which he reported that upon his return to the Rock he had found affairs just as she had left them; he had been sleeping at the Rock, without interference from Wheedon and without being visited by anyone else except "Sam Green Sky who, I must say, is one hundred and ten per cent curious about me—in the daytime—either on his own account or for some one else.
"I have seen no one from St. Florentin," Barney continued. "But I think—and Asa agrees with me—that Kincheloe has got out. I don't know when or where; but he is not about. I have found an Indian—Jim Ozibee, do you know him—who saw a stranger about here three days ago who, I think, is the fellow that slept in that shack opposite Rest Cabin, Miss Carew. From what I can make out from Ozibee, he was an old man who seemed a bit off his head from exposure, perhaps. Anyway, he seemed wholly purposeless and harmless, and I think we were wrong in connecting him up with our affair. I couldn't obtain any better description of him than he was tall and gray-haired and wore a short mitten on his right hand as the ends of his fingers were off."
This determined Ethel to telegraph Barney to come at once to Chicago unless there were developments at St. Florentin. He received the message the next morning and replied by wire that he was taking the train that night. But before him, two others took the train from Quesnel for Chicago—Lucas Cullen, Senior, and his wife. And upon the day of their arrival, the first news confirming the assumption of Agnes's death reached the city.
It came to Lucas Cullen, Junior, in a communication not dissimilar to that letter which had awaited Ethel at
