The Law-bringers/Chapter 9

by G. B. Lancaster

 

CHAPTER IX

"YOU UNDERSTAND"

"Here's Tempest to see you, honey."

Jennifer unlocked the door of Ducane's study and came out reluctantly, holding it shut behind her. Her face was white and her eyes startled; and Dick, standing out in the night behind Tempest, knew why in a swift flash of intuition, and cursed the five hours which had passed since Slicker brought her home. But here he was the under-officer only, locked silently back into the law which bound him, and he saluted her and stood still while Tempest took her hand.

"I have come on a disagreeable errand," said Tempest. "But I would have had to come earlier if court cases hadn't detained us. I am sorry to say that it is necessary for us to take charge of and look through your husband's private papers, Mrs. Ducane."

"Haven't I the right to forbid this?" asked Jennifer, and gripped the door-handle tighter.

"I'm afraid not. Under the circumstances I must request you——"

"Isn't command the better word?" retorted Jennifer.

From behind Tempest Dick watched the light in her eyes and her face with approval. He had always known that she had plenty of courage.

"Perhaps so," said Tempest. "But I would like you to remember that I too am the commanded, and not the commander. I am sorry to say that it is quite necessary that I should have access to those papers, Mrs. Ducane."

His manner was courteous as usual; but it was changed. He seemed to speak from the lips only, with his mind drawn back to struggle with some dearly-loved problem which he could not solve. Already Jennifer had faced him for a few official minutes in the Grey Wolf court-room, when she had been formally charged to appear at the Edmonton Sessions as soon as Forsyth had brought the other witnesses down from Chipewyan and formally freed on bail provided by Leigh and Tempest himself. He had been gentle with her then, as he was gentle now. But the old buoyant sympathy and understanding were gone.

"I—I suppose there would be no use in my applying force to prevent you," she said, struggling to maintain an injured dignity.

A gleam of fun lit Tempest's eyes. She looked so very small and frail.

"I am afraid not. You see I have Corporal Heriot here too."

Jennifer reddened. Then she stood aside from the door with lips set and eyes defiant, and the two men passed her and went in. Where Ducane's reading-lamp burnt on his desk a litter of papers was scattered. Drawers and boxes were open on the floor; ashes smouldered in the fireplace among broken plates from Ducane's camera. Dick said nothing. He had expected it from the first sight of her, but his face was hard with anger. Even now his work came before everything; before Jennifer herself. He crossed to the fire quickly, kicking the ashes apart, and rescuing some half-burnt sheets. But Tempest turned back to Jennifer, and pity and admiration were in his voice.

"You brave little woman," he said. "You brave little woman."

Jennifer's defiance fled before a rush of tears.

"What's the use of it?" she sobbed. "What's the use now! Oh, what will Harry say! What will Harry say!"

"I know what he ought to say." He looked at Slicker. "Won't you take her away and—and—do what you can, Slicker?" he said. "We can't help this, you know. And will you remember, Mrs. Ducane, that the keenest joys and the worst sorrows are those which never come. You may have no need to dread anything at all."

"Come along, honey." Slicker hugged her up against his arm. "Sakes alive, if I'd known what you were after I'd have had you out of there pretty quick. Left you to do his dirty work for him, did he? On my soul, I——"

But Jennifer would allow no comment here. She fought off her tears and dropped down on the rug before the fire in her own sitting-room.

"Put on some more wood, Slicker," she said. "Pine, please; I like the smell. Now, tell me what you have all been doing to Mr. Tempest since I've been away. He looks as if part of him didn't belong to him, somehow."

Slicker followed her lead thankfully. He, too, knew Jennifer's courage.

"It doesn't," he said. "It belongs to Grange's Andree."

Grange's Andree presented herself vaguely to Jennifer's memory as a tall girl with short black curls who had carried the little dishes of beans and corn on the last occasion when she had supped at Grange's hotel.

"I don't understand," she said. "That girl is—is only——"

"Exactly, honey. Tempest has discovered that she's only about all there is to things. She has done up less high-flown sensitive chaps than Tempest, so you can just guess if she's making hay of him. His work is only the husk to him now. It used to be the core——"

"How did you know all this?"

"How?" Slicker shrugged his shoulders. His ideas concerning love and human nature were increasing in severity. "Because he's a fool. Men like Tempest usually love as they work—over-time. Everybody knows it."

Jennifer winced. She knew enough of Tempest to know that something sacred was being despoiled here. She forgot what was going forward in the next room and turned her rage on Slicker.

"Why don't you try to stop it?" she cried. "How dare you let a thing like that go on, and you in the middle of it? You stupid boy——"

"Because I'm a boy I can't stop it. You should do that. He might listen to you. You're a woman."

Jennifer had never felt the fact and its disadvantages and joys more acutely than of late.

"And a boy—or man—naturally expects the woman to do the unpleasant thing," she retorted.

"It wouldn't be unpleasant for you."

"Are you complimenting me on my tact or on the lack of it?"

"Oh, don't be a beast, Jennifer. I've said all I could think of——"

"I guessed you would! If only you'd sometimes try to say the things you couldn't think of it would be much safer. And of course he——"

"Well, he did." Slicker wriggled. "Maybe you could get Heriot to do something. I won't ask him. He's such a jeering, sneering brute——"

"And you'd sooner I was sneered at than you?"

"Oh, come off the roof! What a little cat you are to-night." Slicker slid down beside her on the rug. "See here, honey. This is a serious matter. He's crazy for her. Crazy for her. He's letting go of everything. We men are like that sometimes," said Slicker in the wisdom of his twenty-one years. "We will drop through the bottom of all things to get what we want, and we never think how we're going to get out. Tempest is just beginning to realise that he's dropped in. But I don't know if he's reckoned up the shame he'll put on himself and his uniform before he climbs out—if he ever does."

"Mr. Tempest will never shame anything or anybody but those who are wicked enough to accuse him of doing it."

"Sakes," said Slicker admiringly. "What a refreshment you are, honey. Why, you see, there are plenty of fellows ready to sneer at religion and law and all the other things that Tempest used to stand for. Dick Heriot's one. So can't you realise what a peg he's giving them to hang their sneers on? Tempest was—well, he was about the genuine article. Now he's a fool. He forgets most things, and doesn't bother about the rest. He isn't Tempest any more. It's the fault of the life up here, of course. A man sees so few possible women——"

"You brat! How dare you attempt to judge men like him and—and anyone else? You ought to go east again now your lung's healed. I shall write to Uncle Gerald and tell him you spend all your time carrying scandal——"

"By Heavens, Jennifer! You're enough to make a toad spit——"

"Slicker!" Then Jennifer fell into sudden laughter. "Oh, what a dear boy you are. It has done me all the good in the world to get angry with you just now."

"That's all very well." Slicker was not appeased. "But somebody's got to do something about it."

No one was realising this more keenly than Dick in Ducane's study. If Tempest had not been in arrears with the court-case work, occasioning much delay and later complications Dick would have been over here earlier. He had never suspected this, of course; but his natural instincts led him to desire to guard against all possibilities. Now Jennifer had got her work in first, and the results showed very effectively. For all his anger and disgust and keen disappointment Dick laughed more than once at the holocaust. Her accurate brain had grasped the salient points so thoroughly. There was absolutely nothing left which gave a clue to the real address or composition of the Canadian Home-lot Extension Company, although there were papers pertaining to it which were sufficient to show Ducane's connection with it, and also a number of notes in cypher which might contain clues if the key could be found.

On other matters there were papers which verified the scanty revelations discovered already in Robison's shack. The men had certainly been getting in permits under false names; they had been buying land from the breeds at absolutely cut-prices, and they had an infinitely more intimate knowledge of the values and owners of land in the district than any ordinary inhabitant could hope to have. But Jennifer had taken the poker to Ducane's camera-plates, and Tempest looked up over the wreck in some amusement.

"She has left a good deal to the imagination only," he remarked. "Of course one can tell that these two have been playing a crook game for years, and that Ducane was evidently scared off the field on the verge of a commission which Robison stuck to and tried to put through. What scared him, I wonder?"

Dick told of the photograph seen on Jennifer's lap on the steamer.

"He couldn't know that I'd recognise it, of course," he said. "But I suppose he wouldn't take chances. He never had much fancy for that."

"Well," Tempest looked round the room. "She's a brave little woman and I should fancy this would help her. She wouldn't bother to destroy evidence against him if she had already destroyed him—unless she was implicated also."

"That is a legal suggestion only, of course?"

"Of course. No one would suspect her privately. Well, we'd best go back. You can come over to-morrow and do the rest. I'll tell her that we are locking the room. But we might take the cyphers, and—what else?"

He rubbed his hand over his forehead wearily. The end of a long day usually found him weary now. Dick straightened from his stooping position and looked at him. But he was not thinking of the question. He was thinking of the man. There had always been such buoyant courage in Tempest. He was one of those finely-tempered rapiers which will bend hilt to point and swing back to balance again with such a resonant note of strength and verve. But the resilience seemed gone from the steel now. Some unseen furnace had taken the nature out of it for the time and whether it would ever come back Dick did not know any more than he could understand what had taken it. But he knew that he must find out, and to-night too. He felt a sharp stab of pain in that he had forgotten Tempest and all that he meant to do for him, and he felt a warmer glow of love than ever before as Tempest turned away, forgetting his question, and began to pack the papers together.

Those feelings held with him through the drive back to Grey Wolf; and when Tempest locked the papers in the safe and turned to put the lamp out Dick checked him.

"Can you give me a minute?" he asked. "I want to speak to you."

"Will to-morrow do? I am very tired to-night, Dick."

Dick bit his lip. The cynicism in his nature was wide-awake, and he doubted if he could speak to Tempest without conveying his contempt for a man who could let go of all the essentials for the sake of love. And yet pity was strong in him too, and pride. He was so proud of Tempest, and it stung him to the quick that Tempest should be willing to lower his standard of life as he unquestionably was doing. Some unlocated words flashed to his mind suddenly.

 

"When the will has forgotten the lifelong aim,
And the mind can only disgrace its fame,
And a man is uncertain of his own name . . ."

 

The mercilessness of the thought jarred all the love alive in Dick. Such things might be for men spent with toil and years; but for Tempest in full strength and vigour the thing was brutal, unreal, hideous. And yet it seemed very surely true. Tempest turned to the door.

"Put out the light when you go," he said. And then Dick went after him, and laid a hand on his arm.

"You must tell me what's wrong, old man," he said. "Don't you owe me this?"

"There is nothing wrong." Tempest straightened with his face hardening.

"Are you going to marry her, Neil?"

He had not used that name in many years; and his voice went tender with the sound of it. But Tempest drew back; startled, and sternly indignant.

"How did you know what no one has been told?" he asked.

"No one? My dear fellow, you can't surely be as blind as that? Don't you know that there are bets about it from the Landing up to Chipewyan, and probably much further? Everyone knows it. We live in the glare of the footlights along these rivers, as I have found out, I assure you."

Tempest leaned against the door, and his face was drawn and horror-struck. All the finer dreamy reserve of his nature was shocked; outraged; thrown down off its balance for the time.

"They are not talking about her," he said. "Not about her?"

It seemed to Dick as though that passionate, vibrating voice would ward off criticism from Andree by the mere force of it. But he had to answer.

"About you both. Do you mean to marry her, Tempest?"

"Marry her! God knows I'd have married her long ago if she would have had me! But she's so shy—so delicate and hesitating and shy. I can scarcely get her to talk to me at all. I feel such a rough, clumsy brute beside her."

He broke off, walking across the room hastily. He twitched at the blind as though he had gone to straighten it, and Dick watched him with that dark contemplation shutting down over his face. This was worse than he had expected it. Much worse. Tempest was the kind of man who saw the shining of high stars and the blooming of white flowers wherever he looked. Grange's Andree—Dick knew as much as most people did of Grange's Andree. He had seen her playing cards in the back-parlour; jealous and grasping and ready to cheat with the worst of them. He had seen her drinking with Robison and others in the bar; setting her lips to the glass where theirs had been. He had seen men pass her by with a careless jest and a kiss; he had done it many times himself, for the firm, olive cheek was soft and satin-smooth. He had seen—then he looked again at the still figure in the window.

"I have no right to interfere," he said. "But you can hardly be giving full consideration to the facts of the case. Heavens above. Don't you know what we all think of her?"

Tempest turned and his eyes showed fire.

"I know how men like you can misjudge her. You can't see that she is innocent—ignorant; just a wild thing of the woods. She doesn't know that she needs protection. But I know, and I can't rest—I can't rest—I want to give it to her——"

He stopped again, turning back to the window.

"I could hate you all for the way you behave to a child like that," he said.

Dick shrugged his shoulders. He saw too far to be able to see as high as Tempest saw.

"If she objected to us why doesn't she avail herself of your offered protection?" he asked dryly. "Can't you answer that? Grange's Andree wasn't made for the domestic proprieties, and you would do well to realise it and pull out of this business at once."

"You were perfectly correct when you said just now that you had no right to interfere. We will leave it at that, please. Good-night."

Dick went to bed. But before he slept he came to a determination.

"When I get back from Edmonton I'll put an end to this," he said.

It had seldom been Dick's habit to halt on the road once he had made his mind up to travel it. But an episode two nights later hastened matters for him irremediably. He came out of the big bar-room at Grange's, shutting the inner door on the smell of smoke and drink and the talk of a handful of settlers "going in" to the Grande Prairie district; stumbled down the back passage and thrust open the door of the room which had been Ducane's private sanctum, and way out into the little alley behind the English church. He had been on canoe-patrol all day and his moccasins shod him with silence, so that the two on the far side of the room where the pale light from the window fell did not hear him or heed. But to the man in the dark of the door that poor, grey light gave a picture so cruelly clear that it took his breath.

In Ducane's big padded chair sat Grange's Andree; and Tempest was on his knees at her side, gripping both hands and speaking low and thickly. Tempest's head and shoulders were blocked out in a vague smudge; but the light was sharp across the girl's face, showing the wild, half-terrified irritation of a young horse resisting the bit and yet lacking the courage to break free. Tempest did not see. His head was bowed and he was praying to Andree as a man might pray for his life. Dick closed the door softly and got himself out into the dark narrow alley where the wooden church wall rose against the golden afterglow. Crickets were chirping and crows were calling harshly. From the hotel stables came the champ of feeding horses and the occasional bang as they kicked the wall in endeavour to dislodge the flies. Someone came unseen down the noisy sidewalk, whistling shrilly. Dick heard all the sounds. But they seemed far off. Nothing was near but the ugly rock on which a good man was splitting his life.

"Tempest," he said in his throat. "Good God! Tempest!"

He told himself that he had known it before. But he knew with an artist's instinct that he had not known until he saw Andree's face. There was no heart behind that face; no understanding. Tempest meant no more to her than Robison or O'Hara had done. Perhaps not so much. And she meant to Tempest—Dick thrust himself through a gap in the rail-fence, and felt the dried grass of the churchyard beneath his feet. The door was open, and the light went in, glorious and golden, to dazzle on the small brass cross above the altar. Dick remembered a tall black cross standing bare on a hill on the trail to Lower Landing. Russian emigrants had worshipped there before they built a church to house their prayers in, but to Dick the man whom these two crosses represented meant nothing, although the man who was likely soon to be broken on the cross of his own passion meant very much indeed.

The day was nearly done. The wind was full of rich scents from the yellow-daisy blooms and clover and silver reeds in the river; from grass on the low warm hills and damp moss in the muskeg, and from thick, loamy earth in the forest. Clear notes of birds fluted across the river, and the sunset lights were flushing in warm opal on the sky. As Dick reached the barrack-gate, slowly, and with his head low, he was stopped by Parrett, the Dissenting minister.

Parrett had been in Grey Wolf nearly a year, and he had learnt much, though not so much as he would have done if Grey Wolf had had more time to give to his education.

"I hear that Robison doesn't go down to Fort Saskatchewan till to-morrow," he said. "S'pose I can come right in and see him, Corporal?"

Dick never considered his title an insult on any lips but Parrett's.

"Don't you think you are a trifle premature?" he suggested. "The man is not condemned yet."

"Why—why—it's not necessary to wait for that."

"But I think I would, really. Robison might feel it rather a personal matter. And, in any case, is it worth training your guns on him? They will turn him off in Fort Saskatchewan where they keep the whole plant, parson and all."

Parrett's outraged earnestness found voluble expression, even under those idle, amused eyes. He was breathless before he ended heatedly:

"And you will receive your punishment for this—this blasphemy, as I told you before."

"Six times," agreed Dick. "Be easy. I am receiving a portion now in my inability to fully appreciate the most pointed sermon I have heard for many years. Robison may prove a better listener. But don't give him anything harder than a tract. His manners are often unexpected. And he is a good shot."

He leaned over the gate after Parrett had gone, listening to the high, joyous voices of two little girls skipping on the river-bank, and thinking of Jennifer. He was dreading this trial for her as he had never dreaded anything for himself, but he did not go to see her as the days dragged by. Carefully, with his clear mind taking due note of all side-issues, he was building up his own evidence on the lines of assistance to Jennifer at any cost. Robison was his chief fear. Nothing could touch the man now, and if he chose to assert that he, with Jennifer's connivance, had murdered Ducane, he could leave these two whom he hated a heritage which would go near to crushing them. If it happened that Robison went into the witness-box before himself he would know better what to do. But he had to prepare for the adverse contingency, and he did not dare leave anything to chance. He knew now that nothing would make Jennifer speak, and that fact caused him a strange pride. She was fit mate for the undeniable courage in himself, and not for the cowardice of Ducane.

Of course it was possible that Forsyth might bring Ducane with him. But Dick did not expect it. Without doubt Robison had bribed or bullied the Quatre Fourches Indians into silence, and Dick had sufficient experience of Indian witnesses to know what happened when they did not want to speak. Dick's daily work was trying just now, for the guarding of prisoners usually fell to his lot. But the two stupid Germans and the lunatic who had gone insane from loneliness did to the last inch the work detailed for them to do. They whip-sawed timber for a shack to be built on the adjoining lot. They cleaned stables and re-shingled an outhouse and dug post-holes and stretched a wire-fence along them. There were days when the lunatic desired only to walk through the head of Dick's shadow as it moved over the dusty grass, and Dick had to let him do it; there were days when the bullying wind of the rain, or, worst of all, smoke from the forest-fires which blanketed the hills above Grey Wolf made work a torment. But time drew by at last. Forsyth came down with his witnesses; Jennifer went to Edmonton with Slicker and Mrs. Leigh, and, by Tempest's arrangement, Andree had gone with them. Dick did not speak to Tempest of Andree now, though he had been more than uneasy over a certain matter which occurred on the night when Andree realised that Robison was taken to Fort Saskatchewan for a trial which would mean death. Dick had gone through the back-passage at Grange's that night and had suddenly confronted Moosta. To all appearances Moosta had just come through a storm which had fallen on her apart from her will. She clutched Dick with fat, strong hands, and all her respect for him could not straighten her English.

"Dieu! She mak' hit!" she gasped. "Hit Rosario. An' moi. An' she cry. An' cry. An' mak' noise—diable noise."

"Who?" demanded Dick, halting.

"S'pose it Andree," said Moosta. "She got devil, me t'ink."

Dick pushed open the door of the back-parlour and walked in. He had never been there before, and its mustiness and smell of smoke and cooking and its low, roughly-beamed ceiling made all dark for the moment. Then he saw Andree on the floor behind Grange's big chair, with her head wound in a tablecloth and wild turmoil about her. Dick pulled the cloth away, and stooped to her. That always suspicious mind of his was interested.

"What's all this, Andree?" he asked. "You have scared Moosta's hair out of its pins."

Andree's eyes met his; soft, wild, and anguish-stricken as the eyes of a wounded doe. Dick had never realised her beauty so keenly before. He stooped lower.

"Will—he be—kill?" she whispered.

"Undoubtedly. I think he wants to be killed, Andree. Do you know why?"

The tears darkened her eyes. She put up her long, slender hands, framing Dick's face in them.

"What matter—if he want it so?" she asked.

"What matter indeed. Not worth crying over, is it, Andree? But why does he want it so?"

"Bien," she said. "He want to love me too much. It is better—quite better for him an' Ogilvie. Cela est fort bien. I do not want them to love me. Tapwa, Dick; they do deserve it." Her soft fingers tapped gently against his temples. "They do deserve it," she said, and there was no feeling in her voice.

Dick drew his breath in, looking at her.

"Whether they deserve it or not I think most men will get it in one way or another if they love you, Grange's Andree," he said. "Why were you crying, then?"

"I—was frightened," she said. And then she sprang up; laughing and brilliant again.

"I go to put the hair of Moosta in its pins some more," she said. "One pin will do—if so it is in the right place."

Dick had gone away, but he was not satisfied. If Robison chose to die undefended that was the man's own business. But the matter would have been clearer if Robison had made a legitimate fight for his life.

But if Dick dreaded those Edmonton days for Jennifer, Tempest dreaded still more the knowledge that there they would make Andree swear away a man's life. He tortured himself over the matter, bitterly angry with Dick because of his share in it; illogical, anxious, wearied out by stress of work and of thought. Everything which was said and done seemed to rasp and hurt the delicate edges of his nature, and Dick, coming into the office on the last evening where Tempest was making up his end of the month reports, understood that he would have to take this thing in hand very shortly, or it would be too late; if, indeed, it were not too late now.

Tempest looked up and handed a paper over the desk. "I have duplicated this voucher three times," he said. "Can you make the other three to-night?"

Dick was on night-watch from seven p.m. until midnight. He nodded, folding the sheet into his pocket-book.

"If this goes on we'll have to get a hand-press," he said. "There has been a lunatic of sorts in cells ever since I came, and that means sixfold vouchers each time."

"Oh, well; all in the day's work, I suppose." Tempest pushed his hair back. "Is everything ready for an early start in the morning?"

"I think so. Tempest, you're letting all this get hold of you too much, you know."

Tempest turned back to his blotting-pad impatiently.

"At least you keep the balance even," he said.

But when Dick had gone out he dropped his pen and sat still, with a fear which had lately come to life dawning in his eyes. Dimly he was beginning to know that he was deceiving himself; that he was deliberately building up and holding to a thing which had not, and never could have, any foundation. He fought against this knowledge with all his powers; telling himself that it was the right of man to seek a woman, to give to her love and protection and help, to enable her to fulfil her life gloriously and wisely and fully. This was man's right; one of the primal laws. Therefore, if he chose to give so to Andree where was the sin? A thousand times he told himself that there was no sin. The very height and fineness of his nature made it possible for him to deceive himself. He had given his all to the work. Now he was giving his all to the woman. Surely these were the two things which Nature and God required of him? But the fact that he had to assure himself of this so often suggested the flaw in it. He knew well that he was wrecking his powers and crippling his work; he knew that his unhappiness was due to more than Andree's indifference. And in the centre of his heart he knew that the truth was waiting, if he would look at it. He had lived too near that truth all his life not to know it. But he would not look. He was afraid of what it might tell him; and so he lived with his inner heart shut against himself, and he suffered accordingly.

Dick could do wrong if he wanted to; open-eyed, and in half-derision at himself. Tempest could only do it by blinding his conscience. Part of him guessed that he was doing this. Part of him clung to that early image of Andree; of the ideal woman and the ideal life; clung fiercely, with all the steel-spring tenacity of his nature. He could not let her go, and he would not, until she was taken irrevocably from him.

But when the moment which he had feared came, four days later, and he saw Andree walk into the witness-box and take the oath, all his strength went out of him, and he hid his eyes under his hand. Dick, sitting in the front seat among the witnesses, watched with that silent intensity which had gained him his Indian name of Carcajou. He saw Robison in the dock raise his head and look once at Andree with that expression which Dick had seen in the cell at Chipewyan. There was renunciation in it; there was adoration; self-abnegation. There was something which lifted him for the instant to a plane where Dick had never trodden yet. Then it was gone, and the thick, heavy face and brutal eyes and forehead showed reddened and swarthy in the airless heat of the filled court-room. Dick's suspicions strengthened. Could it possibly be Andree who was playing Robison into the hands of death? Was there any means by which Robison could save himself if he chose? Was Andree herself the sinner, and did Robison know it?

Dick would have been glad to believe this or anything else which could part her from Tempest. But he could not believe it. He could not have done such a thing himself. Had Jennifer stood there, lying away his liberty with the half-coquettish innocence Andree used he would have had her life for it though he took his own directly after. And that breed, coarse and dark and soulless as a lump of moosemeat, could assuredly never be so far swayed by the epic passion of love, no matter how far the passions of hate might move him.

One by one the questions went on, almost as a matter of form.

"You say that you ran away while the murder was taking place. Were you running into Grey Wolf for help?"

A flash of Andree's coquetry had just sought and found the admiring eyes of a young lawyer's clerk. She started; half-laughed, and hesitated.

"I—I suppose," she said.

"Why did you not tell Corporal Heriot when you saw him?"

"I do not like him sufficient," said Andree sedately, with her chin up. A laugh went round, and Andree shrilled to it. Dick saw the glow on her face, and the consciousness in her actions, and he smiled. It was so exactly the vain, irresponsible nature which he had always ascribed to her. Surely it would disgust Tempest? But Tempest sat still with his head in his hand, and he did not move as Andree's simple evidence went through to the end. She did not quite understand why they had quarrelled. It was all si vite—si sauvage. Robison did pull out Ogilvie's knife. Oui, she saw that. Oui, she saw him strike, and then she did run.

Dick's evidence established a little more, although it was scarcely needed; for Robison pleaded guilty without extenuating circumstances, receiving his sentence with stolid indifference. A man behind Dick leaned forward.

"That fellow has an iron will," he said. "Or is it just brutal stupidity?"

"It is will, I think," said Dick, and shuddered a little to think what that will might do to Jennifer before long. And then he went out to get through as best he might the hours before he would see Jennifer in that dock.

Yesterday Tempest had driven Jennifer through the town and along the tall banks of the Saskatchewan River, assuring her that she had nothing to fear, and that this absurd charge must fall to pieces on the least investigation. And Jennifer did not mean to fear. But when she stood with her bare hands on the edge of the dock, and saw the white wigs bobbing below her, and the stand of the jury opposite, and the judge in his scarlet robes, her strong courage failed for a moment. Tempest and Dick and Slicker were all there. But they could not help. It was one of those crucial moments when the soul must stand alone. Then, as the oath was administered to the first witness, she straightened and stood still.

Emmett, captain of the tug, was the first witness; a small, mean-looking man, terribly afraid of being personally implicated. He told how he had put Ducane, Robison, and Jennifer ashore at Quarte Fourches Channel, and how they had been taken up the stream by Indians. In about four hours Jennifer and Robison had come back, and inquiries for Ducane were met with the assertion that he would return with the Indians. Emmett had thought no more of the matter until Constable Hinds arrested Robison on the arrival of the tug at Chipewyan and asked concerning Ducane. Robison said that Ducane was coming back later. Emmett could not remember that Jennifer had said anything, either of denial or assent. Next morning Hinds went across to the Channel. But the Indians were gone, and it was only the cache in the bank which gave the first suggestion of foul play. Hinds could not follow the Indians up, for there was no one else at the Post.

Being asked where the other police were he told how Dick had taken Forsyth to Lobstick Island, and how it was rumoured that he had done so because he knew what Robison and Ducane intended to do. Cross-examined, he spoke of the well-known fact that Ducane was brutal to his wife and that Dick, Robison, and Slicker were almost the only visitors to the house across the Lake. Slicker was called to corroborate this, and in the hands of the direct ruddy-faced counsel for the prosecution he was forced to admit Dick's friendship with Jennifer, his dislike of Ducane, and Ducane's scarcely-concealed hatred and fear of Dick. He admitted that Jennifer felt her position as Ducane's wife very keenly, and that once, in a flash of temper, she had said that she hoped she would never be tempted to strike him. Under cross-examination he said that Jennifer had gone to Chipewyan against her wish, and at Ducane's expressed command. Her counsel asked:

"He was in the habit of making her do what she did not want, then?"

"I don't know. She seldom spoke of her own feelings. She was very good to him, and very patient with him always."

"Was she friendly with the breed, Robison?"

"No. She couldn't bear him. She never spoke to him if she could help it."

"You do not think she would connive with him against her husband?"

"Never. And I know that Ducane is alive. Otherwise his wife would tell what had happened," said Slicker.

The counsel for the prosecution rose again.

"If Ducane has escaped is it not almost certain that he has done it with the joint aid of Mrs. Ducane and Robison?"

"I don't know."

"The three were together. The remaining two must know what occurred. Therefore, Mrs. Ducane and Robison have acted in conjunction, whether the issue be escape or murder."

Slicker went down, desperate and anxious, to see Tempest grapple with the problem where he had left it. Tempest was asked if it would not be to Robison's interest to shield Jennifer until he himself had the chance to extract from Ducane's study all such evidence as might be damning to his own liberty.

"Possibly. That matter would not affect him once he was caught."

"He is known to hate the police. Might he not keep silence to baffle them?"

"His hate is focussed on Corporal Heriot. To accuse him of connivance would, in these circumstances, be better than silence."

"He knows that connivance has already been suggested. Mrs. Ducane and Corporal Heriot were seen in a canoe on the Lake just before Heriot went up to Lobstick Island."

"Corporal Heriot has been working up a case of fraud against Ducane and the breed Robison for some months. He was not likely to do anything which would thwart his plans there."

"Personal reasons Have been suggested as a reason for that."

"I believe them to be totally untrue."

Cross-examined he told how Jennifer had burnt the evidence which might have enabled Dick to prove his case, and of Dick's anger and disappointment on discovering this.He spoke of Jennifer's unswerving loyalty in word and deed to her husband, and suggested that it had proved itself by the fact that she dared something in destroying his papers by his order.

"You believe that it was done at his order?"

"Certainly. When I stopped the work half done, she said, 'What is the use of it now? Oh, what will Harry say?’"

The counsel for the prosecution suggested that Jennifer was personally implicated.

"It is well known that she did not love her husband and that she had reason to fear him. Even supposing that he forced her into helping him to escape, is it likely that she would make away with evidence which, in the event of his recapture, would save her from his persecutions?"

"She never forgot the duty she owed him as her husband," said Tempest.

A few more leading questions were quietly parried, and then Tempest gave place to Hinds, who told of the search in Quatre Fourches; the finding of the cache and the impossibility of extracting information from either Jennifer or Robison. He had not been able to follow up the Indians; but Forsyth had done so later, and three of them were now in court. They were called; but either they were ignorant of the affair or Robison's threats had been effectual. They had left the two white men and the white woman on shore up the Channel, and, after taking a few photographs, the three had gone into the woods. Some hours later Mrs. Ducane had returned with Robison who told them that Ducane was following in another canoe. They never saw anything of that canoe, and on their return to their people they neither heard nor saw anything of a white man. They did not know any more.

Forsyth was next called. His evidence asserted that Dick had come to Chipewyan ostensibly to arrest Robison for murder, but that he had refused to do so at once on the ground that he wished to implicate Ducane on another matter first. He could not say that Dick had any other motive in leaving the man at liberty. He could not say that Dick had any but the alleged reason for taking himself to Lobstick Island. He did not see why the Indians should deny the fact if a white man had passed up the Channel, and he thought it very possible that Ducane could have been killed and sunk in the Channel or buried in the swampy land round about without being found. He acknowledged that he had had men dragging the Channel ever since; but it was muddy and full of snags. Under cross-examination he had no reason to say that he suspected Dick of collusion. Dick had promised to get evidence from Mrs. Ducane, and had afterwards refused to give it. Dick had insisted on taking Mrs. Ducane back with him in order that she might supply information regarding the Company for which Ducane was supposed to be working. He had not heard that she had given any.

His evidence closed the day's inquiry; and Dick, who had never left the court, except to snatch a hasty lunch while Jennifer was away, caught Tempest's arm at the door.

"I must keep off," he said. "But go round to see her, Tempest. Tell her that it's going all right. And don't let anyone suggest Robison to her. Slicker, I want you."

Slicker turned wretched blue eyes on him.

"If she is condemned it's my doing," he said.

"Don't you flatter yourself. Twenty of you couldn't condemn her. This is only the beginning of the thing. My dear fellow, you wait until we get through."

He was kinder than Slicker had ever known him; and he insisted on the boy dining with him, and staying with him until Leigh came round and took him for a walk. And after that Dick went through his own evidence again, examining it in the light of to-day's showing, and readjusting wherever it seemed necessary. He was too busy to be anxious; too grimly set on his work to think of Jennifer.

The next morning dragged through with unimportant evidence: the breed who had seen Dick and Jennifer go out in the canoe; Grey Wolf residents who spoke of the state of affairs in Ducane's house; those who knew Dick and could say little good of him; those who knew Jennifer and could say little ill. After the lunch-hour Robison's name was called, and Dick said "Thank God," not because he believed in a God, but because there is no other form of relieved expression. But Robison was not available. There had been delay in bringing him from Fort Saskatchewan prison, and Dick was presently put in the witness-box in his stead. He felt a moment's tremor as he took the oath. For he meant to clear Jennifer if it were possible; but he knew that it would be at heavy cost to himself. Tempest, looking at him, remembered his Indian name of Carcajou and sighed a little. Dick was very quiet, and his eyes were half-closed; but Tempest knew how he could flash out when it came to fight. Some unimportant questions opened the way for the leading one:

"Why did you take Sergeant Forsyth up to Lobstick Island immediately after having been out in the canoe with Mrs. Ducane?"

"Because she told me I would find her husband and Robison there."

"It is alleged that you went for another reason."

"Well, as it happens, I did. I made Sergeant Forsyth sea-sick."

The counsel reddened as a smothered laugh ran through the court.

"The captain of the tug has accused Mrs. Ducane of sending you and Forsyth there to clear the way for the murder of Ducane."

"He would," said Dick composedly.

"What do you mean by that?"

"To accuse everyone interested in the surest way to save himself from suspicion. But I haven't heard yet that he accused Ducane."

"Do you mean that Ducane may have committed suicide?"

"Certainly not. I do not think that Ducane is dead."

"What reason do you give for that opinion?"

"Sergeant Forsyth has had parties searching the woods and Captain Emmett has had men dragging the Channel almost ever since Ducane disappeared. I cannot believe that they would not find him, supposing he was there—if they wished to."

"What do you mean by 'if they wished to'?"

"Captain Emmett might not care to acknowledge publicly that through personal fear he had subjected a woman to a thing of this sort."

Away in the back seat Grange was rubbing his hands and grinning.

"My, my," he said. "Don't get much change out o' the Corp'ral, does they? I guess that's hit Emmett where he lives all right."

"I do not like to look at Dick," said Andree under breath. "He has the eyes—it is like one animal caught in a trap."

"Why—I thought he was looking pretty gay, myself."

"Ah! Bete!" said Andree, and turned from him with a shrug.

The question Dick had prepared for came next.

"On what terms were you on with Mrs. Ducane which could make it possible for you to think she would send you to arrest her husband?"

"I got a very great deal of information concerning Ducane's fraudulence from his wife—without her knowledge, of course. I obtained it principally at her own house where I visited very often."

"You mean that you went to a man's house and ate his bread and used his friendship as a cloak to extract damning information about him from his wife?"

"Certainly. I had to have the information."

"But you could not have gained the knowledge that sent you to Lobstick in this way? Please explain the matter fully."

"It has been said that Mrs. Ducane and I acted in collusion in the fact of Ducane's disappearance. That is so far from being the case that she deliberately gave me misinformation in order to prevent his capture. I was under the impression that she was telling the truth. I knew that she had a great deal to bear from Ducane, and I was—I imagined that she had taken me into her confidence for the first time. It was not until I got to Lobstick Island that I realised how fully she had tricked me."

"If she had never given you her confidence before, why should you have expected and believed it on such an important point then? Was it not more likely that you should be suspicious of her desire to betray her husband?"

Dick looked across at Jennifer, and he hesitated a moment.

"Through all our friendship Mrs. Ducane has kept me at arm's length. She relented somewhat that night, and—she allowed me to put my own interpretation on what she said. She did it to save her husband, as I have since had very conclusive reason to understand. For Mrs. Ducane knows where Ducane is, and she knows that it means very much to me to find him. But I can get no information from her at all. She has fooled me, and shown me where I stand in her estimation."

His voice was stern, almost sad. But it carried the ring of truth.

"Is it not most likely that she has killed him or had him killed? In that case she would, of course, be reticent on the matter."

"Robison would not kill him. Nor would he shelter Mrs. Ducane if she had done it. Ducane was too useful to Robison. He wanted money and power, and I can prove that Ducane was the channel through which he was getting them. He had not sufficient education to get them otherwise, but he had sufficient wit not to destroy the source. In my opinion Ducane disappeared because his fear of me was greater than Robison's power over him, and he made Mrs. Ducane burn the implicating papers in order that, when he was found or came back, he might purchase immunity by betraying the company for himself."

"Is it not possible that Mrs. Ducane believed that she was telling you the truth when she sent you to Lobstick?"

"No. Her actions since have convinced me of that."

"In what way?"

Dick was fighting for Jennifer's liberty and he did not hesitate.

"I have several times tried to persuade her to leave Ducane or to divorce him, and she has always repulsed me. Her mind is centred on him, and she is waiting for him to come back. I believe that he is living, and I have more reason to wish to doubt that than you can have."

Tempest was watching him with bitten lips. Dick was getting the sympathy for Jennifer, certainly. But at what a cost! It could not be possible that he was laying his inmost heart bare here in the court. He must be lying; but he surely felt the position in which he was putting himself. And then Tempest remembered, painfully. This Dick had no scruples of shame nor honour, and he would have no objections to telling lies, even on oath.

To Dick himself the psychology of the matter was interesting. He was telling the absolute truth, which was unusual, and it was doing more good than any carefully-shaped lies could have done. He had turned Jennifer into the persecuted and blameless wife, and himself and Ducane into the sinners, and the results of this arrangement would show very soon. But, because the postulated reason for Jennifer's alleged destruction of Ducane lay in her relations with Dick, he was kept in the witness-box for the remainder of the afternoon; and how much he had won he did not know until Robison should take his place there, and how much harm he had done himself with her he did not know either. But no cross-examining could extract from him more than he wished to say, and he gave place to Robison at last in the knowledge that Jennifer's cause was safe unless Robison chose to damn it. But Robison chose to say nothing. Called to a higher tribunal he was indifferent to the threats of an earthly one. He would not tell the truth, but he would not lie either, and Dick saw him go with something nearer gratitude to an unknown God than he had thought possible.

The long days in the hot, close court-room made Jennifer's little pale face smaller and paler than ever. But her courage had not flagged, and she had not misunderstood Dick's evidence. Much that he had said seemed painful and unnecessary to her; but she did not doubt his wisdom in saying it, even when she herself stood to be questioned on what he had said. There was nothing to deny there, for Dick had known better than to lie with her frank truth to follow him. But his disclosures had turned the tide of sympathy so powerfully in her favour that it could not be stopped now. Of Emmett's trumped-up charge there was practically nothing left. Jennifer had been shown to have thwarted at all points the man with whom she was supposed to be in love, and not the severest examination could make her story differ in the essentials from Dick's. She gave her answers clearly and directly; but she refused to say more of Ducane but that he was, to the best of her knowledge, alive and well.

"Where would be the use of my helping him to get away if I told of him now?" she asked naively; and Dick saw more than one of the jury smile.

Her counsel made much of the point that, Ducane being a free agent at the time of his disappearance, Jennifer had committed no crime in assisting him, nor in destroying his papers at his command. She denied most firmly any knowledge concerning Ducane's connection with the Canada Home-lot Extension Company. Ducane had told her to burn all the papers in his escritoire, and she had been doing it hastily when she was interrupted. Many of them mentioned the Company, and she would have no objection to giving the address if she knew it. But she did not remember it, even if she had read it. She was dismissed at last with a verdict of "Not proven," and a heavy fine for contempt of court; and Dick, who had hoped for something better, had venom on his tongue when Tempest went to his room before dinner that night.

"I can't think that Mrs. Ducane was lying, though I thought you were," said Tempest. "Did you try to make her love you?"

Dick was dressing after a bath. But he stopped to laugh at Tempest.

"She isn't the first woman, and she won't be the last," he said. "Need you look so solemn over it?"

"I had not thought that you were a scoundrel," said Tempest slowly.

"Oh, well;" Dick shrugged his shoulders. "That little pour passer le temps did her good on the whole. And it didn't hurt me."

"I wonder if anything can hurt you now."

"Not much, I fancy. Not this, anyway. She gave me a run for my money, though."

Tempest went out in disgust, and Dick frowned as he hooked his collar. He had never loved Jennifer better than now, and he had never been so afraid of her. All which she had held sacred he had dragged into the light, making her testify to it as well as himself. She had been asked once if she loved him, and Dick's heart had stopped with fear before the question was waived. For he knew that she would have told the truth. But though fear for her was over now there was much bitterness in him, or he would not have answered Tempest so. He was coming to believe that she would be more difficult to persuade than he had even expected, and his face was hard with anxiety when he went at last out of the dimly-lighted streets and walked up to Jennifer's hotel.

Slicker opened the door of her private sitting-room when he knocked on it. The strain had told on the boy severely; but anger flamed into his face at the sight of Dick. He would have shut the door if Dick's foot had not been in the way.

"Is she there—alone?" said Dick.

"Yes. But you're not to see her, you cad."

Dick's hand brushed Slicker aside.

"Stay outside," he said only, and went in, shutting the door behind him.

Slicker stood still on the mat with the colour dying from his face. Boy though he yet was in experience and understanding, he felt those charged forces in the man with which he dared not meddle. Then he went away, a little dazed, and with a curious feeling of awe.

The little hotel parlour was as unlike Jennifer's pretty rooms at home as anything could be. But Dick saw nothing but the white-gowned girl in the big chair by the window. She turned her head to watch him cross the room; but neither spoke, and she did not lift the head from where the bare arm propped it on the window-sill. The night was very hot, and her face had no colour at all, though there was a faint smile on her lips as she looked at his scarlet uniform and at the gentle deference which she knew would not hold him long.

"You were right when you said you would hurt me," she said.

"And I was right when I said that would not end it. You understood, or you would not be speaking to me now." He sat on the window-sill with the dark of a closed shop behind him. "Never mind all that now, Jennifer. It is over. What pretty arms you have. I never saw them uncovered before."

She drew them back hurriedly under the falling laces. "I have not given you the right to call me Jennifer," she said.

"But you will." He paused, then said slowly: "If you are too tired we will leave the matter for to-night. But you cannot imagine that I am going to let it rest."

"I am not too tired. No." She shivered a little. "But it can only hurt us."

"I don't fancy your suggested remedy would ease that. Have you found it so simple to put the thing out of your heart?"

"You know that I have not. But that doesn't alter the question. We are not our own masters here. This has been threshed out for us long ago—through suffering—and passion—and bitter remorse."

Her voice was low, and she looked past him to the sky. In her loose white dress and her aureole of bright hair she seemed almost unearthly, guarded from his dominant eagerness by a strange sacredness which daunted and puzzled him.

"I am not asking you to do wrong," he said. "God forbid. But to divorce the man who has ill-treated you and whom you do not love, and to marry the man who loves you is common-sense only. To refuse to do it is the wrong. Can't you see that?"

"I made no reservations when I married Harry. I cannot make them now. I could not live in the same house with him again, I think. But I must be free to help him if ever he should need help. This is my duty. Not my duty to myself only, nor to you, nor to him. We can't get away from the fact that we belong to the great Brotherhood of Life. Where you or I fail or sin future generations pay for it."

"I don't understand. It is not as if you had children——"

"I didn't mean that. But it has taken such centuries to work out the moral laws, and so we know they must be true. We should hurt ourselves and more than ourselves if we broke them."

"I cannot feel or believe that, Jennifer."

"But I can and do. And because you know this it is for you to help me, not to hinder. It should be the pride of your manhood to make this hard thing easy for us to bear."

"I don't want to make it easy. I want to make it impossible. You are building a fetish out of a chimera, Jennifer. We owe nothing to the past, nor to the future. We owe all to ourselves only. And I am not going to spoil your life and mine for the sake of a creation of the fancy. This life is all we have, and it is madness not to make the most of it. It is madness to lose a day—an hour——"

He caught her hands, speaking thickly, and his face was lit and warm with eagerness. She met his eyes steadily.

"Does love not mean respect with you?" she asked.

The phrase struck him. He remembered that German boy at Grey Wolf who had desired to "love all ladies always." And he remembered his own rebuke. It was her face had brought it from him then. It was her face brought its memory now. He let her hands go and stood up.

"I beg your pardon if I have offended you," he said. "But all this is only fencing, you know. You will have to see the thing in a wider light. It is impossible that you should seriously think of condemning us to such an equivocal position——"

Through the dark of the hot room he walked back and forth; he stood still; he came back to the window again: arguing ever with patience, with passion, with flashes of sarcasm or tenderness. His bitter humour got the upper hand at last.

"Your religion is accountable for this, of course. You have run after it until it has turned and rent you as all extremes are certain to do. But in your natural pleasure at self-sacrifice you appear to have forgotten me. I have not offered myself up for demolition, and I can't see what right you have to hand it out to me."

"It isn't religion. It is—conscience."

"The same thing when they become abnormal."

"No. Conscience is it is God, I suppose. Religion—well, it is tied on to us with our bibs, and we leave it there because it becomes a habit. And with lots of people it is nothing more. God is more than that, you know. He is sought first-hand by those who won't take a go-between. Religion is often just the go-between. And when you sneer at religion that is the thing you mean. I am afraid you don't understand anything about the other—yet."

"I understand that you are the sweetest and truest soul I have ever known." He came back; kneeling a knee on the window-sill and leaning to her. "I will take you for my religion and my conscience and my God if you will. But I won't take any other. I don't want any other. Why should I? If God made this world then He did not make such a pure and beautiful thing that I should want to love and worship Him because of it."

"But don't you see that it is you and unbelievers like you who take the purity and beauty out of it? And then you blame God."

"He should not have allowed the devil to be too strong for us, then."

"It is you who have allowed that——"

"Please don't begin a theological discussion. I am not up in all the cant phrases—I beg your pardon again, but—I wonder if you realise what you are doing with me. We are not children, to be frightened by the bugbears of devils or gods. We are simply man and woman, with our own problems to meet and our own doubts to conquer. It is natural that you should be afraid of this step at first. But no religion, no philosophy, no metaphysics can prove to us that there is a God or another world but this. Our nature is our strongest and most relentless guide. Why shouldn't we follow it? For we have no other."

"We have. Oh, we have." She put her hand on his shoulder. "You can't do it, Dick. If you kill my belief you kill me. It is me. I could not live without it—not even with you."

"My God—if you'd only try it," he said. But before her face his eager eyes dropped, and he sat still, biting his lips and frowning at the dark wall beyond the window.

Jennifer twisted her hands together. She knew that he was recognising acutely this hidden force that was ranged against him, and that the whole of his manhood's assertive will was in revolt at it.

"You are wilfully blinding yourself," he said at last. "You don't realise that religion is and always has been the most selfish thing conceivable. You are showing me the brutality and mercilessness of religion now. You have taught me to hate it as I never did before, because it is the thing which separates us. You have shown me the self-centred satisfaction of those who worship it——"

She put out her hands with a sudden cry.

"Go! Oh, go! You are hurting me too much!"

He sprang up and stooped over her.

"I will come back to you," he said. "I shall keep on coming back while I live, and I will wear down your resistance, Jennifer. I will have you, if I die for it—or if I make you die for it. My work will keep me in the West just now, and you will be in the East. But I shall come to you again. I shall come."

He took her hands down from before her eyes.

"Your little gods won't make you happy," he said. "We are men and women on this old earth, Jennifer, and not fantastic spiritual anomalies. You want me, and you will never stop wanting me. You know what I have done to yourself and Ducane, and yet you cannot love me the less. You know that I laugh at all the tenets which you believe, and yet you cannot love me the less. This proves that love is not a spiritual thing and that it is sheer imbecility to put it on a spiritual plane. You are wrecking both our lives for nothing—nothing!"

"It is often the nothings of earth which grow to the everythings of Heaven," she said.

The white, brave sadness of her face halted the impatient anger on his tongue. He lifted her hands, kissed them, and laid them back on her lap.

"I have lived enough to know that we all blind ourselves, and that no man has the right to judge his fellow," he said. "You believe that you are right, you poor little girl, and you are going to make us both suffer for your belief. I believe that you are wrong, and I'll convince you of it yet. A man takes his stand on reason and a woman on sentiment. If I give way on some points you must do the same. And I will not say good-bye to you, for I mean to come back."

She watched him cross to the door and turn to look at her. And she raised herself in the big chair.

"Good-bye," she said. But he shook his head with a sudden, half-whimsical smile, and shut the door behind him.