And all this time the chief constable of St. Marys was speculating in
property with steadily increasing success. So crafty was he that few
people in the town knew it. When the fourth year of Clark's régime was
completed, Manson had made profits that astonished him. His purchases
covered both farm and town lands, and amongst the latter was a mortgage
on the vine clad cottage of Fisette. But not a man in his circle would
have guessed that what prompted the acquisition of the Fisette mortgage
was Manson's remembrance of a friendly joke about a Unitarian wolf; a
joke which still lived and set up a minute but unceasing irritation.
Now, at any time, Manson might be in a position to teach the bishop a
lesson.
It fell on a day that he was at the head of the old portage leading
round the rapids. Here he had recently acquired an option on a
considerable acreage, calculating that before long a new town would
spring up in the shadow of the works, and, just as he pushed through
the underbrush and came out on the gravel beach, he caught the flash of
a paddle a mile away. He was hot and breathless and, lighting his big
pipe, sat in the shade, his ruminative eye on the fast approaching
canoe. Twenty minutes later it touched the shore, and Fisette, leaning
forward on the thwarts, surveyed him with black and lustrous eyes.
Manson nodded. He did not speak at once. It was palpable that Fisette
had been prospecting, and always in the north country the returning
prospector brings with him a peculiar fascination. He is the herald of
the hitherto unknown. It was also understood that Fisette was working
for Clark.
The half breed brought the side of his canoe delicately against the
sand and, stepping lightly out, began to unload, greeting Manson with a
low-voiced "Good morning." Ax, paddles, dunnage bag, shed tent, these
he laid neatly and, last of all, a small sack of samples, the weight of
which, however he disguised it, swelled the veins in his temples. He
was stooping to swing this on his shoulders when Manson spoke.
"Sit down a minute and have a smoke."
Fisette did not want to sit down. There was that in the sack and in
his brain which he greatly desired to evacuate in the proper place and
at the earliest possible moment. But a little reflection demonstrated
that undue haste would be suspicious. Inwardly disturbed at the sight
and manner of Manson, he laid the sack gently down. There came the
slightest creak of metallic fragments.
"Had a good trip?" hazarded the big man carelessly.
"Pretty fair."
"Pretty rough country up there?" Manson waved his arm northwest.