A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD

The sun was shining down; the spring rains had ceased; within less than a month winter had vanished, and summer had swept through Keewatin with a burst of gladness. The land was riotously green; through the heart of it wandered the river, newly released, a streak of azure, or of gilded splendour where smitten by the sun. Although its waters were running freely, many memories of the frozen quiet still remained in the shape of ice piled up along its banks, sometimes to the height of fifteen feet, and of snow in the more shady hollows of the forest, which glimmered distantly between leaves and branches hinting at secret woodland lakes. Even the most backward among the trees had commenced to unfold their buds. All day long, and through the major portion of the night, the frogs continued to whistle in the marshes and along the river's edges. Flock after flock of duck arrived, flashing their wings against the sky, dropping from under a cloud suddenly, and coming to rest in the water with a shower of spray, where they rode at ease side by side, like painted, anchored merchantmen returned in safety from the earth's end. Now the wild swan, teal, or goose would go by with a whirr of wings, crying hoarsely. To make the world seem yet more wide an occasional gull would heave in sight, drifting without effort in silent flight majestically. In the forest Granger was conscious of a commotion at the cause of which he could only guess. Love was at work in the shadows, or what among the dumb creation passes for love. There was a continual stirring of leaves, the rustle of branches forced aside, the scattering of birds, those spies and betrayers of the four-footed animal, and the grievous low wail of the wolf. Sometimes a fish would leap in the river, flash silvery and dripping in the sunlight, on its bridal journey from the ocean. Was it an act of gallantry, he wondered, which some deep-sea female witnessed from beneath the ripple of the stream, or was it a terrified effort to escape from love. He knew what that best of all passions could mean to the forest animal, and how cruel it might become. Often in the fall of the year he had watched a doe, seen her dash down the river bank, stand quivering, leap in and swim, made fearless of man because she knew that her lover, the stag, was not far behind.

This frenzy of passion set him thinking, and made him long for the return of Peggy Ericsen. He knew that his love for her was not of the highest, was little more than physical, not much nobler than forest love; but what was a man to do, and how guide his conduct when all the world was a-mating? On occasions he had a clearer vision, and realised with a sense of sudden shame to how low a level he had sunk. Then he would strive to throw off this attraction for a half-breed girl by recalling the faces of all the other women whom he had admired and loved. Yet this also was dangerous, for it caused him to remember Mordaunt, thoughts of whom roused up anger within him against Spurling. He had agreed to leave him to God, and could not go back on his word; therefore he must forget Mordaunt and, if his mind must be haunted by womankind, think only of Peggy. Peggy! Well, she was not a bad little sort. Pretty? Yes. But between her and himself there could be no community of mind. He knew that for hundreds of years it had been the custom of traders and white trappers to take to themselves a squaw from a tribe of friendly Indians, sometimes for the sake of commercial advantages, sometimes for defence, sometimes for domestic convenience, rarely for love. But there his education, which would have served him well in an older land, stood in his way, as it had so often done, making him over-delicate.

He could find it in his heart to wish himself more ignorant and less refined. That glamour of intellectual gentility, which England sets such store by, had made him unfit for the outdoor brutalities of northern life. In his catastrophe he knew that he was not single, though there was small consolation in that; all through Canada he had encountered younger sons, drawing-room bred young gentlemen, who worked in lumber camps, on railroads, and in mines by day, and spelt out their Horace from ragged texts by brushwood fires, beneath the stars, or in verminous shacks by night. Their power to construe a dead language served to differentiate them from their associates, and, rather foolishly if heroically, to bolster up their pride.

But, to return to Peggy, what a pity it was that she had insisted on the marriage ceremony! Yet, he respected her for that. But, and there was always a but in Granger's reasonings, suppose he should get his chance to return to England one day! And this would certainly happen to him on his mother's death. And suppose, when he had tethered himself to this half-breed wife, he should get word that Mordaunt was still alive! Granger was always at a loss when the moment for decision presented itself; he was too moderate, too far-sighted and philosophic to act immediately. It takes an abrupt, coarse-grained man, or a prophet, to handle a crisis efficiently; your man who is only endowed just beyond the average sees too far—and not far enough. The insolent infringement of personality which he had suffered as man and child from his mother's unwise interference had caused him to become a chronic hesitator. As usual, in this case as in all others, he determined to let matters slide, to give circumstance an unfettered opportunity to evolve its own event. He was content to remain the spectator of his own career, allowing Chance to be the only doer of the deeds which went to make up the record of his life. And what would Chance do next? The Man with the Dead Soul might return at any hour from his winter's hunt, bringing with him his daughter, in which case most surely his book of life would commence to write out its latest chapter of disgrace.

Beorn had cached a canoe at the mouth of the Forbidden River, and therefore would reach the Point up-stream from the northward. Granger found excitement in the thought that any minute, looking out from his window, he might discover the approach of his future wife. The more he allowed his fancy to dwell upon her, the more pleasant her image became for him. After all, there is always something of romance, at first at any rate, in marrying out of your blood heritage. Pizarro must have felt that when he took to himself Inez Huayllas Nusta, the Inca princess. The havoc of affection which was being enacted secretly beneath the shadow of the forest trees urged him on, crying, "Take your pleasure while it is yours, winter will return. Short views of life are best." Having listened to that advice for several days, he allowed himself to be persuaded. It seemed to him, when he remembered how they had parted, that it would be a gallant and reconciling act to set forth to meet her. Moreover, though the mind that was in him stood aside from the project in disdain, the body cried, "Forward! Forward!" in chorus with the song of the wild-wood.

Early one morning he carried down his canoe to the water's edge, loaded it with a week's provisions, padlocked his store and set out. As the prow drove forward down-stream, exultation entered into him. He was playing at saying good-bye to his long exile; miles ahead lay the Hudson Bay, and beyond that England. If his boat were not so frail and his arms were stronger, by pressing on and onward he could escape. These were scarcely the thoughts with which a man should set out to meet his bride. Desires to meet and avoid her alternated even now, when with each fresh thrust of the paddle he approached her nearer presence. Yet, even to his way of thinking, there was something epic in the situation—that this girl of an alien tradition and a savage race, with her copper skin, and blue-black hair, and timid eyes, should be threading her passage up her native river, through the early summer, toward her western lover who was hastening down the self-same primeval highroad to meet her. Oh, he would be very happy with Peggy! Thus imagining himself on through the labyrinth of passionate fancy, he floated down stream, shrouded in the morning mist. He had to go slowly, for he could not see far ahead, and travel by water was still treacherous by reason of belated floes of ice. Over to the eastward the sun winked down on him with a dissipated bloodshot eye, knowingly, with the cruel misanthropic humour of a tired man of the world who, regarding idealism as a jest, had guessed at the purpose of his errand and was eager to declare his own shrewd cleverness.

And if the sun is a cynic, who can blame him? He alone of created things has an intimate knowledge of all live things' love affairs, from when Eve shook back her hair and lifted up her lips, to the last girl kissed in Japan. The canoe drifting out of a scarf of mist brought Granger in sight of the bend, where Strangeways had been drowned. He plunged his paddle deeper in the water, thrusting it forward to stay the progress of the prow, and glanced from side to side, then straight ahead. He had caught the smell of burning. On the northern side of the bend, curling above the trees, he could detect the rise of smoke. Someone had lit a fire and was camping there. But who? Was it Beorn and Peggy? No, they would not camp so near their destination; they would have pushed on to the store for rest. Nor could it be men from the Crooked Creek coming up to God's Voice; the season was as yet too early for them to be expected. Then, was it Spurling?

Paddling out into the middle stream, he stole beneath the farther bank, and, rounding the bend, came in sight of two men, the one seated upright before the fire cooking his bannocks, the other stretched out twenty paces distant at the edge of the underbrush, completely covered with a robe, motionless as if he slept. The man who was awake looked up, shaded his eyes, then rising to his feet came down to the water's edge and waved his hand.

Granger recognised in him his friend PÈre Antoine, the gaunt old Jesuit of Keewatin. No one could remember, not even the Indians, at what time he had first come into the district; he seemed to have been there always and was of a great age. Yet, despite his many years, he could travel miracles of journeys in the name of Mary's son. It was said of him that he was always to be seen mounting the sky-line in times of crisis and temptation; that he knew by instinct where men were in spiritual peril, as the caribou scents water; that he had often broken out of the forest unexpectedly in time to prevent murder. There were Indians to be found who would circumstantially assert that they had met with PÈre Antoine, five hundred miles distant from the spot where he had last been seen, walking in the wilderness radiantly, wearing the countenance of Jesus Christ.

Granger recalled these legends as he gazed toward the camp; he watched the figure of the sleeping man—and he thought of Spurling. Was this Spurling? He tried to make out the man's identity by his figure's outline, but the robes which were piled above him forbade that. Yet within himself he was sure that his guess was correct. What was more likely than that Antoine should have met the fugitive wandering up the Forbidden River, perhaps sick and starving, should have taken his confession and compassionately have brought him back? Probably it was Antoine's purpose that they two should be reconciled. He might even have converted Spurling and have brought back God into his life, so that now he was willing to return to Winnipeg to give himself up, and to take his chance of death.

Having run his canoe aground between the bank-ice, he stepped out and grasped the Jesuit's hand.

"God has arrived before you this time, PÈre Antoine," he said, jerking his head in the direction of the sleeping man; "he has already done your work. I have promised Him that I will do no harm to your companion, so you have arrived too late."

"If it was God who arrived," he said, "I am content."

He spoke significantly, hinting at a further knowledge of which he supposed Granger to be possessed.

"If it was not God, then who else?"

"Ah, who else?"

Granger, in common with most white men of the district, had fallen into the Indian superstition that PÈre Antoine was omniscient; it came to him as a shock that he might be unaware of how God had written on the ice. Usually in talking with the priest he took short-cuts in his methods of communication, leaving many things understood but unmentioned, as a man is wont to do when conversing with himself.

"There is no doubt that it was God," he said; "He did not want me to murder this man. He wished that I should leave him alone, to be judged in the forest by Himself. Therefore, if you have brought him here with you to make us friends, I will not do that; but I will promise you, as I have promised God, that I will not be his enemy."

Antoine tapped him on the arm gently, looking him full in the face with his grave, penetrating eyes: "And did not God Himself arrive too late?" he asked.

Granger flushed hotly, for he thought that he detected an under-tone of accusation in the way in which those words were uttered. "Tell me, is he dead?" he asked abruptly.

"He is dead."

"Is it . . . is that his body over there?"

"You should know best."

Involuntarily Granger sank his voice, now that he knew that that sleeping man was dead. He pressed closer to the priest and commenced to whisper, now that he knew that no noise of his, however loud, could disturb the rest of this man who would never wake. Sometimes, when in the hurry of his speech his voice had been by accident a little raised, he would cease speaking, lift up his head, and peer furtively from side to side, then over to where the dead man lay, to make certain that he had not stirred,—all this lest someone in that great silence should have heard what he had said. Thus does the presence of the dead accuse living men, as if by our mere retention of life we did them injury. Wheresoever we encounter them, whether in the hired pride of the vulgar city hearse, or in the pitiful disarray of bleached bones and tattered raiment strewn on a mountainside, they make even those of us who are remotest from blame feel guilty men.

"But, PÈre Antoine, I did not kill him," Granger was saying. "I was gravely tempted, but God wrote upon the ice and stayed my hand. This man was once my friend, and is now again—now that he is dead. Let me uncover and look upon his face."

But the priest withheld him. "Not yet—not yet," he said. "Let us first talk together awhile, that I may hear what has happened, and get to understand."

So there in the quiet of the early morning, with nothing to break the stillness save the crackling of the fire, and the flowing of the river, and the occasional flight of a bird, Granger told the priest all his story, from his first dream of El Dorado to the thoughts of escape and of Peggy Ericsen which he had had, as drifting down-stream, he had caught the smell of burning and come in sight of the bend. It was a true confession; nothing to his own discredit was left out.

When he came to an end the mist had lifted, and the sun rode high in the heavens disentangled of cloud. All the time that he had been speaking the priest had sat motionless, with his head bent forward listening, his knees drawn up and his arms about them. Now that the tale was over, he slowly turned his head; and then it was for the first time that Granger knew what the Indians meant when they said that they had met with PÈre Antoine in the wilderness, walking radiantly, wearing the countenance of Jesus Christ. There was such a brightness about him that he could not bear his gaze, but trembling with a kind of fearful joy fell forward on his face, covering his eyes with his hands. And still the priest said nothing, not trusting himself to speak, perhaps, so great was his compassion.

But it was not long before Granger was conscious of a hand, hard and horny and ungentle, as far as outward circumstance could make it so, which rested on his head. At last he spoke. "I think I understand," he said, and then, after a pause, "but you will never help yourself or the world by merely being sad. No man ever has."

When Granger answered nothing nor lifted up his head, he spoke again. "Does that seem a strange judgment to pass on you here in Keewatin? Does it sound too much like the speech of a city man? Nevertheless, it is because of your flight from sadness that you have met with all your dangers. All your life you have spent in striving to escape from things which are sad. Why did you dream of El Dorado when you were in London? Because, as you yourself have told me, exquisiteness of dress did not reassure you of another's happiness; you were always remembering that a decent coat may sometimes cover cancer. You are one of those who suffer more because of the sores of Lazarus than Lazarus himself. That is well and Christlike, if you suffer gladly—which you do not. So you left London and travelled half across the world to Yukon, only to find a greater wretchedness; for your misery growing vicious pursued you, and goaded you on to crime. Once more to escape you left Yukon and came to Winnipeg, and came up here, and still you are sad. Will I tell you why? Always, always you have depended on yourself for escape and rest. That is useless, for your sadness does not belong to any city, or any land; it is within yourself. Wherever you have travelled you have carried it with you. You must look for help from outside yourself."

Again he paused, but Granger did not stir. Then he repeated, speaking yet more gently, "I am an old man and have lived in Keewatin the length of most men's lives, yet I have not always lived up here. I was not always happy, and I say to you, you must look for help from outside yourself."

Then Granger answered him, keeping his head still bowed.

"Where, where must I look for help?"

"Lift up your head."

He obeyed, and the first sight he saw was the face of PÈre Antoine bent above him. Again he was struck with its likeness to the traditional face of Christ—but the face was that of a Jesus who had grown grey in suffering and had been often crucified, who was very ancient and had not yet attained his death. Then he thought he knew what le PÈre had meant by saying that he must look for help from outside himself. He turned his eyes away and gazed into the sunshine, and on the greenness of the awakened country. Somehow it all looked very happy and changed from what it had been before they two had met. He vaguely wondered whether already he might not be now experiencing that help. But, as had always happened to him after tasting of a momentary joy, in turning his head he found a new grief awaiting him, for there, twenty paces distant, stretched out at the edge of the underbrush, covered with a robe, he caught sight of that recumbent figure, lying motionless as if it slept. He shuddered, and seizing the priest by the arm, speaking hoarsely with suppressed excitement, exclaimed, "Where did he come from? But where did you find him?"

"I found him stretched out on the bank-ice, awaiting me as I paddled up-stream toward the bend."

"Then he was coming back. God must have met him down there on the Forbidden River and have spoken with him face to face; he could not endure His voice, so he fled. Oh, to come back at such a season, when the river was in flood, he must have been terribly afraid. He must have clambered his way up-stream, all those hundred miles, running by the bank. PÈre Antoine, you know many things, what kind of words were those, do you suppose, that God spoke to Spurling?"

"The kind of words which God always speaks to men; He told him the truth about himself."

"The truth about himself? There are few who could endure to hear that."

"Yes, He would accuse him with a question, I think."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because that is the way in which God usually speaks to men. He asked Adam a question, and Adam hid himself; he asked Cain a question, and Cain became a vagabond in the earth."

They sat in silence awhile, and then Granger said, "And if God were to speak to me, what question would He ask?"

"I think he would say, 'John Granger, by how much are you better than Spurling, whom you condemn?'"

"You are right; yes, I think He would say that. Even I have asked myself that question before to-day."

"You did not ask yourself; it was God's voice."

"And I could give no answer to what He said. PÈre Antoine, before we met, I had often wondered what I would say to Spurling should we meet again. I had planned all manner of kindly phrases to make him again my friend; but I had thought of him as coming to me prosperous, with the approval of the world. When he came to me in poverty, asking help, in peril of his life for a sin which had been almost mine, I turned him away. He had chosen me out from among all men between Winnipeg and the Klondike, as the only one to whom he could safely go for help; and I turned him away. I see it clearly now; God sent to me this man whom I had wished to murder, when he had performed my crime, that, by endangering my life for his, I might cleanse myself. When all men had failed him, he and God expected that I, at least, would understand. But for Mordaunt, I might have had to flee as he fled, changed by the raising of a gun and hasty pulling of a trigger into a Judas to all that is best; I might have had to support within me his utter solitariness and agony of mind, and have been compelled to see myself as debased throughout and forever by a single, momentary act. How he must have suffered! I shall fear to die now; till now I have been afraid only of life."

"Why will you fear to die?"

"Because I shall meet with Spurling, and then I shall hear God's question and His accusing voice."

The priest laid a hand upon his shoulder gently. "Ah, my child, but you forget," he said; "in the country where Spurling has gone he will have learnt how to understand."

That thought was new to Granger, that of the two faults his own was the greater and that forgiveness belonged to Spurling. He sat motionless for a long time arguing it out; he wanted to be exactly just to both Spurling and himself. The fire died down and PÈre Antoine threw on more brushwood; the sun grew tall in the heavens and a rain cloud gathered in the west; the floe-ice caught in its passage round the bend, gasped and whined and, tearing itself free again, vanished down river out of sight. The arithmetic of the problem stood thus: Spurling's sin had been the result of a sudden violence, his own of a conscious and premeditated uncharitableness. Which sin was morally the worse, to shoot a fellow creature in a fit of passionate desperation, or to turn your back upon a bygone benefactor who comes to you in distress, comes to you when his heart is breaking, because he can trust himself with no one else? "My sin is the greater," Granger told himself, "I am more wrongful than wronged against"; his thoughts going back to what le PÈre had said, he added, "I am Cain, and yet I judged Spurling as if I had been God Himself."

He was roused from his meditation by a dull thudding sound which had commenced behind his back; turning his head, he saw that PÈre Antoine was already digging a grave. Rising without a word, he began to lend a hand. They had not gone far when they found that the ground was hard as granite, that it had not yet thawed out; then they commenced to look for stones to pile upon the body so that, since the grave would be shallow, they might raise a mound above it to prevent the wolves from getting the body out.

By the time they had completed their preparations the rain was falling in large and heavy drops, and the storm was blowing in great gusts through the forest, causing the young leaves to shudder and whisper together, and to turn their backs to the wind. The priest and the trader stood upright from their work and gazed at one another. Already the narrow hole, which they had scooped out, was filling with water; there was no time to lose; yet neither seemed inclined to hurry. At last PÈre Antoine said, "So you are sure that you did not do it?"

"I cannot be sure of that."

"Ah, but you did not do it in the way I mean? You did not kill him with the strength of your hands?"

They went together to the edge of the underbrush where the dead man's body lay, and carried it, without disturbing the coverings, to the side of the grave; there they set it down.

"I cannot bear that he should lie in that dampness," Granger broke out; "I remember when we were in London, how he used to hate the wet. Coldness he could put up with or the hottest sunshine, but he could not endure the damp. He said it made him feel as though the world was crying, like a dreary woman because her youngest child was dead. We can't drop him into that puddle and leave him there."

He commenced to strip off his clothes, and to fold them along the floor of the grave. When he had apparently made all ready, he stooped down again and smoothed out a ruck, lest its discomfort should irk the dead.

"Now," he said, "let me see his face for the last time, for he was my friend."

Le PÈre bent down, and drew the coverings back to the waist, while Granger leant over him in his eagerness. The body, having lain upon the ice, had been well preserved, no feature had been disturbed; but it was not the body of a man who was newly dead, nor was it the face of Spurling. So absorbed had Granger been by thoughts of the comrade whom he had treated harshly, and by the mysterious meaning of the writing which he had seen upon the ice, that the likelier solution of the problem of this man's identity had not entered into his head, that the body might be that of Strangeways, thrown up by the back-rush of the current around the bend.

"Strangeways," he muttered, "it is Strangeways." And with those words his charity towards Spurling began to ebb.

PÈre Antoine, when he heard it, realising that these were the remains of an officer of justice, for whom, when he did not return, search would be made, and not of an escaped murderer with a price upon his head, at news of whose death Authority would be glad, went down on his hands and knees and began to examine the clothing of the dead for proofs of his identity, which could be sent in to headquarters for the establishing of his death. He foresaw that there was need for care; when the matter came to be investigated, it would be discovered that Granger had been Spurling's partner in the Klondike; questions would certainly be asked of Robert Pilgrim, as Hudson Bay factor and head man of the district, concerning Granger's conduct in Keewatin, and no good word could be looked for from that quarter. That which would tell most heavily against him would be this fact, that two men, separated by a few hours, were known to have passed God's Voice en route for the independent store of Garnier, Parwin, and Wrath, the first a hunted criminal, the second an officer of justice—the criminal had escaped and the officer was dead. Presumably both pursued and pursuer had arrived at Murder Point, for the body of Strangeways, the follower, had been found a mile down-river below the Point. Then where was Spurling? And how had he managed to escape, if he had not been helped? Who could have helped him save Granger? And why was Strangeways dead?

These were some of the many questions which avenging justice would be sure to ask, and, however skilfully they might be answered, the priest knew well that it would be difficult to prevent suspicion from attaching to a hated independent trader, especially when it became known that he had once been the fugitive's friend. Why, he himself had suspected Granger at first!

His present purpose was, if possible, to gather such proofs from the dead man's clothing as would exclude the doubt of foul play, and establish as a fact Granger's assertion that the corporal had arrived at his death by the accident of drowning.

In the meanwhile, he was not meeting with much success in his search, for the right arm of the dead man was pressed so rigidly across his breast that it could not be moved without breaking; the hand was concealed and the fingers tangled in the folds of his dress, as if even in the last moments of life he had been conscious that he kept a secret hidden there. Only with violence could it be forced aside, and to this the priest was averse; he commenced to cut away the clothing, above downwards from the neck, below upwards from the belt. The cloth ripped easily, having become rotten with the wet, but the trimmings of fur were tough and obstinate to separate. When he had slit the capote and under-garments above and below the arm in two big flaps, he rolled them back, laying bare the breast, where he discovered a silver chain which went about the neck, the pendant to which, wrapped in the portion of the dress that had covered it, was clutched in the icy hand. He now cut away the stuff from around the hand, and, with a severity which seemed both profane and cruel, bent back the fingers one by one, compelling them to release their hold, so that the bones were heard to crack.

"What are you doing?" cried Granger, angrily, being roused by the sound from an unsatisfactory examination of the mixed feelings which had arisen within him on discovering that Spurling, whom he had just been regretting, was not dead. "Why must we torture him? Why can't we leave him alone, and lay him decently in his grave?"

"Perhaps in order that we may prevent you from being hanged."

"From being hanged! You mistake me for Spurling, PÈre Antoine; your memory must be failing. What have I done to deserve such courtesy at the hands of Fate? Why should men want to hang me?"

"For the murder of Strangeways."

Granger stood back, and drew himself erect, as if by asserting his physical cleanness and manhood he could refute the accusation. He lifted up his head and gazed with a fixed stare on the landscape, seeing nothing. Yes, it was true, they could make that accusation; there was sufficient evidence for suspecting him and, with the aid of a few lies and inaccurate statements on the part of his enemies—Robert Pilgrim, for instance, and Indians whom he had offended—sufficient evidence might be got together to bring him to the gallows. A fitting ending that for the son of the ambitious mother who had stinted herself and planned for his success, and a most appropriate sequel to the example of reckless bravery set by the last two generations of his father's house!

Dimly, slowly, as he stood there in the northern icy drizzle, with his eyes on the muddy river hurrying toward its freedom between jagged banks, he came very wretchedly to realise that there was only one way in which he could save himself, a way, albeit, which both his loyalty and honour forbade, by becoming ardent in the pursuit and effecting the capture of Spurling, that so he might prove his innocence. An emotion of shame and self-disgust throbbed through him that it should have been possible for him, even for a moment, to entertain such a coward's thought as that. He shook himself free from temptation and looked about. What was PÈre Antoine doing? What had he meant by saying that he was perhaps preventing him from being hanged? Did he still believe him to be guilty, as he had evidently done at first?

PÈre Antoine was intent upon his undertaking; when asked, he only shook his head, saying, "If I believed you guilty, why should I endeavour to find the signs which will prove you innocent? Would I do that, do you think, if I believed you to be a guilty man?"

Granger was softened by those words; they meant a great deal to him at such a time, spoken as they were curtly by one who was so eager to rehabilitate his character before all the world that he had no moments to waste in argument. They were far more convincing to him of the true opinion which le PÈre held of him than an hour consumed in apology, which would have been an hour spent in idleness. He came and knelt down by the side of the priest, and gazed on the results of his work. He saw the cold white face of Strangeways with the eyes set wide, staring upwards at the clouds. Their gaze did not seem to concentrate as in life, but like that of a well-painted portrait, while the eyes themselves remained fixed, wandered everywhere. Yet, when he settled his attention upon them, they seemed to look at him alone as if, since the lips were silent, they were trying to speak those words which the body had come to utter; if he turned his head away for a moment and then looked back, they seemed themselves to have changed their direction and to be staring again incuriously out on space, having abandoned hope of delivering their message. And he saw the naked throat and neck, and the marks where the teeth of the yellow-faced husky had clashed and met; last of all he saw the silver chain and the pendant attached, which PÈre Antoine had at that moment succeeded in freeing from the cold clenched hand.

"What have you there?" he asked.

"I don't know yet. Lift up the head, so that we can slip the chain over and find out."

Granger did as he was bidden; but, as he stooped to his task, he was horribly conscious that the dead man's eyes were intently fixed upon him, as if they knew and lived on, though every other part of the motionless body was dead and ignorant.

"Well, here it is. It's a locket."

Granger started up from the ground trembling. "PÈre Antoine, do you think we ought to look at it?" he said.

"Why not?"

"Look at the eyes of that dead man."

"They seem to me to be saying 'yes.'"

Granger looked again, went near, bent down and looked carefully; then he turned his head. "You are right," he said; "I also think they are saying 'yes.'"

The priest put the locket in his hand. "It is for you to open it," he said.

It was of gold and studded with turquoise, a woman's trinket and old-fashioned, the chasing being worn flat in places; the silver chain was common and strong, and had evidently not at first belonged to it, being of modern manufacture—probably a comparatively recent purchase. Granger looked it over critically, but could get no hint of its contents from the outside. On the front was engraved a monogram J. M., and on the back a coat-of-arms. The lines of the monogram were distinct and sharp to the touch, they must have been cut many years after the locket itself was made, but the coat-of-arms seemed contemporary with the rest of the chasing. He tried to open it, but the dampness had caused it to stick, so that he broke his nails upon the fastening. He took out his knife and attempted to lever its edges apart with the blade. At last, growing impatient, he set it on its hinges upon a rock and commenced to hammer it with a stone. At the third blow the fastening gave, and the sides fell apart. He could see that it contained a miniature, and, on the other side, a lock of hair; but the glasses which shut them in were mist-covered. He rubbed them clean on the lining of his coat and looked again.

The portrait was that of a young girl, fresh and innocent, about eighteen years of age; her hair, worn loose, all blown about, fell upon her neck and shoulders in long curls; her eyes were blue and intensely bright; her face was animated, with a certain dash of generous spirit and healthy defiance in it, which were chiefly denoted by the full firm lips and arching brows—and the face was the face of Mordaunt. For the first time, he saw the woman whom he had loved, in her rightful woman's guise. He had often longed that he might do that; it had made him feel that he shared so small a portion of her life that he should know her only by her man's name and remember her only in her Yukon placer-miner's dress. He would have stooped to kiss her lips at that time, had it not been for the presence of the dead, who had also loved her and from whom he had stolen his treasure. Would his body be able to rest in the grave when thus robbed of the symbol of the passion which had caused its blood to pulsate most fiercely in its life?

Then he fell to thinking other thoughts—of how strangely this knowledge had come to him, from all across the world, by the hand of a rejected lover who was dead. Had this been the secret which the corporal had waited to tell him, thrown up on the ice, lying silent and deserted throughout that month at the bend; had he been waiting only to say, "I hold the knowledge which you most desire in my clenched right hand. Here is her woman's likeness. I require it no longer, now that I am dead?" No, surely he had not delayed for that. Then suddenly he realised that this must mean that the woman herself was dead. He remembered distinctly those last words which Strangeways had spoken, even as though he were now repeating them again aloud, "I tell you if the ice were as rotten as your soul or Spurling's, I would still follow him, though I had to follow him to Hell." And his last utterance had been a reiteration of that promise, "He killed the woman I loved, and he shall pay the price though I follow him to Hell."

This was the fulfilment of that promise; though he himself was dead, he had delayed his body near Murder Point that, with his pale and silent lips and the portrait which hung about his neck, he might urge his rival on in their common cause of vengeance. "I will pray God every day of my life that Spurling may be damned throughout the ages—eternally and pitilessly damned," he had said, and now that the days of his life were over his body had tarried behind to continue that errand, so far as was possible, into the days of his death. When they had parted that night, a month ago outside the shack, he had told a lie; he had denied that the woman was Mordaunt who had been murdered, and had tried to prove his words by asserting that the body which was found in the creek near Forty-Mile had worn a woman's dress. Now he had come back to silently refute his own statement, and to declare the truth which would stir up anger and give him an inheritor of his revenge.

Here, then, was a new reason why he should become ardent in the pursuit and effect the capture of Spurling, that by so doing he would be behaving honourably by a man who was dead. He saw in it at present, with his cynic's eye for self-scorn and self-depreciation, only an added excuse and more subtle temptation for the saving of himself. "No, I cannot do it," he said. And yet, somewhere at the back of his brain, the monotonous and oracular voice of a wise self-knowledge kept answering, "But you will do it, when you have had leisure to be lonely, and have tortured yourself with memories of her."

It seemed to Granger as though Strangeways himself were the speaker of those words; but when he turned round hotly, prepared for argument, he found that the eyes had become glazed and vacant, and that at last the body was truly dead. It had no need to live longer—it had delivered its message.