CHAPTER XXVII

When Lyndsay walked up the beach at the Island Camp, it was already dark. In the dinner-tent, on camp-stools, the two men were gaily discussing such events as in a fishing camp are always uppermost—how this or that salmon behaved, the weather, the water, or the eternal black-flies.

The cook had just set on the table a dish of broiled salmon, and said, as he did so:

“There’s a canoe at the beach—Mr. Lyndsay, I think.”

“Come to ask your intentions, Fred,” said Ellett, laughing.

“Hush, I hear him coming. I wonder what it is he wants.” As Carington spoke, he threw open the fly of the tent. “Come in, Mr. Lyndsay; you are just in time. Bring the soup back, Jim.”

“Thanks. How are you, Mr. Ellett? Yes, I will dine with you, and with pleasure. No soup, thank you,” and he sat down.

For a while there was the ordinary talk of the river, and when, finally, they were left with the tobacco and cigars, Lyndsay having declined the rye whisky, he said:

348“I came up to get a little help from you. We have had to-day a very singular and quite unpleasant incident. There is no one can overhear us?”

“No one. I need hardly say how heartily we are at your service. Pray go on. May I ask what has troubled you?”

“Of course. I came to tell you, and then to ask your help or advice. You know all these river men?”

“Almost all, even the lumber-gangs.”

“I thought so. I shall be brief. Last year we buried my youngest child here. I had set up at the head of the grave a simple white stone. To-day I went up with Mrs. Lyndsay to see that it was all in order. To our horror the stone was gone. Of course my wife was painfully disturbed. The grave was trampled; the wild rose-bushes we had set around in a little thicket were beaten down. That is the whole story. I am, as you may fancy, greatly annoyed. I felt that, with your knowledge of the men hereabouts, you might possibly give me some clue. I owe you every apology,” and he turned to Ellett, “for thrusting so personal a calamity into the hours of a holiday, but—”

“You could not have found two people more willing.”

“Thank you.”

“Let me ask you a few questions,” said Carington.

“Of course.”

The young man reflected a moment, and then in quick succession put his queries.

“Have you gone over the place?”

“Yes,” and he told the little he had seen.

349“Was it a dugout?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“I will look to-morrow, early. Were there several people?”

“The foot-marks seemed alike—the usual many-nailed boot. I did not measure them.”

“I will. The beach is clay up there. Has any one cause to injure you?”

“No one. My wife has been, as usual, all goodness to these poor people.”

“I see no possible motive,” said Ellett.

“Wait a bit, Oliver. The grave had not been opened?”

“Great Heaven! No.”

“Why should a man want a tombstone?” said Ellett. “An insane person might have done it.”

“No,” returned Carington, thoughtfully. “No, there are none here. No, some one wanted that stone. Why!—by George, I hate to suspect the poor devil!”

“Who?”

“It is a mere guess, a suspicion. I have an idea that Joe Colkett stole that stone.”

“It is a little odd. That, exactly, is my sister’s conclusion.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes. Being a woman, she had no reason to give, or none worth anything; and yet I myself am enough inclined to agree with her to want to make sure as to whether there is any evidence to be had. It is a thing to punish.”

“I think so. The man is in pretty sore straits about money. But it cannot be any motive involving 350money, and yet—however, it is useless to talk about it. The first thing is to go over the ground with care. Let me do that—early to-morrow. Ah, to-day is Wednesday; I must go to Mackenzie to-morrow. That I can’t let wait. A man is to meet me there about my cabin. Can this thing rest a day?”

“Yes, I shall stay over Sunday. We had meant to go out on Saturday.”

“Then I will call late to-morrow night for your boy—as we come back, I mean.”

“One moment: I have thought best not to tell the boys. It can do no good.”

“None. On our return toward camp, I will manage to send Jack off, and will myself slip down to Colkett’s, and will look about me. If necessary, I can talk it out frankly. I think I could know in five minutes all the man knows, if he is in the thing at all.”

“But you won’t forget my warning, Mr. Carington. Joe is a poor sodden dog, but the woman is a devil.”

Carington smiled. “Oh, I shall have my rifle; and, after all, what could a woman do? There is no manner of risk.” He did not say that the notion of there being some peril in the matter made the enterprise more attractive. There were other motives also which were not disagreeable, and of these, too, he made no mention.

“Well, promise me to be on your guard.”

“It all seems rather absurd, but I shall keep my eyes open. I may be very late to-morrow night. Tell Jack, and, by the way, if it is late, I shall have to keep your money until Friday evening, or Ellett can take it to you. Send me the draft to-night.”

351“I have it with me”; and he handed it across the table.

“I think,” said Carington, “I would ignore the whole matter until I see you on Friday night. I would fish, as usual.”

“I think so.” He had asked advice and help, and this very decisive young man had certainly given it. “Thank you a thousand times,” he said, as he rose; “you have really relieved me,” and then he went away.

In his canoe he reflected a little on the mental peculiarity which made Anne and Carington prompt to conclude where he had been so tardy in reaching a decision. Anne had once said of him that his mind lacked wings, but was very sure on its legs. He reached home late, and rather weary. Anne said Rose had been told, and that Margaret had behaved admirably; also that the boys had no suspicion of the events which had distressed their elders.

The lives of men are lived under the limited monarchy of circumstance. Within this, men’s instincts and personal qualities—in a word, character—decide how they deal with the stringency of events, or meet the despotism of changeless natural laws.

Carington was about to feel the results of a combination of influences, some within and some outside of those due to mental and moral peculiarities entirely his own.

What I saw in an idle hour may serve to illustrate my meaning. The reader has my benevolent permission to leave it unread. I was once lying on my couch of spruce in a rude log-cabin on the Alligash River. It was raining heavily, and we had left our 352tents awhile for the more perfect shelter of a deserted log-cabin where the lumbermen had wintered years before my coming. Apparently for reasons as good as our own, many live things had come hither—some for a permanent home, and some, like Noah’s menagerie, for temporary protection. A splendidly constructed spider’s net occupied the open space where a window-pane had been. The three remaining panes were intact. It was a happy thought of that spider: when flies at noon sought the cool shade of the house, this open pane seemed to offer a way, and, when the sun fell, the path of exit was as inviting. The net was well stocked, as I saw, but mostly these corpses were dead shells, out of which the succulent meats had been taken. Nevertheless, the deadly retiarius lay coiled in a corner, as eager as if he had never had a breakfast. As to the flies, who were many, they seemed to be as ignorant of the net’s thin lines as men are of the fatal meshes which circumstance spins in the way of human flies, or which character weaves when the fly is his own spider. The spaces between the anchoring cables were wide. Most of the flies went through quite unaware how near they had been to death. Some got into the toils and struggled out, and then went and sat down in dark corners, and reflected on free-will and predestination. At last a queer-looking, yellowish fly got into trouble. He was physically odd-looking, and as to mental organization clearly distinct from the herd of flies. He was evidently adventurous and on a holiday. He was in and out of the room, between the long net lines, half a dozen times. “That is luck!” said I. “The goddess Wyrda 353has smiled on him!” At last he struck the net, and was caught. In place of struggling, he kept still a moment, while the spider ran out and made a reconnaissance. Then my fly gave a kick and a flutter, and was off and away. “Luck and strength,” said I. By and by he sailed past me, and sat down to dine on the sweet margins of some ponds of molasses—the relics of our lunch. Being a little too eager, he got his legs in the sweets, and then his wings. Not liking this, he flew away, and, after a disorderly flight, made for the window, where he hit the center of the net. This time I got up to observe the affair closely. He made a brave fight, but the molasses on his sticky legs was the determining circumstance. The net-thrower crawled up with caution, when, of a sudden, a great bee, humming in its flight, went like a Minié ball through the net, and the spider fled, and the fly tumbled out—and this was the end. I felt as if I had been a superior being who, from the vantage of a higher sphere, had been watching one of earth’s numberless dramas. He would have seen how instincts, character, and circumstance combine to determine the fates of men.