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:
“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.
“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 money, 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.”
“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 tents 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 has 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.