheeks, and luxuriant whiskers, with that intense but unreflecting interest which the lonely bestow upon unexpected company. He looked also, with an eye to his own business, at the contents of the cart, and gave the man a civil "good evening."

As he spoke, his voice and accent fell upon the air of this wilderness as a rarely pleasant thing to hear. Saul hastily dressed his whiskers with his horny left-hand before he answered, but even then, he omitted to return the greeting.

"I want to know," he said, sidling up, "how much it would cost to send that by the cars to St. Hennon's." He nudged his elbow towards the coffin as he spoke.

"That box?" asked the station-master. "How much does it weigh?"

"We might weigh it if I'd some notion first about how much I'd need to pay."

"What's in it?"

Saul smoothed his whiskers again. "Well," he said—then, after a slight pause—"it's a dead man."

"Oh!" said Trenholme. Some habit of politeness, unnecessary here, kept his exclamation from expressing the interest he instantly felt. In a country where there are few men to die, even death assumes the form of an almost agreeable change as a matter of lively concern. Then, after a pause which both men felt to be suitable, "I suppose there is a special rate for—that sort of thing, you know. I really haven't been here very long. I will look it up. I suppose you have a certificate of death, haven't you?"

Again Saul dressed his whiskers. His attention to them was his recognition of the fact that Trenholme impressed him as a superior.

"I don't know about a certificate. You've heard of the Bates and Cameron clearin', I s'pose; it's old Cameron that's dead"—again he nudged his elbow coffinward—"and Mr. Bates he wrote a letter to the minister at St. Hennon's."

He took the letter from his pocket as he spoke, and Trenholme perceived that it was addressed in a legible hand and sealed.

"I fancy it's all right," said he doubtfully. He really had not any idea what the railway might require before he took the thing in charge.

Saul did not make answer. He was not quite sure it was all right, but the sort of wrongness he feared was not to be confided to the man into whose care he desired to shove the objectionable burden.

"What did he die of?" asked the young man.

"He fell down, and he seemed for some days as if he'd get over it; then he was took sudden. We put his feet into a hot pot of water and made him drink lye."

"Lye?"

"Ash water—but we gave it him weak."

"Oh."

"But—he died."

"Well, that was sad. Does he leave a wife and family?"

"No," said Saul briefly. "But how much must I pay to have the cars take it the rest of the way?"

Trenholme stepped into his room and lit his lamp that he might better examine his list of rates. Saul came inside to warm himself at the stove. The lamp in that little room was the one spot of yellow light in the whole world that lay in sight, yet outside it was not yet dark, only dull and bitterly cold.

Trenholme stood near the lamp, reading fine print upon a large card. The railway was only just opened and its tariff incomplete as yet. He found no particular provision made for the carriage of coffins. It took him some minutes to consider under what class of freight to reckon this, but he decided not to weigh it. Saul looked at the room, the ham and tea, and at Trenholme, with quiet curiosity in his beady eyes. Outside, the oxen hung their heads and dozed again.

"You see," said Saul, "I'll get there myself with the potash to-morrow night; then I can arrange with the minister."

He had so much difficulty in producing the requisite number of coins for the carriage that it was evident the potash could not be sent by train too; but Trenholme was familiar now with the mode of life that could give time of man and beast so easily, and find such difficulty in producing a little money of far less value. He did remark that, as the cart was to complete the journey, the coffin might as well travel the second day as it had done the first; but, Saul showed reluctance to hear this expostulation, and certainly it was not the station-master's business to insist. The whole discussion did not take long. Saul was evidently in a haste not usual to such as he, and Trenholme felt a natural desire to sit down to his tea, the cooking of which filled the place with grateful perfume. Saul's haste showed itself more in nervous demeanour than in capacity to get through the interview quickly. Even when the money was paid, he loitered awkwardly. Trenholme went into his store-room, and threw open its double doors to the outside air.

"Help me in with it, will you?"

It was the pleasant authority of his tone that roused the other to alacrity. They shouldered the coffin between them. The store-room was fairly large and contained little. Trenholme placed the coffin reverently by itself in an empty corner. He brought a pot of black paint and a brush, and printed on it the necessary address. Then he thought a moment, and added in another place the inscription—"Box containing coffin—to be handled with care."

It is to be remarked how dependent we are for the simplest actions on the teaching we have had. Never having received the smallest instruction as to how to deal with such a charge, it cost him effort of thought and some courage to put on this inscription. Saul watched, divided between curious interest and his desire to be away.

"You've got another coffin inside this case, of course?" said the station-master, struck with a sudden doubt.

To him, polished wood and silver plating seemed such a natural accessory of death that he had, without thought, always associated the one idea with the other.

"No, that's all there is. We made it too large by mistake, but we put a bed quilt in for stuffing."

"But, my man, it isn't very well put together; the lid isn't tight."

"No—neither it is." Saul had already sidled to the door.

Trenholme felt it with his thumb and fingers.

"It's perfectly loose," he cried. "It's only got a few nails in the lid. You ought to have put in screws, you know."

"Yes, but we hadn't got any; we had used the last screws we had for the hinge of a door. I'm going to buy some to put in at St. Hennon's. Good-day."

As they spoke, Saul had been going to his cart, and Trenholme following, with authoritative displeasure in his mien.

"It's exceedingly careless—upon my word. Come back and nail it up firmer," cried he.

But Saul drove off.

The young station-master went back to the store-room. He looked at the box for a moment, with annoyance still in his mind. The air that he had would have sat well upon a man with servants under him, but was somewhat futile in the keeper of a desolate railway-station. He had not been able to command the man, and he certainly could not command the coffin to nail itself more firmly together. After all, his tea waited. Somewhat sullenly he barred the double door on the inside, and went back to his own room and his evening meal.

The room was filled with the steam of the boiling tea as he poured it out, and the smoke of the ham gravy. With the strength of youth and health he thrust aside the annoyance of his official position from his present mind, and set himself to his supper with considerable satisfaction.

He had not, however, eaten a single morsel before he heard a sound in the next room which caused him to sit erect and almost rigid, forgetting his food. He had been so pre-occupied a minute before with the carelessness of those who constructed the coffin that he had left the inner door between the two rooms ajar. It was through this that the sound came, and it seemed to his quickened sense to proceed from the corner in which the pinewood box reposed, but he hastily went over all the contents of the room to think if any of them could be falling or shifting among themselves. The sound still continued; it seemed as if something was being gently worked to and fro, as in a soft socket. His imagination was not very quick to represent impossible dangers, nor had he in him more cowardice than dwells in most brave men. He did not allow himself to conclude that he heard the coffin-lid being opened from the inside. He took his lamp and went to see what was wrong.

The sound ceased as he moved. When the light of the lamp was in the next room all was perfectly silent. For almost half a minute he stood still, shading his eyes from the lamp, while, with every disagreeable sensation crowding upon him, he observed distinctly that, although the nails were still holding it loosely in place, the lid of the coffin was raised half an inch, more than that indeed, at the top.

"Now, look here, you know—this won't do," said Trenholme, in loud authoritative tones; so transported was he by the disagreeableness of his situation that, for the moment, he supposed himself speaking to the man with whom he had just spoken. Then, realising that that man, although gone, was yet probably within call, he set down the lamp hastily and ran out.

It seemed to him remarkable that Saul and the oxen could have gone so far along the road, although of course they were still plainly in sight. He shouted, but received no answer. He raised his voice and shouted again and again, with force and authority. He ran, as he shouted, about twenty paces. In return he only heard Saul's own commands to his oxen. Whether the man was making so much noise himself that he could not hear, or whether he heard and would not attend, Trenholme could not tell, but he felt at the moment too angry to run after him farther. It was not his place to wait upon this carter and run his errands! Upon this impulse he turned again.

However, as he walked back, the chill frost striking his bare head, he felt more diffidence and perplexity about his next action than was at all usual to him. He knew that he had no inclination to investigate the contents of the box. All the curiosity stirred within him still failed to create the least desire to pry further; but, on the other hand, he could not think it right to leave the matter as it was. A strong feeling of duty commanding him to open the coffin and see that all was right, and a stout aversion to performing this duty, were the main elements of his consciousness during the minutes in which he retraced his steps to the house.

He had set down the lamp on a package just within the baggage-room door, so that his own room, by which he entered, was pretty dark, save for the fire showing through the damper of the stove. Trenholme stopped in it just one moment to listen; then, unwilling to encourage hesitation in himself, went through the next door. His hand was outstretched to take the lamp, his purpose was clearly defined—to go to the far corner and examine the coffin-lid. Hand and thought arrested, he stopped on the threshold, for the lid was thrown off the coffin, and beside it stood a figure.

The lamp, which did not throw very much light across the comparatively large empty room, was so placed that what light there was came directly in Trenholme's eyes. Afterwards he remembered this, and wondered whether all that he thought he saw had, in fact, been clearly seen; but at the moment he thought nothing of the inadequacy of light or of the glare in his eyes; he only knew that there, in the far corner beside the empty coffin, stood a white figure—very tall to his vision, very lank, with white drapery that clothed it round the head like a cowl and spread upon the floor around its feet. But all that was not what arrested his attention and chilled his strong courage, it was the eyes of the figure, which were clearly to be seen—large, frightened, fierce eyes, that met his own with a courage and terror in them which seemed to quell his own courage and impart terror to him. Above them he saw the form of a pallid brow clearly moulded. He did not remember the rest of the face—perhaps the white clothes wrapped it around. While the eyes struck him with awe, he had a curious idea that the thing had been interrupted in arranging its own winding sheet, and was waiting until he retired again to finish its toilet. This was merely a grotesque side-current of thought. He was held and awed by the surprise of the face, for those eyes seemed to him to belong to no earthly part of the old man who, he had been told, lay there dead. Drawn by death or exhaustion as the face around them looked, the eyes themselves appeared unearthly in their large brightness.

He never knew whether his next action was urged more by fear, or by the strong sense of justice that had first prompted him to call back the carter as the proper person to deal with the contents of the coffin. Whatever the motive, it acted quickly. He drew back; closed the door; locked it on the side of his own room; and set out again to bring back the man. This time he should hear and should return. Trenholme did not spare his voice, and the wide lonely land resounded to his shout. And this time he was not too proud to run, but went at full speed and shouted too.

Saul undoubtedly saw and heard him, for he faced about and looked. Perhaps something in the very way in which Trenholme ran suggested why he ran. Instead of responding to the command to return, he himself began to run away and madly to goad his oxen. There are those who suppose oxen yoked to a cart cannot run, but on occasion they can plunge into a wild heavy gallop that man is powerless to curb. The great strength latent in these animals was apparent now, for, after their long day's draught, they seemed to become imbued with their driver's panic, and changed from walking to dashing madly down the road. It was a long straight incline of three miles from the station to the settlement called Turrifs. Saul, unable to keep up with the cattle, flung himself upon the cart, and, with great rattling, was borne swiftly away from his pursuer. Young Trenholme stopped when he had run a mile. So far he had gone, determined that, if the man would not stop for his commands, he should be collared and dragged back by main force to face the thing which he had brought, but by degrees even the angry young man perceived the futility of chasing mad cattle. He drew up panting, and, turning, walked back once more. He did not walk slowly; he was in no frame to loiter and his run had brought such a flush of heat upon him that it would have been madness to linger in the bitter cold. At the same time, while his legs moved rapidly, his mind certainly hesitated—in fact, it almost halted, unable to foresee in the least what its next opinion or decision would be. He was not a man to pause in order to make up his mind. He had a strong feeling of responsibility towards his little station and its inexplicable tenant, therefore he hurried back against his will. His only consolation in this backward walk was the key of the door he had locked, which in haste he had taken out and still held in his hand. Without attempting to decide whether the thing he had seen was of common clay or of some lighter substance, he still did not lend his mind with sufficient readiness to ghostly theory to imagine that his unwelcome guest could pass through locked doors.

Nor did the ghost, if ghost it was, pass through unopened doors. The flaw in Trenholme's comfortable theory was that he had forgotten that the large double door, which opened from the baggage room to the railway track, was barred on the inside. When he got back to his place he found this door ajar, and neither in his own room, nor in the baggage room, nor in the coffin, was there sign of human presence, living or dead.

All the world about lay in the clear white twilight. The blueberry flats, the bramble-holts, were red. The clouded sky was white, except for that metallic blue tinge in the west, through which, in some thin places, a pale glow of yellower light was now visible, the last rays of the day that had set. It was this world on which the young Englishman looked as, amazed and somewhat affrighted, he walked round the building, searching on all sides for the creature that could hardly yet, had it run away in such a level land, be wholly out of sight.

He went indoors again to make sure that nothing was there, and this time he made a discovery—his tea was gone from his cup. He gave a shudder of disgust, and, leaving his food untouched, put on coat and cap, and went out shutting his door behind him. His spirits sank. It seemed to him that, had it been midnight instead of this blank, even daylight, had his unearthly-looking visitant acted in more unearthly fashion, the circumstances would have had less weird force to impress his mind.

We can, after all, only form conjectures regarding inexplicable incidents from the successive impressions that have been made upon us. This man was not at all given to love of romance or superstition, yet the easy explanation that some man, for purpose of trick or crime, had hidden in the box, did not seem to him to fit the circumstances. He could not make himself believe that the eyes he had seen belonged to a living man; on the other hand, he found it impossible to conceive of a tea-drinking ghost.

About a quarter of a mile away there was a long grove of birch trees, the projecting spur of a second growth of forest that covered the distant rising ground. Towards this Trenholme strode, for it was the only covert near in which a human being could travel unseen. It was more by the impulse of energy, however, than by reasonable hope that he came there, for by the time he had reached the edge of the trees, it was beginning to grow dark, even in the open plain.

No one who has not seen birch trees in their undisturbed native haunts can know how purely white, unmarred by stain or tear, their trunks can be. Trenholme looked in among them. They grew thickly. White—white—it seemed in the gathering gloom that each was whiter than the other; and Trenholme, remembering that his only knowledge of the figure he sought was that it was wrapped in white, recognised the uselessness, the absurdity even, of hoping to find it here, of all places.

Then he went back to the road and started for Turrifs Settlement.



CHAPTER IX.

The settlement called "Turrifs" was not a village; it was only a locality, in which there were a good many houses within the radius of a few square miles.

When Alec Trenholme started off the third time to reproach the recreant driver of the ox-cart, he had no intention of again dealing with him directly. He bent his steps to the largest house in the neighbourhood, the house of the family called Turrifs; whose present head, being the second of his generation on the same farm, held a position of loosely acknowledged pre-eminence. Turrif was a Frenchman, who had had one Scotch forefather through whom his name had come. This, indeed, was the case with many of his neighbours.

Trenholme had had various negotiations with this Turrif and his neighbours, but he had only once been to the house he was now seeking and in the darkness, which had fallen completely during his three-mile walk, he was a little puzzled to find it quickly. Its wooden and weather-greyed walls glimmered but faintly in the night; it was only by following the line of log fences through the flat treeless fields that he found himself at last full in the feeble rays of the candle-light that peeped from its largest window. Trenholme knocked.

Turrif himself opened the door. He was a man of middle age, thick-set but thin, with that curious grey shade on a healthy skin that so often pertains to Frenchmen. For a moment his shrewd but mild countenance peered into the darkness; then, holding wide the door and making welcome motion with his hand, he bade Trenholme enter.

Trenholme could not speak French, but he knew that Turrif could understand enough English to comprehend his errand if he told it slowly and distinctly. Slowly and distinctly, therefore, he recounted all that had befallen him since Saul arrived at the station; but such telling of such a story could not be without some embarrassment, caused by the growing perception, on the part of both men, of its extraordinary nature.

"Eh—h!" said the Frenchman during the telling. It was a prolonged syllable, denoting meditative astonishment, and it brought another listener, for the wife came and stood by her husband, who interpreted the story to her, and shortly a girl of thirteen also drew near and stood listening to her father's interpretation. Trenholme began to wonder whether the elder listeners were placing any confidence in his word; but the doubt was probably in his mind only, for an honest man does not estimate the subtle force of his own honesty.

Turrif and his wife listened to all that was said, and looked at each other, and looked at him, and asked him a good many questions. They were neither of them hasty, but, as the woman's manner was the more vivacious, so her questions, when translated, showed a somewhat quicker wit. When all was said, like wise people, they pronounced no sentence, either upon Trenholme's actions or upon those of the creature that had inhabited the coffin; but they remarked that if the carter had committed no evil he would not have run away. They said that they had some knowledge of this man, whom they called "Monsieur Saul," and that he was a fellow of little worth. They agreed that Turrif should go with Trenholme, as requested, to bring the man to book.

On crossing the threshold of the house Trenholme had come at once into a large, long room, which composed the whole lower flat of the dwelling, as appeared from the windows on both sides and from the fact that the staircase went up from one end of it. It was a comfortable, well-warmed room, containing evidences of all the various industries of the family, from the harness that hung on the wall and the basket of carded wool by the spinning-wheel, to the bucket of cow's mash that stood warming by the stove at the foot of the baby's cradle. At the far end a large table, that held the candle, had a meal spread upon it, and also some open dog's-eared primers, at which small children were spelling audibly.

When the conference, which had taken place near the door, was over, the wife went back to her children and her lighted table, and Trenholme made as if to open the door, supposing that Turrif would walk away with him.

"Eh—non," said the older man, with a kindly smile. "Pas encore," and taking Trenholme by the arm, he pushed him gently towards the table. "I weel get out my 'orse," said he, in slow, broken English. "You have had enough walking to-day, and I have had enough work. A present"—with a gesture toward the table.

He made Trenholme sit down at the table. There was a very large pan of thick sour milk on it, and a loaf of grey bread. Bits of this bread were set round the edge of the table, near the children, who munched at them.

Turrif gave Trenholme a bit of bread, cutting into the loaf as men only do in whose lives bread is not scarce. With a large spoon he took a quantity of the thick rich cream from the top of the milk and put a saucer of it before the visitor. Trenholme ate it with his bread, and found it not as sour as he expected, and on the whole very good. Turrif, eating bread as he went, carried the harness out of the house.

As there was no one left for him to talk to, Trenholme grew more observant. He remarked the sweetness and sense in the face of the house-mother as she bestowed their suppers upon the children. She was still comparatively young, but there was no beauty of youth about her, only the appearance of strength that is produced by toil and endurance before these two have worn the strength away. But, in spite of this look of strength, the face was not hard—no, nor sad; and there was a certain latent poetry, too, about the gesture and look with which she gave food to the little ones, as if the giving and receiving were a free thing, and not the mere necessity of life. Her manner of giving them supper was to push the large pan of curded milk close to the edge of the table, where the little ones were clustered, and let them, four of them at once, lap out of the side of it with their little spoons. At the same time she pushed the creasy yellow cover of cream to the farther side, with a watchful glance at Trenholme's saucer, evidently meaning that it was kept for him. She and the elder boy and girl waited to sup till the little ones had finished.

Trenholme endeavoured to say that he should not want any more cream, but she did not understand his words. He would have felt more concerned at the partiality shown him if the youngsters had looked more in need of cream; but they were, in truth, so round-faced and chubby, and so evidently more pleased to stare at him with their big, black eyes than grieved to lose the richest part of their milk, that he felt distress would have been thrown way. All four little ones wore round knitted caps, and their little heads, at uneven heights, their serious eyes rolling upon him, and their greedy little mouths supping in the milk the while, formed such an odd picture round the white disk of the milk-pan that Trenholme could not help laughing. The greedy little feeders, without dropping their spoons, looked to their mother to see whether they ought to be frightened or not at such conduct on the stranger's part, but seeing her smile, they concluded that they were safe.

Upon Trenholme's making further overtures of friendship, one or two of them began to smile: the smile was infectious, it spread to all four, and they began to laugh, and laughed in baby fashion quite immoderately. Their mother considered this a sign that they had had enough, and took their spoons from them. As they scattered from the table Trenholme perceived that, though their heads were covered, their feet were not. Their whole costume consisted of a short blue cotton nightgown and the little knitted cap.

When Turrif came in to say that the horse was ready, Trenholme made an effort to present his thanks in saying good-bye to the mistress of the house, but she did not seem to expect or take much notice of these manners. As he went out of the door he looked back to see her bending over the baby in the cradle, and he noticed for the first time that above the cradle there was a little shrine fastened to the wall. It was decked with a crucifix and paper flowers; above was a coloured picture of the Virgin.

Trenholme, whose nerves were perhaps more susceptible than usual by reason of the creature set at large by the opening of the coffin, wondered that Turrif should leave his wife and children alone so willingly, without any effort to bar the house and without objection on their part. He knew there was no other house within half a mile, and the darkness that lay on the flat land appeared to give room for a thousand dangers.

He expressed this surprise to Turrif, who replied placidly that the good saints took care of women and children—a reply which probably did not go to prove the man's piety so much as the habitual peace of the neighbourhood.

The vehicle to which Turrif had harnessed his pony was a small hay cart—that is to say, a cart consisting of a platform on two wheels, and a slight paling along each side intended to give some support to its contents. It was much more lightly made than Saul's ox-cart. The wheels went over the frozen ruts at a good pace, and the inmates were badly jolted. Trenholme would rather have walked, but he had already observed that the Canadian rustic never walked if he could possibly avoid it, and he supposed there must be some reason for this in the nature of the country. The jolting made talking disagreeable; indeed, when he attempted conversation he found his words reminded him forcibly of times when, in the nursery of his childhood, he had noticed the cries of baby companions gradually grow less by reason of the rapid vibrations of the nurse's knee. He kept silence therefore, and wondered whether Turrif or the pony was guiding, so carelessly did they go forth into the darkness, turning corners and avoiding ghostly fences with slovenly ease.

It soon appeared that Turrif knew no more than Trenholme where to find Saul; his only method of seeking was to inquire at each house. It was not, however, necessary to go into each house; the cart was only brought sufficiently near upon the road for a lusty shout to reach the family inside. The first house Trenholme hardly saw in the darkness; at one or two others he had a good view of the interior through an open door or window. From each door men and boys, sometimes women and children, sallied forth eagerly into the cold night to see what was wanted, and to each inquiry the phlegmatic Turrif repeated Trenholme's tale. Trenholme would have given a good deal to be able fully to understand what was said. There was much conversation. From each house one or two men joined them, and in one case, from a squalid-looking doorway, a loud-speaking and wilful girl came out and insisted on getting into the cart. She talked to the men and shrieked loudly when any object, such as a barn or a tree, loomed dimly at the side of the road. Two of the men brought a lantern and walked behind. When they came to the house whose roof was found to cover Saul, a party of eight entered to hear and pronounce upon his explanation. Certainly, if Trenholme had had the management of the business, he would not have proceeded in this fashion, but he had no choice.

The carter had been drinking whisky—not much as yet, but enough to give him a greater command of words than he ordinarily possessed. When he saw Trenholme among the band who were inquiring for him, he manifested distinct signs of terror, but not at his visitors; his ghastly glances were at door and window, and he drew nearer to the company for protection. It was plainly what they had to tell, not what they had to demand, that excited him to trembling; the assembled neighbourhood seemed to strike him in the light of a safeguard. When, however, he found the incomers were inclined to accuse him of trick or knavery, he spoke out bravely enough.

Old Cameron had died—they knew old Cameron?

Yes, the men assented to this knowledge.

And after he had been dead two days and one night, Mr. Bates—they knew Mr. Bates?—

Assent again.

—Had put him in the coffin with his own hands and nailed down the lid. He was quite dead—perfectly dead.

On hearing this the bold girl who had come with them shrieked again, and two of the younger men took her aside, and, holding her head over a bucket in the corner poured water on it, a process which silenced her.

"And," said Turrif, quietly speaking in French, "what then?"

"What then?" said Saul; "Then to-day I brought him in the cart."

"And buried him on the road, because he was heavy and useless, and let some friend of yours play with the box?" continued Turrif, with an insinuating smile.

Saul swore loudly that this was not the case, at which the men shrugged their shoulders and looked at Trenholme.

To him the scene and the circumstances were very curious. The house into which they had come was much smaller than Turrif's. The room was a dismal one, with no sign of woman or child about it. Its atmosphere was thick with the smoke of tobacco and the fumes of hot whisky, in which Saul and his host had been indulging. A soft, homemade candle, guttering on the table, shed a yellow smoky light upon the faces of the bearded men who stood around it. Saul, perhaps from an awkward feeling of trembling in his long legs, had resumed his seat, his little eyes more beady, his little round cheeks more ruddy, than ever, his whiskers now entirely disregarded in the importance of his self-vindication.

Too proud for asseveration, Trenholme had not much more to say. He stated briefly that he could not be responsible for the contents of a box when the contents had run away, nor for any harm that the runaway might do to the neighbourhood, adding that the man who had consigned the box to his care must now come and take it away.

He spoke with a fine edge of authority in his voice, as a man speaks who feels himself superior to his circumstances and companions. He did not look at the men as he spoke, for he was not yet sure whether they gave him the credence for which he would not sue, and he did not care to see if they derided him.

"I sink," said Turriff, speaking slowly in English now,—"I sink we cannot make that mee-racle be done."

"What miracle?" asked Trenholme.

Those of the men who understood any English laughed.

"Se miracle to make dis genteel-man, M. Saul, fetch se box."

Trenholme then saw that Saul's shudderings had come, upon him again at the mere suggestion.

"What am I to do, then?" he asked.

At this the men had a good deal of talk, and Turrif interpreted the decision.

"We sink it is for M. Bates to say what shall be done wit se box. We sink we take se liberte to say to sis man—'Stay here till some one go to-morrow and fetch M. Bates.'"

This struck Trenholme as just, and any objection he felt to spending the night under the same roof with the mysterious coffin did not seem worth remark.

As for Saul, he professed himself satisfied with the arrangement. He was only too glad to have some one brought who would share his responsibility and attest, in part at least, his tale.

"Well," said Trenholme, "I'll go then."

He felt for the key of the station in his pocket, and would have thanked the men and bid them "good evening," had they not, rather clamorously, deprecated his intention. Living, as they did, far from all organised justice, there was in them a rough sense of responsibility for each other which is not found in townsmen.

Trenholme shortly made out that they had decided that two of them should help him to guard the station that night, and were only disputing as to who should be allotted for the purpose.

"It isn't at all necessary," said Trenholme.

"We sink," said Turrif, with his deliberate smile, "it will be best; for if you have not been wandering in your mind, some one else's body has been wandering."

Trenholme went back to his station in the not unpleasant company of two sturdy farmers, one young and vivacious, the other old and slow. They found the place just as he had left it. The coffin was empty, save for the sweet-scented cushion of roughly covered pine tassels on which the body of the gaunt old Cameron had been laid to rest.

The three men sat by the stove in the other room. The smoke from their pipes dimmed the light of the lamp. The quiet sounds of their talk and movements never entirely took from them the consciousness of the large dark silence that lay without. No footfall broke it. When they heard the distant rush of the night train, they all three went out to see its great yellow eye come nearer and nearer.

Trenholme had one or two packages to put in the van. He and his companions exchanged greetings with the men of the train.

Just as he was handing in his last package, a gentlemanly voice accosted him.

"Station-master!" said a grey-haired, military-looking traveller, "Station-master! Is there any way of getting milk here?"

A lady stood behind the gentleman. They were both on the platform at the front of a passenger car.

"It's for a child, you know," explained the gentleman.

Trenholme remembered his untouched tea, and confessed to the possession of a little milk.

"Oh, hasten, hasten!" cried the lady, "for the guard says the train will move on in a moment."

As Trenholme knew that the little French conductor thus grandly quoted did not know when the train would start, and as in his experience the train, whatever else it did, never hastened, he did not move with the sudden agility that was desired. Before he turned he heard a loud-whispered aside from the lady: "Tell him we'll pay him double—treble, for it; I have heard they are avaricious."

When Trenholme had started the train he jumped upon it with the milk. He found himself in a long car. The double seats on either side were filled with sleepy people. There was a passage down the middle, and the lamps above shone dimly through dirty glasses. Trenholme could not immediately see any one like the man who had spoken to him outside, but he did spy out a baby, and, jug in hand, he went and stood a moment near it.

The lady who held the baby sat upright, with her head leaning against the side of the car. She was dozing, and the baby was also asleep. It was a rosy, healthy child, about a year old. The lady's handsome face suggested she was about seven-and-twenty. Among all the shawl-wrapped heaps of restless humanity around them, this pair looked very lovely together. The dusty lamplight fell upon them. They seemed to Trenholme like a beautiful picture of mother and child, such as one sometimes comes upon among the evil surroundings of old frames and hideous prints.

Said Trenholme aloud: "I don't know who asked me for the milk."

The lady stirred and looked at him indifferently. She seemed very beautiful. Men see with different eyes in these matters, but in Trenholme's eyes this lady was faultless, and her face and air touched some answering mood of reverence in his heart. It rarely happens, however, that we can linger gazing at the faces which possess for us the most beauty. The train was getting up speed, and Trenholme, just then catching sight of the couple who had asked for the milk, had no choice but to pass down the car and pour it into the jar they held.

The gentleman put his hand in his pocket. "Oh no," said Trenholme, and went out. But the more lively lady reopened the door behind him, and threw a coin on the ground as he was descending.

By the sound it had made Trenholme found it, and saw by the light of the passing car that it was an English shilling. When the train was gone he stood a minute where it had carried him, some hundred feet from the station, and watched it going on into the darkness.

Afterwards, when his companions had composed themselves to sleep, and he lay sleepless, listening to all that could be heard in the silent night, curiously enough it was not upon the exciting circumstances of the early evening that he mused chiefly, but upon the people he had seen in the night train.

A seemingly little thing has sometimes the power to change those currents that set one way and another within a man, making him satisfied or dissatisfied with this or that. By chance, as it seems, a song is sung, a touch is given, a sight revealed, and man, like a harp hung to the winds, is played upon, and the music is not that which he devises. So it was that Trenholme's encounter in the dusty car with the beautiful woman who had looked upon him so indifferently had struck a chord which was like a plaintive sigh for some better purpose in life than he was beating out of this rough existence. It was not a desire for greater pleasure that her beauty had aroused in him, but a desire for nobler action—such was the power of her face.

The night passed on; no footfall broke the silence. The passing train was the only episode of his vigil.

In the morning when Trenholme looked out, the land was covered deep in snow.



CHAPTER X.

When the night train left Turrifs Station it thundered on into the darkness slowly enough, but, what with bumping over its rough rails and rattling its big cars, it seemed anxious to deceive its passengers into the idea that it was going at great speed. A good number of its cars were long vans for the carriage of freight; behind these came two for the carriage of passengers. These were both labelled "First Class." One was devoted to a few men, who were smoking; the other was the one from which Trenholme had descended. Its seats, upholstered in red velvet, were dusty from the smoke and dirt of the way; its atmosphere, heated by a stove at one end, was dry and oppressive. It would have been impossible, looking at the motley company lounging in the lamplight, to have told their relations one to another; but it was evident that an uncertain number of young people, placed near the lady who held the baby, were of the same party; they slept in twos and threes, leaning on one another's shoulders and covered by the same wraps. It was to seats left vacant near this group that the man and his wife who had procured the milk returned. The man, who was past middle life, betook himself to his seat wearily, and pulled his cap over his eyes without speaking. His wife deposited the mug of milk in a basket, speaking in low but brisk tones to the lady who held the baby.

"There, Sophia; I've had to pay a shilling for a cupful, but I've got some milk."

"I should have thought you would have been surer to get good milk at a larger station, mamma." She did not turn as she spoke, perhaps for fear of waking the sleeping baby.

The other, who was the infant's mother, was rapidly tying a shawl round her head and shoulders. She was a little stout woman, who in middle age had retained her brightness of eye and complexion. Her features were regular, and her little nose had enough suggestion of the eagle's beak in its form to preserve her countenance from insignificance.

"Oh, my dear," she returned, "as to the milk—the young man looked quite clean, I assure you; and then such a large country as the cows have to roam in!"

Having delivered herself of this energetic whisper, she subsided below the level of the seat back, leaving Sophia to sit and wonder in a drowsy muse whether the mother supposed that the value of a cow's milk would be increased if, like Io, she could prance across a continent.

Sophia Rexford sat upright, with the large baby in her arms and a bigger child leaning on her shoulder. Both children were more or less restless; but their sister was not restless, she sat quite still. The attitude of her tall figure had the composure and strength in it which do not belong to first youth. Hers was a fine face; it might even be called beautiful; but no one now would call it pretty—the skin was too colourless, the expression too earnest.

Her eyes took on the look that tells of inward, rather than outward, vision. Her thoughts were such as she would not have told to any one, but not because of evil in them.

This was the lady to whom Robert Trenholme, the master of the college at Chellaston, had written his letter; and she was thinking of that letter now, and of him, pondering much that, by some phantasy of dreams, she should have been suddenly reminded of him by the voice of the man who had passed through the car with the milk.

Her mind flitted lightly to the past; to a season she had once spent in a fashionable part of London, and to her acquaintance with the young curate, who was receiving some patronage from the family with whom she was visiting. She had been a beauty then; every one danced to the tune she piped, and this curate—a mere fledgeling—had danced also. That was nothing. No, it was nothing that he had, for a time, followed lovesick in her train—she never doubted that he had had that sickness, although he had not spoken of it—all that had been notable in the acquaintance was that she, who at that time had played with the higher aims and impulses of life, had thought, in her youthful arrogance, that she discerned in this man something higher and finer than she saw in other men. She had been pleased to make something of a friend of him, condescending to advise and encourage him, pronouncing upon his desire to seek a wider field in a new country, and calling it good. Later, when he was gone, and life for her had grown more quiet for lack of circumstances to feed excitement, she had wondered sometimes if this man had recovered as perfectly from that love-sickness as others had done. That was all—absolutely all. Her life had lately come again into indirect relations with him through circumstances over which neither he nor she had had any control; and now, when she was about to see him, he had taken upon him to write and pick up the thread of personal friendship again and remind her of the past.

In what mood had he written this reminder? Sophia Rexford would surely not have been a woman of the world if she had not asked herself this question. Did he think that on seeing her again he would care for her as before? Did he imagine that intervening years, which had brought misfortune to her family, would bring her more within his grasp? Or was his intention in writing still less pleasing to her than this? Had he written, speaking so guardedly of past friendship, with the desire to ward off any hope she might cherish that he had remained unmarried for her sake? Sophia's lips did not curl in scorn over this last suggestion, because she was holding her little court of inquiry in a mental region quite apart from her emotions.

This woman's character was, however, revealed in this, that she passed easily from her queries as to what the man in question did, or would be likely to, think of her. A matter of real, possibly of paramount, interest to her was to wonder whether his life had really expanded into the flower of which she had thought the bud gave promise. She tried to look back and estimate the truth of her youthful instinct, which had told her he was a man above other men. And if that had been so, was he less or more now than he had been then? Had he been a benefit to the new country to which he had come? Had the move from the Old World to this—the decision in which she had rashly aided with youthful advice—been a good or a bad thing for him and for the people to whom he had come?

From this she fell a-thinking upon her own life as, in the light of Trenholme's letter, the contrast of her present womanly self with the bright, audacious girl of that past time was set strongly before her. It is probably as rare for any one really to wish to be the self of any former time—to wish to be younger—as it is really to wish to be any one else. Sophia certainly did not dream of wishing to be younger. We are seldom just to ourselves—either past or present: Sophia had a fine scorn for what she remembered herself to have been; she had greater respect for her present self, because there was less of outward show, and more of reality.

It might have been a quarter of an hour, it might have been more, since the train had last started, but now it stopped rather suddenly. Sophia's father murmured sleepily against the proximity of the stations. He was reclining in the seat just behind her.

Sophia looked out of her window. She saw no light. By-and-by some men came up the side of the track with lanterns. She saw by the light they held that they were officials of the train, and that the bank on which they walked looked perfectly wild and untrodden. She turned her head toward her father.

"We are not at any station," she remarked.

"Ay!" He got up with cumbrous haste, as a horse might rise. He, too, looked out of the window, then round at his women and children, and clad himself in an immense coat.

"I'll just go out," he whispered, "and see how things are. If there's anything wrong I'll let you know."

He intended his whisper to be something akin to silence; he intended to exercise the utmost consideration for those around him; but his long remark was of the piercing quality that often appertains to whispers, and, as he turned his back, two of the children woke, and a young girl in the seat in front of Sophia sat up, her grey eyes dilated with alarm.

"Sophia," she said, with a low sob, "oh, Sophia, is there something wrong?"

"Be quiet!" said Sophia, tartly.

The snoring mother now shut her mouth with a snap. In a twinkling she was up and lively.

"Has your father got on his overcoat, Sophia? Is there danger?" She darted from one side of the carriage to another, rubbing the moisture off each window with a bit of her shawl and speaking with rapidity.

Then she ran out of the car. Two of the children followed her. The others, reassured by Sophia's stillness, huddled together at the windows, shivering in the draught of cold air that came from the open door.

After some minutes Sophia's father came in again, leading his wife and children with an old-world gallantry that was apparent even in these unsatisfactory circumstances. He had a slow impressive way of speaking that made even his unimportant words appear important. In the present case, as soon as he began to speak most of the people in the car came near to hear.

Some obstruction, he said, had fallen across the line. It was not much; the men would soon remove it. An Indian woman, who lived near, had heroically lit a fire, and thus stopped the train in time. There was no other train due upon the road for many hours. There was no danger. There might have been a bad accident, but they had been providentially preserved.

His utterance greatly impressed the bystanders, for he was an important-looking gentleman; but long before he had finished speaking, the bright-eyed little mother had set her children into their various seats again, pulled their jackets close in front, rolled up their feet, patted their caps down on their heads, and, in fact, by a series of pokes and pulls, composed her family to sleep, or, at least, started them as far on the way to sleep as a family can be sent by such a method.

Quiet settled on the car again. Soon the train went on. Sophia Rexford, looking out, could dimly discern the black outline of wood and river. At length the window grew thicker and opaque. There was no sound of rain or hail, and yet something from without muffled the glass. Sophia slept again.

When the dawn of day at length stole upon them she found that snow had been upon the glass and had melted. Snow lay thick on the ledges of the windows outside. Yet in that part of the country in which they now were there was none on the ground. They seemed to have run a race with a snowstorm in the night, and to have gained it for the nonce. But the sight struck her sadly. The winter, which she dreaded, was evidently on their track.

It was in the first grey hour of dawn that the train steamed into the station, which was the junction for Quebec, and passengers bound for the English settlements south of that city were obliged to change.

For a few minutes before the train stopped the Rexford family had been booted and spurred, so to speak, ready for the transfer. Each young person was warmly buttoned up and tied into a warlike-looking muffler. Each had several packages in charge. A youth came in from the smoking-car and attached himself to them. When the train had come to a standstill the little French conductor was energetic in helping them to descend.

The family was very large, and, moreover, it was lively; its members were as hard to count as chickens of a brood. Sophia, holding the youngest child and the tickets, endeavoured to explain their number to the conductor.

"There are three children that go free," she said. "Then two little boys at half fare—that makes one ticket. Myself and three young ladies—make five tickets; my brother and father and mother—eight."

The sharp Frenchman looked dubious. "Three children free; two at half fare," he repeated. He was trying to see them all as he spoke.

Sophia repeated her count with terse severity.

"There was not another young lady?"

"Certainly not."

And Sophia was not a woman to be trifled with, so he punched the tickets and went back into his car.

Wooden platforms, a station hotel built of wood, innumerable lines of black rails on which freight trains stood idle, the whole place shut in by a high wooden fence—this was the prospect which met the eyes of the English travellers, and seen in the first struggling light of morning, in the bitter cold of a black frost, it was not a cheerful one. The Rexford family, however, were not considering the prospect; they were intent only on finding the warm passenger-car of the train that was to take them the rest of their journey, and which they had been assured would be waiting here to receive them.

This train, however, was not immediately to be seen, and, in the meantime, the broad platform, which was dusted over with dry frost crystals, was the scene of varied activities.

From the baggage-car of the train they had left, a great number of boxes and bags, labelled "Rexford," were being thrown down in a violent manner, which greatly distressed some of the girls and their father.

"Not that way. That is not the way. Don't you know that is not the way boxes should be handled?" shouted Captain Rexford sternly, and then, seeing that no one paid the slightest attention to his words, he was fain to turn away from the cause of his agitation. He took a brisk turn down the empty end of the platform, and stood there as a man might who felt that the many irritations of life were growing too much for his self-control.

The little boys found occupation because they observed that the white condensed vapour which came from their mouths with each breath bore great resemblance to the white steam a slowly moving engine was hissing forth. They therefore strutted in imitation of the great machine, emitting large puffs from their little warm mouths, and making the sound which a groom makes when he plies the curry-comb. The big brother was assisting in the unloading of a large carriage from an open van in the rear of the train, and Mrs. Rexford, neat, quick-moving, and excitable, after watching this operation for a few minutes and issuing several orders as to how it was to be done, moved off in lively search of the next train. She ran about, a few steps in each direction, looking at the various railway lines, and then accosted a tall, thin man who was standing still, doing nothing.

"Is the train for the Eastern Townships here? We were told it would be here waiting to receive us at daybreak. Is it here? Is it ready?"

Seeing from the man's face, as she had already seen from the empty tracks, that no such train was in readiness, she ran at one of the puffing and strutting children whose muffler was loose, and tied it up again. Then, struck by another thought, she returned to the impassive man whom she had before addressed.

"This is really the actual dawn, I suppose?" she asked, with an air of importance. "I have read that in some countries there is what is called a 'false dawn' that comes before the real one, you know."

Compelled now to speak, the man, who was a New Englander, took a small stick from between his teeth and said: "As far as I know, marm, this morning is genuine."

"Oh really"—with abatement of interest in her tone—"I thought perhaps there might be that sort of thing in Canada, you know—we certainly read of Northern Lights. Very strange that our train isn't here!"

The Yankee took the trouble to reply again, hardly moving a muscle of his face. "Keep a good heart, marm; it may come along yet, a-ridin' on these same Northern Lights."

"Riding on—? I beg your pardon—on what, did you say?" she asked eagerly.

At this the grey-eyed girl who had been frightened in the night plucked her by the sleeve and pulled her away. "Don't you see he's making fun of you, mamma?"

Besides the grey-eyed girl, who wore short frocks, there were two other girls in the first bloom of young-womanhood. One of these, having overheard the conversation, ran and told the other.

"Just because we happened to read of such a thing in that book of Asiatic travel! Isn't it absurd? And there's papa fuming at the other end of the station."

Both girls giggled.

"I know quite well that people will think us all crazy," urged the first speaker. Then they laughed again, not unhappily.

"There's not a doubt of it," gasped the other.

These two girls were very much alike, but one wore a red cloak and the other a blue one. In spite of the fact that they were somewhat bloused and a little grimy, and their pretty little noses were now nipped red by the icy morning, they looked attractive as they stood, pressing their handkerchiefs to their mouths and bending with laughter. The extent of their mirth was proportioned to their youth and excitement, not to the circumstances which called it forth.

The train they had left now moved off. Most of the other passengers who had alighted with them had taken themselves away in various directions, as travellers are apt to do, without any one else noticing exactly what had become of them.

Sophia, with the child in her arms, made her way to a mean waiting-room, and thither the children followed her. The mother, having at last ascertained the train would be ready in the course of time, soon came in also, and the father and brother, hearing it would not be ready for at least a quarter of an hour, went away to see the town.

There was a stove burning hotly in the small waiting-room. The only other furniture was a bench all round the wall. The family, that had entered somewhat tumultuously, almost filled it. There was only one other traveller there, a big girl with a shawl over her head and a bundle under her arm. When Sophia had come into the room alone with the baby, she had asked the girl one or two questions, and been answered civilly enough; but when the rest of the family followed, the girl relapsed into silence, and, after regarding them for a little while, she edged her way out of the room.

Mrs. Rexford, who in the excitement of change and bustle was always subject to being struck with ideas which would not have occurred to her mind at other times, suddenly remembered now that they were dependent upon the resources of the new country for domestic service, and that she had heard that no chance of securing a good servant must be lost, as they were very rare. Stating her thought hastily to Sophia, and darting to the narrow door without waiting for a reply, she stretched out her head with an ebullition of registry-office questions.

"My good girl!" she cried, "my good girl!"

The girl came back nearer the door and stood still.

"Do you happen to know of a girl about your age who can do kitchen work?"

"I don't know any one here. I'm travelling."

"But perhaps you would do for me yourself"—this half aside—"Can you make a fire, keep pots clean, and scour floors?"

"Yes." She did not express any interest in her assent.

"Where are you going? Would you not like to come with me and enter my service? I happen to be in need of just such a girl as you."

No answer.

"She doesn't understand, mamma," whispered the grey-eyed girl in a short frock, who, having wedged herself beside her mother in the narrow doorway, was the only one who could see or hear the colloquy. "Speak slower to the poor thing."

"Looks very stupid," commented Mrs. Rexford, hastily pulling in her head and speaking within the room. "But still, one must not lose a chance." Then with head again outside, she continued, "Do you understand me, my good girl? What is your name?"

"Eliza White."

"That is a very good name"—encouragingly. "Where do you live?"

"I used to live a good bit over there, in the French country." She pointed with her arm in a certain direction, but as the points of the compass had no existence for Mrs. Rexford's newly immigrated intelligence, and as all parts of Canada, near and remote, seemed very much in the same place in her nebulous vision of geography, the little information the girl had given was of no interest to her and she took little note of it.

"Did you come from Quebec just now?"

"Yes," replied the girl, after a moment's pause.

Then, in answer to further questions, she told a succinct tale. She said that her father had a farm; that he had died the week before; that she had no relatives in the place; that, having seen her father buried, she thought it best to come to an English-speaking locality, and wait there until she had time to write to her father's brother in Scotland.

"Sad, sad story! Lonely fate! Brave girl!" said Mrs. Rexford, shaking her head for a minute inside the waiting-room and rapidly repeating the tale.

"Yes, if it's true," said Sophia. But Mrs. Rexford did not hear, as she had already turned her head out of the door again, and was commending Eliza White for the course she had taken.

The grey-eyed Winifred, however, still turned inside to combat reproachfully Sophia's suspicions. "You would not doubt her word, Sophia, if you saw how cold and tired she looked."

Mrs. Rexford seemed to argue concerning the stranger's truthfulness in very much the same way, for she was saying:—

"And now, Eliza, will you be my servant? If you will come with me to Chellaston I will pay your fare, and I will take care of you until you hear from your uncle."

"I do not want to be a servant." The reply was stolidly given.

"What! do you wish to be idle?"

"I will work in your house, if you like; but I can pay my own fare in the cars, and I won't be a servant."

There was so much sullen determination in her manner that Mrs. Rexford did not attempt to argue the point.

"Take her, mamma," whispered Winifred. "How ill she seems! And she must be awfully lonely in this great country all alone."

Mrs. Rexford, having turned into the room, was rapidly commenting to Sophia. "Says she will come, but won't be called a servant, and can pay her own fare. Very peculiar—but we read, you know, in that New England book, that that was just the independent way they felt about it. They can only induce slaves to be servants there, I believe." She gave this cursory view of the condition of affairs in the neighbouring States in an abstracted voice, and summed up her remarks by speaking out her decision in a more lively tone. "Well, we must have some one to help with the work. This girl looks strong, and her spirit in the matter signifies less." Then, turning to the girl without the door: "I think you will suit me, Eliza. You can stay with us, at any rate, till you hear from your uncle. You look strong and clean, and I'm sure you'll do your best to please me"—this with warning emphasis. "Come in now to the warmth beside us. We can make room in here."

The place was so small and the family so large that the last assurance was not wholly unnecessary. Mrs. Rexford brought Eliza in and set her near the stove. The girls and children gathered round her somewhat curiously, but she sat erect without seeming to notice them much, an expression of impassive, almost hardened, trouble on her pale face. She was a very tall, strong girl, and when she dropped the shawl back a little from her head they saw that she had red hair.



CHAPTER XI.

The village of Chellaston was, in itself, insignificant. Its chief income was derived from summer visitors; its largest building was an hotel, greatly frequented in summer; and its best houses were owned by townspeople, who used them only at that season. That which gave Chellaston a position and name above other places of the same size in the country was an institution called "The New College," in which boys up to the age of eighteen were given a higher education than could be obtained at ordinary schools. The college was a square brick building, not handsome, but commodious; and in the same enclosure with it were the head-master's house, and a boarding-house in which the assistant-masters lived with the pupils. With that love of grand terms which a new country is apt to evince, the head-master was called "The Principal," and his assistants "Professors." The New College was understood to have the future of a university, but its present function was merely that of a public school.

Chellaston was prettily situated by a well-wooded hill and a fair flowing river. The college, with some fields that were cultivated for its use, was a little apart from most of the houses, placed, both as to physical and social position, between the commonplace village and the farms of the undulating land around it; for, by a curious drift of circumstances, the farms of this district were chiefly worked by English gentlemen, whose families, in lieu of all other worldly advantage, held the more stoutly by their family traditions. In doing so they were but treasuring their only heirloom. And they did not expect to gain from the near future any new source of pride; for it is not those who, as convention terms it, are the best born who most easily gather again the moss of prosperity when that which has been about them for generations has once been removed. They were, indeed, a set of people who exhibited more sweetness of nature than thrift. Elegance, even of the simplest sort, was almost unknown in their homes, and fashion was a word that had only its remotest echoes there; yet they prided themselves upon adhering strictly to rules of behaviour which in their mother-country had already fallen into the grave of outgrown ideas. Their little society was, indeed, a curious thing, in which the mincing propriety of the Old World had wed itself right loyally to the stern necessity of the New. How stern such necessity might be, the Rexford family, who came rolling into this state of things in their own family carriage, had yet to learn.

It was to the Principalship of the New College that Robert Trenholme, by virtue of scholastic honours from Oxford, had attained. Although a young man for the post, it was admitted by all that he filled it admirably. The school had increased considerably in the three years of his management. And if Trenholme adapted himself to the place, the place was also adapted to him, for by it he held an assured standing in the country; he could, as the saying is, mix with the best; and he valued his position. Why should he not value it? He had won it honourably, and he cherished it merely as the greatest of his earthly goods, which he believed he held in due subordination to more heavenly benefits. Those lives are no doubt the most peaceful in which self-interest and duty coalesce, and Trenholme's life at this period was like a fine cord, composed of these two strands twisted together with exquisite equality. His devotion to duty was such as is frequently seen when a man of sanguine, energetic temperament throws the force of his being into battle for the right. He had added to his school duties voluntary service in the small English church of Chellaston, partly because the congregation found it hard to support a clergyman; partly because he preferred keeping his schoolboys under the influence of his own sermons, which were certainly superior to those of such clergymen as were likely to come there; and partly, if not chiefly, because the activity of his nature made such serving a delight to him. The small church, like the school, had been greatly improved since it had come under his hand, and the disinterestedness of his unpaid ministrations was greatly lauded. He was a very busy, and a successful, man, much esteemed by all who knew him. The New College was expected to become a university; Robert Trenholme hoped for this and expected to remain at its head, but this hope of his was by the way; he did not think of it often, for he loved work for its own sake. Even the value he set on his present success was not often, more actively in his mind than the value he set on the fresh air he breathed. It was very occasionally that the pride of him came to the surface, and then chiefly when animated by the memory of the time when he had been at a disadvantage in worldly things. Such memories came to him when he prepared to go to the railway station to meet the Rexfords. He concealed it perfectly, but it gave him certain swellings of heart to think that Miss Rexford would now gradually see all to which he had attained.

When Captain Rexford had decided upon buying a farm at Chellaston, he had had some correspondence with Principal Trenholme on the subject, having been put into communication with him by the widow of the relative at whose house Sophia and Trenholme had first met. This was the whole extent of the acquaintance. Of Sophia's step-mother and her numerous children Robert Trenholme knew nothing, save that a second family existed. Nor did Captain Rexford imagine that his eldest daughter had any distinct remembrance of a man whom she had so casually known. Fathers are apt to assume that they know the precise extent of their daughters' acquaintanceships, for the same reason that most people assume that what they never heard of does not exist. Yet when Trenholme actually repaired to the station at the hour at which Captain Rexford had announced his arrival, it was a fact that many of his leisure thoughts for a month back had been pointing forward, like so many guide-posts, to the meeting that was there to take place, and it was also true that the Rexford family—older and younger—were prepared to hail him as a friend, simply because their knowledge of him, though slight, was so much greater than of any other being in the place to which they were come—and everything in this world goes by comparison.