There are few things more interesting than to observe in a quiet family the effects of an explosion of the unusual. Assuredly, what had happened to the Lyndsays was uncommon. There is family character just as there is national character. Individuality is more or less dominated by it. Among those with whom we are dealing the endless discussions which in some groups of human beings are wasted on a matter of annoyance—a calamity or a grievance—were quite unknown. At need they talked over their troubles or difficulties, and put them aside when decisions were once attained.

Anne was fond of saying, “Talk is a wedge which widens troubles. When you think, you are talking to yourself alone, and are responsible for the consequences; it is hard so to weigh words as to know what weight they will have for others.” And thus it was that even about her most unbearable pain she said nothing, and disliked all discussions which led to no working opinion. Mrs. Lyndsay alone was given to seeking sympathy in her small ailments; but Anne, as she herself once observed, “wore neither her heart nor her liver on her sleeve.” And this was 355the general tone. If talk was needed to settle a thing, there was enough, and no more. Lyndsay liked to say, “And now we will put it aside, my dear.” He had thus ended a talk with his wife, who was disposed to say far more.

To all of them the unpleasant event I have recorded brought a sense of horror. But the primary mood of anger or disgust gave way to some other form of mental or moral activity, which varied with the person. Lyndsay simply and directly occupied himself with the slight evidence he had, and endeavored to reach a conclusion as to the criminal. Anne fell to thinking with interest of the motives of the criminal, and as to what possible temptation could make her desire to do such an act. The mother remained in a state of somewhat lessened emotional disturbance, wanting some one to talk to of it all, but finding none save Rose, who had no power to repress her.

Thus Thursday passed quietly enough at the Cliff Camp. Mr. Lyndsay wisely went a-fishing, and took Rose. It was pitiably true that, for Mrs. Lyndsay, the incident of the day before had renewed the grief which time had begun to heal. She wondered how Archie could go and fish. She even made a mild attempt to keep her daughter at home; but Lyndsay resolutely persisted, and had his way. Left to herself, Margaret devoted the morning to coddling Anne, which resulted, for the latter, in a condition of restrained irritability which was almost too much even for this heroic woman. At last she took refuge in her room.

356Jack spent the day in cleaning his rifle, and Dick in stuffing a kingfisher, while Ned bothered him with questions which not Solomon could have answered. As to Carington, he asked Ellett to go up to the church and make careful measurements of the footsteps, as this, by relieving him of the task, would enable him to get away earlier for his long paddle to Mackenzie.

At dawn, Carington, with his two men, in their canoe, went by the Cliff Camp, where all was peacefully still.

At the little town he made his own arrangements for the building of his cabin in the fall, and cashed a draft for himself and one for Mr. Lyndsay. The seven hundred dollars of Canadian notes he rolled into a tight bundle and put in his breeches-pocket. Then, after a hasty meal and a little rest, he turned back for the journey up the river.

There was some paddling to do until they reached swift water, and here he “spelled” his bowmen, taking a turn at poling, and pushed on. Three miles an hour is very good speed at this business, and thus, as the way was long, it was far into the night before they reached the Cliff Camp. Every one else but Jack was in bed. He had taken his blanket and gun, and settled himself patiently at the foot of the cliff.

“Is that you, Nimrod?” said Carington.

“Yes.”

“You have had a long wait. Is your father up?”

“No.”

“Then I must keep this money until Ellett can give it to him to-morrow. Jump in. It is late.”

357In five minutes the boy was asleep in the bottom of the canoe. Carington began to think over what he should do next day about the tombstone business.

At his own camp-ground it took him some five minutes to restore Jack, for a time, to the world of the wakeful, and Carington himself was glad enough to find his own couch.

Before dawn, Michelle touched him on the shoulder.

“You are pretty hard to wake, Mr. Carington.”

“Am I? What is it? Oh, we are going after bears. Hang the bears!” He rubbed his eyes, sat up, and said to Michelle, “Wake that boy. It will take ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

After Jack’s blanket was pulled away, and he himself rolled on to the tent-floor, he began to wake up.

“Coffee ready and lunch in knapsack, Michelle?”

“All right, sir.”

Carington got up, and, laughing at the guide’s difficulty in reviving Jack, went down to the beach, had a cold—a very cold—dip, and in a few minutes was dressed and ready, while Jack, but half awake, was making a boy’s still briefer toilet.

Meanwhile Carington looked into Ellett’s tent, and, seeing him sound asleep, hesitated a moment as to waking him, in order to give into his charge the money he had drawn. As he was about to speak, Michelle called out:

“Halloa! Canoe’s adrift! Take care, Jack. Paddle her in.”

Carington ran out of the tent, and saw that Jack was again ashore. He had put his gun and other 358traps in the boat, and then, jumping in hastily to arrange them, had caused the canoe to slip off into the current. The slight break thus caused in Carington’s mental processes made him for the time forget his intention. Ten minutes later he remembered it, as they were flying down-stream, and his hand chanced to fall on the bulging packet of notes in his pocket.

“Confound it!” he exclaimed. “I forgot it. It is hardly worth while to go back, Jack. I meant to leave the money I drew with Mr. Ellett. I fancy it is safe enough.” Then he proceeded to secure the pocket with a pin, saying, “We won’t go back. It is late, as it is.”

“I was thinking that,” said Jack, to whom bears were of far more importance than the balance in the national treasury.

“I meant to wake myself earlier, Jack; but I was pretty tired. Usually I can wake when I please.”

“I did think you were up, sir,” said Michelle. “You were a-saying things about roses when I touched you.”

“Was I?”

“Yes. Just, ‘Rose—Rose’—like that.”

“That’s queer,” remarked Jack.

“No. I am rather fond of flowers, more so than most men. By the way, Jack, you are a first-class performer in your sleep. If the wedding-guest had heard your loud bassoon, I don’t know what he would have done.”

“Who was the ‘wedding-guest’?”

“Ask Miss Rose.”

“I shall say you told me to ask.”

359“That is hardly necessary. Read the poem—‘The Ancient Mariner,’ I mean.”

“I don’t care much for poetry stuff.”

“Don’t you? Well, you were pretty musical about 3 A. M.” Then he played a little with the matter of his rosy dream. “I think, Jack, that very often dreams like this of mine seem to be the outcome of some quite trivial event rather than of the larger things of life. A day or two back I was trying to pick a rose, and pricked my finger. I didn’t get the rose, but I—meant to. I suppose that thorn stuck into some pincushion of the mind. Odd, wasn’t it?”

“I dreamed about bears for a week after that beastly circus on the beach.”

“No wonder,” and they laughed. “I don’t think dreams very interesting, Jack; but twice in my life I have chanced to see dreams produce some very strange results. See how the mists are melting away.”

“What was it about—the dreams?”

“One, Jack, I cannot tell you. The other I can. I had a guide in the Wind River country who used to talk in his sleep. Several times when we were alone in the hills he woke me up by the noise he made. I used to whistle to quiet him long enough to give me a chance to fall asleep. It is a good recipe to stop snoring. I tried it on you.”

“Dick can beat me all hollow! But please go on, Mr. Carington.”

“Well, one night he kept at it so long, and talked so plainly, that I gave up in despair and listened. He was unusually excited this time. I heard him 360say, ‘Kill him! Kill him!’ Then he groaned and rolled over and groaned so that I thought he had a nightmare. At last he sang out, ‘Let me go! I didn’t do it.’ After this I whistled ‘Yankee Doodle,’ and it acted like a charm. Next morning at breakfast I said, ‘Whom were you murdering in the night, and were they really going to hang you, Billy?’ When I said this he looked at me sharply, and I saw he did not like it. He asked what he had said. I thought it best to say as little as possible, and so replied, ‘You might have been killing bears, Billy.’ I saw he did not believe me. All day long that fellow was restless and uneasy. He twice missed an elk, and he was a perfect shot.”

“That was bad,” remarked Jack.

“That wasn’t all. When I woke next morning Bill was gone. I never saw him again, and I had a pretty hard time getting back.”

“Do you think he had killed somebody?”

“Probably. Folks’ consciences seem to get a grip of them in sleep, and to go to sleep themselves in the daytime. It’s a queer enough story.”

As they talked the paddles were busy, the mist melted, and they ran swiftly down-stream a mile or more below the Cliff Camp. Here, at a bend, where the river made a bold curve to the northwest, they ran ashore.

“That will do, Michelle. Be on the lookout about six or seven to put us over. Come, Jack. Give me the knapsack. Do not load yet.” As he spoke they left the shore, and Carington, leading, struck into the woods.

361They walked slowly through a tangled wilderness of trees, dead and alive, set in perplexing undergrowth, Carington explaining his plans to the boy as they tramped along.

“We shall go up the hill to left, over the crest and down on to Loon Lake. It is a mere pond, but the berries are thick on the far side, and, although now there are none, the bears have a habit of going there. We shall read our fortune clear when we get on the shore.”

“By the tracks on the edge?”

“Yes. The deep print of the foot makes little pools; and if the water in these is still muddy, the prints are recent; if not, we shall get no chance.”

“I see.”

“Out in the Rockies we used to stir up the mud in the old prints with a stick so as to fool the other fellows. It is an ancient trick. By the way, Jack, at evening I shall set you on the ox-track to the west of Colkett’s. I saw two porcupines there a day or two back. I will go straight down the mountain to Colkett’s. I shall be but a few minutes at Joe’s. I want to arrange about lumber for my cabin. If you see no game, don’t wait, but take the cross track to Colkett’s. You can’t miss it. It starts back of the big boulder in the clearing on the left, as you face the river.”

“And you will meet me?”

“Yes. Perhaps before you quit the open.”

“I understand.&r............