Murder Point: A Tale of Keewatin Page 5

  CHAPTER V

  CITIES OUT OF SIGHT

  In Keewatin the human intellect stands forever at a halt, awed in thepresence of a limitless serenity for which it can find no better namethan God, since, of all things which are incalculable, He seems mostinfinite.

  In this land of rivers and solitude Man is unnecessary, disregarded,and plays no part; if, after two hundred odd years of white, and manycenturies of Indian habitation, Man were to withdraw himselfto-morrow, he would leave no permanent record of his sojournthere--only a few outposts and forts, several far-scatteredindependent traders' stores, one or two missions and fishing-stations,all of them built of wood, which within a decade would have crumbledto decay, over which the tangled forest would silently close up.Instinctively he knows himself for an impudent intruder on somethingwhich is sacred; he hears continually what Adam heard when he stole ofthe fruit which was forbidden, God walking in the garden in the coolof the day--the accusing footsteps of God. His brain is staggered byan unchartered immensity in which he has no portion, which he can onlywatch. His individual worth to the universe is dwarfed by theimminence of the All: so nothing seems very serious which is onlypersonal and, since all things which we apprehend must become in somesense personal, nothing is very important. The procession of humaneffort becomes a spectacle at sight of which Homeric laughter maysometimes be permissible, but tears never. If a man once gives way toweeping in Keewatin, he will weep always. Only by the exercise of aself-restraint which at first seems brutal can life be endured there.

  Granger, as he walked toward his store under the shadow of the dawn,was conscious of all this. The land was wrapped in the intensestquiet; the very crunch of his snowshoes seemed a profanation, thoughhe trod lightly. When he had ascended the Point, he paused and gazedback. Already the thaw had commenced; down the still white face of thecountry, which lay at his feet like a shrouded corpse, the tears hadbegun to trinkle, though the eyes were tranquil and fast shut; thesight was as astounding to him as if a man six months dead should beseen to stir within his coffin of glass. Here and there in the expanseof forest he could see flashes of green and brown, of tree-tops fromwhich the snow had fallen. The river-banks, which yesterday had seemedchiselled out of solid marble, were to-day tunnelled and scarred withtiny rills and watercourses which groped their way feebly riverwards.As he stood in silence meditating, he was startled by the whirr ofwings, and looking southward descried the advance-guard of the firstflock of ducks. "Ha, the spring has come," he cried; but immediatelyhe checked his ecstasy, for his eyes had again caught sight of theemotionless expression on that great white face with its closed eyesturned toward the sun. Though no voice spoke it seemed to him to say,making by its silence its meaning plain, "There is nothing of whichthe importance is so great that we should forsake our calm."

  He felt rebuked for vulgarity, as though he had been found shouting ina cathedral-nave where priests were praying for the peace of souls ofthe departed. He desired to hide himself; entering his shack, hepushed to the door. He was tired; his brain ached with thought, andhis thought was disjointed. He could not believe that Spurling hadever come; it was all an hallucination. Thinking about the past hadmade him imagine all that, or else he had dreamed it in the night. Hewent over detail by detail all that had seemed to him to happen; andeven then, when it fitted reasonably together, he could not becertain. It was too monstrous that Spurling should have become likethat! He would not believe it. Then his anxiety for Mordaunt sprang upand commenced to craze him. The terrible question throbbed through hismind, "Is Mordaunt dead?"

  The mania for questions grew upon him. Three separate voices spokeclamorously at once: "Is Mordaunt dead?"

  "Did Spurling murder him?"

  "Am I mad?"

  He stumbled to the far end of the room and flung himself down in hisbunk, burying his face in its coverings that he might shut out thelight and gain a moment's rest. But his imaginings followed and kneltbeside him.

  "Well, if I must think," he whispered, "I will think of that which isbest." He beckoned from out the shadows his memory of Mordaunt's face,and gave himself over to recalling all that it once had meant. Theyhad nicknamed him "The Girl" because of his shyness and modesty, andhad not always been particular in the jokes which they had made at hisexpense. Yes, and he had had a woman's ways from first to last.Nothing that had happened had been able to coarsen him; he had nevergiven way to loose talk or brutal jests, and in the presence ofsuffering had invariably been full of tenderness.

  Good heavens! pass on to the crisis--to that day when he had come tothe top of the shaft and called down to him! He had answered his call,praying him in an agonized voice to descend and rescue him. He couldsee him now approaching hurriedly, yet cautiously, through thedarkness, lifting high up his swinging lamp so that its rays fellacross his face. He could still remember how absurd it had seemed tosuppose that a creature, so small and fragile, could save him from_that other_. Yet he had; and after that, because of the relief hefelt, he had confessed. Then, in a moment of compassionateself-forgetfulness, Mordaunt had placed his arms about him and haddrawn down his head upon his breast--an action of which no man indealing with another man was ever capable; the mother-instinct wasmanifested there. In the flickering lamplight, with his head pressedclose to his companion's breast, feeling its rise and fall at eachstruggling intake of the breath, crouching underground upon thebed-rock, he had guessed the secret--_that Mordaunt was not a man_.From that hour he had loved her. She had never known that he sharedher secret. Thank God, he had remained so much a gentleman that he hadnot told her that! Who she was, why she had come to the Klondike, whatwas her proper name, he had not permitted himself to inquire; for himit had been sufficient that she was a woman, and that he loved her,and that he was unworthy of her love. After she had seen him shoot atSpurling he had avoided her, lest by contact with him she should bedefiled. He had vaguely hoped at the time of leaving that the daymight come, after he had cleansed himself and proved himself a man,when he might seek her out and ask her to be his wife. Through thelast three years he had lived for that. To have asked her then wouldhave been an insult, an act of cowardice. How would an upright womananswer a man whom she had just saved from homicide? How would sheregard a man who had discovered the secret of her sex in such amanner, because of her compassion, and had not had the decency to keepthat knowledge secret even from herself? So he had fled from theShallows for a double reason; that he might not do violence toSpurling, and that he might not betray himself to her. He had left herwithout a hint of his going, or a word of explanation.

  What had she thought of him? He had often wondered that. Had she alsoloved him, and not dared to speak about it? He half-suspected that. Ifshe had loved him and had spoken out, he would not have married her atthat time, when even he despised himself; to have done so would havebeen to drag her down. Still, he could not help speculating as to whatshe had said and thought on that morning when she awoke in the winterdreariness, and, gazing round the cabin, found that he had vanished.Had she regretted him, and had she sometimes, when Spurling had becomeintolerable, gone aside and wept? After three years, though he hadloved her, he could only recall her by her man's name, and picture herin her man's dress.

  Then, while he thought with closed eyes, that awful question cameagain, "Is Mordaunt dead?"

  Whilst she was in the world it had been possible for him to strive tobe straightforward and courageous; but, _if she was dead_ . . .! IfSpurling had murdered her, if he had lied to him and _she_ was hispartner, what then? Well, that all depended on whether Spurling hadknown her sex. If not, what a revenge he would take when he shouldconfront him, and inform him that he had murdered a woman, and not aman! He knew Spurling; for him the public ignominy of being hangedwould be as nothing compared with such private knowledge--it wouldthrust him into Hell in this life.

  Ah, but that could not be; God would not allow it! Spurling himselfhad said that he had not sunk so low as that. Yet, in case it might beso, he would keep his word an
d help him to escape--from the MountedPolice, but not from himself. He would be the executioner if theremust be one. The law should not rob him of his revenge. He would saveSpurling's life in case he might need to take it.

  Then, unbidden and against his will, there rose up the image of theman who had saved his life in Tagish Lake. Spurling had forestalledhim, bribed him beforehand, by restoring him his own life in exchangefor the life which he was doomed to take. Did that not make amends?Also he had rescued Mordaunt from disaster on the Skaguay trail, wherehe would certainly have perished had he been left. He had doneunconsciously that which Granger proposed to do of set purpose--saveda life that he might take it. Did not that in some measure makeamends? The problem was too complicated; it must work itself out inits own way. Yet, it would be a bitter irony if, after he hadtravelled a continent to avoid this deed, he should be forced to killSpurling in the end--Spurling, who had come to him of his own accord.Still more burlesque would it be if, after Spurling was at rest, heshould be hanged in his stead.

  But perhaps Mordaunt was not dead.

  To rid himself of these morbid questionings, he would give his remotermemory the reins to-day, at whatever cost; it was pleasanter toremember bygone unpleasantness than to live with the ills whichthreatened his present life. He recollected how some one had onceasked Carlyle, "Why does the Past always seem so much happier than thePresent?" And Carlyle's stern reply, "Because the fear has gone out ofit." How odd it seemed to him that he should be recalling Carlyle upthere in Keewatin! Yet, because that answer was true, he took up thethread of his London life again, that so, with the drug of memory, hemight lay to rest his immediate misfortunes. He was a little boy againin the old red house on Clapton Common. One by one he entered itshomely rooms with their ancient furniture, quaint wall-paper, andgeneral look of substantial comfort. Once more he leant out of thebow-window at the back and gazed beyond the hill, upon which the housewas built, up which gardens climbed, divided by creeper-covered wallsof crumbling brick, down to where at its foot the river ran throughflats and marshes. Far away, a little to the right, old Woodfordraised its head; to the left Chingford, as yet unmodernized, showedup; and straight ahead, at a distance of seven miles, the steeple ofHigh Beech, in the kindly habitable forest of Epping, was in sight.This was the house in which he had first dreamed the dream by theglamour of which he had been led astray. His father had dreamed thesame dream, and his grandfather before him; it seemed to be a part ofthe walls and masonry, so interwoven was it with his memories of thathouse. It had been the first faery-story which he had ever listenedto, and had been told to him for the most part in that back room withthe bow-window, as he had sat on his grand-father's knee on winters'nights.

  The first time that he had heard it he could not have been more thanfive, and his father was absent, so his grandfather said, pursuing thedream on the other side of the world. This was the story as heremembered it. "In the land of Guiana there is a golden city namedManoa, but El Dorado in the Spanish language, which stands on theshores of a vast inland lake whose waters are salt, which is calledParima, and which is two hundred leagues in length. Juan Martinez wasthe first white man to visit it, and he did so through no fault of hisown! When he was with the Spanish army at the port of Morequito, thestore of powder, of which he had charge, caught fire and wasdestroyed. His commander, Diego Ordas, was so enraged that hesentenced him to death; but being appealed to by the soldiery withwhom Martinez was a favourite, he commuted his punishment tothis--that he should be set in a canoe alone, without any victual,only with his arms, and so turned loose on the great river. By thegrace of God he floated down stream and was captured by certainIndians, who, never having seen a European before or anyone of thatcolour, carried him into a land to be wondered at, and so from town totown, until he came to the golden city of Manoa of which Inca wasemperor. Now the emperor, when he beheld him, knew him to be aChristian, for not long since his brethren had been vanquished by theSpaniards in Peru; therefore he had him lodged in his palace andordered that he should be respectfully entertained. There Martinezlived for seven months, and all that while was not allowed to wanderbeyond the city's walls lest he should discover the country's secrets,for he had been brought thither blindfold and had been fifteen days inthe passage. When, years later, he came to die, he confessed to apriest that he had entered Manoa at high noon and that then hiscaptors had uncovered his eyes, and that he had travelled all that daytill nightfall through its streets and all the next, from the risingto the setting of the sun, of so great extent was it, until he arrivedat the palace. It was Martinez who had given to Manoa its name of ElDorado, because its roadways were paved with gold, and there was sogreat an abundance of that metal there that, before the emperor wouldcarouse with his captains, all those who were to pledge him werestripped naked, and their bodies anointed with white balsam, overwhich through hollow canes was blown by slaves the dust of fine gold,so that when his guests sat down to drink with him, they glistenedyellow in the sun like gilded statues.

  "When Martinez had obtained his freedom and returned to Trinidad, andtold his story, many other adventurers set out in quest of Manoa; butnone so much as saw it save only Pedro de Urra. He, after incrediblelabours, at length arrived at a mountain peak whence, looking down,far away in the distance he could just descry the shining roofs ofpalaces and golden domes of Inca temples, wherein, he was told, werestored gold images of women and children more beautiful than God hadyet wrought into flesh and blood. But his strength was spent and histroops were famished, also the Incas' armies were moving forward tocheck his advance; therefore he had to retreat, and to return to theseacoast, where he fretted away his life in dreaming of thesplendours of which he had only just had sight. Fifty years laterBerreo, governor of Trinidad, set out from Nuevo Reyno with sevenhundred horse and slaves, and descended the Cassanar river, bound uponthe same errand. What with fever and poisonous water he lost many ofhis men and cattle, so that, when he reached the Province of Amapaia,he had but one hundred and twenty soldiers left, and these were sickand dying; and so he also was forced to abandon his search. And thisman Raleigh captured, and from him extorted his secrets, when hesailed to discover and conquer El Dorado for Queen Elizabeth, havingin his company Jacob Whiddon, the English pirate, and George Giffordwho was captain of the Lion's Whelp.

  "All the way across the ocean they studied the records of theadventurers who had sought before them, till they had them all bymemory; for they hoped to find those same wonders which Lopez saysthat Pizarro found in the first home of the Incas: 'A royal city whereall the vessels of the emperor's house, table, and kitchen, were ofgold and silver, and the meanest of silver and copper for strength andhardness of metal. He had in his wardrobe hollow statues of gold whichseemed giants, and the figures in proportion and bigness of all thebeasts, birds, trees, and herbs that earth produceth; and of all thefishes that the sea or waters of his kingdom breedeth. He had alsoropes, budgets, chests, and troughs of gold and silver, heaps ofbillets of gold, that seemed wood marked out to burn. Finally, therewas nothing in his country whereof he had not the counterfeit in gold.Yea, and they say, that the Incas had a garden of pleasure in anisland near Puna, where they went to recreate themselves when theywould take the air of the sea, which had all kinds of garden-herbs,flowers, and trees of gold and silver, an invention and magnificencetill then never seen. Besides all this, he had an infinite quantity ofsilver and gold unwrought in Cuzco.' The counterpart of all thesemarvels Raleigh hoped to find, when he had sailed up the Orinoco toits watershed.

  "So, when he had gathered all the information which he could fromBerreo, he departed and rowed up the river in the galego boat of theLion's Whelp, till on the fourth day he dropped into the waters of theGreat Amana. Up the Great Amana he travelled, always getting news ofhis city, always being told that it was farther inland. On the banksof this river grew diverse sorts of fruit good to eat, flowers andtrees of such variety as were 'sufficient to make ten books ofherbals.' And everywhere he saw multitudes of birds of a
ll colours,some carnation, some crimson, some orange-tawny, purple, watchet, andof all other sorts, so that, as he himself has said, 'It was unto us agreat good passing of the time to behold them, besides the relief wefound in killing some store of them; and still as we rowed, the deercame down feeding by the water's side, as if they had been used to thekeeper's call.'

  "Lured on by these delights, he journeyed farther inland until at lasthe came to the first great silver mine; but here the Orinoco and allthe other rivers had risen from four to five feet in height, so thatit was not possible by the strength of man or with any boat whatsoeverto row into the river against the stream. However, before his return,one day as it drew towards sunset, he had sight of a crystal mountain,which was said to be studded with diamonds and precious stones, whichshone afar off, the appearance of which was like to that of a whitechurch tower of exceeding height. Over the summit rushed a mightyriver, which touched no part of the mountainside, and fell with agreat clamour as if a thousand bells were knocked together; so, thoughhe did not find El Dorado, he was somewhat comforted by the marvel ofthis sight. Also, before he left he saw _El Madre del Oro_, the motherof gold, which proved that treasure lay not far underground."

  So, hour after hour, and night after night, the old man had told hismagic story of the search for El Dorado to the little boy. Andsometimes he would vary it with other tales and legends of men who hadgone upon quests equally wild; of Ponce de Leon, who had sought forthe Bimini Isle, where arose a fountain whose waters could cause mento grow young again; of the Sieur D'Ottigny, who set sail for theUnknown in search of wealth, singing songs as if bound for a bridalfeast; and of Vasseur, who first brought news of the distantAppalachian Mountains, whose slopes teem with precious metals and withgems beyond price. But always the narration would return to El Doradoon the shores of Parima. Then the little boy would ask, "But, Grandpa,is it true, or is it only a faery-tale? Was there ever such a city,and does it exist to-day?" Whereupon the old gentleman would grow veryserious and would reply, "Certainly there is such a city, my dear; forwhen I was young I went in search of it, and your father is out therefinding it to-day."

  After which answer he would get out maps, and show the child the redlines, which were his own journeys, and the exact spot in thewatershed of the Orinoco where he believed the city to stand. Thenthey would reason about it together, bending low beneath the lamp,tracing out the various routes of past explorers, until his mothercame in and, seeing what they were so busy about, carried him off tobed. At an early age he discovered that his mother approved neither ofthe grand-father's stories, nor of her husband's absence. She wasoften at pains to tell him that there was no such city, that thestories were all fables, and that his grandpapa had wasted his fortuneand talents in its search. But the boy believed in the fables, for heliked to think of his father as sailing up the Great Amana, where thedeer feed along the banks, until at last he came to the golden citywhere the men are like gilded statues. He was sure that his papa wouldreturn rich one day, bringing with him an Inca princess for his son tomarry.

  But, when his father did return, he brought back with him only afever-shattered body for his wife to nurse, and a plucky belief thathe would succeed next time. Ah, but those were good days which he hadspent by his father's bedside, when he had gazed on that fair-haired,soldierly man who had trodden in Raleigh's footsteps! He rememberedhow his father had laughed when he had asked in awe-struck toneswhether he might be allowed to kiss his hands, and how he had said,"If I do not find, you will seek for it some day"--and then he hadfelt proud. How eagerly he had listened when the two explorers, fatherand son, had sat together and had talked over their various travels!And how he could remember his father's account of his latest journey!His mother had been out at the time when it was related; they nevermentioned these matters in her presence because they pained her;moreover, if she was near by when they were talked about, she wouldcontrive some excuse for snatching the boy away. They had watchedtheir opportunity, however, and his father had told him.

  He had set out in a canvas sailing boat, and had ascended the Orinocofor twenty days. Every now and then he had come to rapids, where hehad had to go ashore to carry his boat, or to marshes, where he hadhad to wade. As he travelled farther from the mainland, his Indianguides had deserted him till there was none left, and he had had to goon alone. Day by day he had passed by great rocks, on which there waswriting engraved, which, perhaps, contained directions for travellerswho, ages since, had been bound for that same city; but they were nowof no use to him, because they were written in a forgotten languageand in an alphabet which not even the Indians could understand. So hehad gone on until at last he came to the crystal mountain, and thewaterfall which Raleigh had described; and after that he had travelledfurther than even great Raleigh himself, or any other white man. Itwas at this point that the boy had gasped and asked to be allowed tokiss his father's hands.

  Then his father had told him how beyond the mountain there had seemedto be nothing but tangled wood and swamp, and how he had caught feverand wandered on in delirium until, when he came to himself, he hadfound himself standing on the shores of what had once been a vastinland lake, but which had now become partially dry, through which itwas only possible to wade. So he left his boat and waded on, sometimesshoulders high, for four days; for, though he was racked with pains,he would not give up because he believed the lake to be Parima. Onthe evening of the fourth day, when his strength was almost spent andhe was ready to sink with faintness, he came to an island and saw inthe distance, in the light of the setting sun, golden spires and theroofs of houses many miles away, which he knew to be El Dorado. But bythis time he had only two days' provisions left and dared not venturefurther; so he, like Pedro de Urra, having come within sight of hisdesire, had been compelled to turn back. Of his return journey he saidnothing; Granger learnt that from his mother in later years. It hadbeen made in agonies of hunger and thirst, which had nearly robbed himof his life. Nevertheless, his father had told him that, so soon as hegot well again, he was going back, and that he would reach El Doradothis time. True to his word, when his fever had left him, he had badethem all good-bye, making his son secretly promise that, if he shouldnot come back, when he became a man, he would follow him in the quest.Then had come the two years of anxious waiting in which they had hadno news of him, and the final acceptance of the belief that he wasdead. But his grandfather would not lose faith; he himself had oncebeen missing for five years. He said that his son had reached thecity, and was pushing homeward through the Andes on to the Pacificside. Night by night, in that back room with the bow-window, he hadcollected his records and studied them beneath the lamp. "He must beabout here by now," he would say, pointing to a certain place. But theboy's mother had only smiled sadly, saying, "Is he not yetundeceived?" Then one evening they had left him in his chair, and hadnot heard him come up to bed, and in the morning had found him sittingstiff and silent in the sunshine, with the map of Guiana spread outbefore him and his finger on the spot where he had written EL DORADO,the magic word.

  The child had never forgotten that sight, its impression had sunk deepinto his nature; somehow it had become symbolic for him of loyalty toone's chosen purpose in life. As he had once asked permission to kisshis father's hands, so, when there was no one in the room to watchhim, he had stolen up and smoothed his hands with reverence againstthe cushions of the chair where the old grey head had last rested--buthe had never sat there. After the old man's death, all things in thatroom became objects for his veneration. It was just this capacity inthe small boy for hero-worship which his mother never tried tounderstand; so he kept his secret, and thus began the breach which waspresently to widen. From that day Granger had pledged himself, when heshould become a man, to go in search of his father and to inherit hisquest; and to such a nature as Granger's that childish pledge wasbinding. He could never be persuaded that his father was dead; healways spoke and thought of him as a soldierly fair-haired man, livingin a desirable land hard by a garden, like to
that of the isle nearPuna, which had herbs and flowers and trees of gold and silver, onewho was an honoured guest in the emperor's house where the meanestutensils were of silver and copper for strength. At first, when onlyhe and his mother were left, he had spoken to her of these fancies;but she had shown herself more and more averse to their mention, so hehad learnt to keep his longings to himself.

  His mother was a practical woman, born of a race of lawyers anddiplomatists. Hence she coveted above all things for her son, as shehad done for his father before him, the certainties of life--socialrecognition and a banking-account; she had no sympathy with theories,however heroic, or with any kind of success which was not obvious andwithin hand-stretch. She was one of those safe people who alwayschoose to-day's salary, if it be promptly paid, in preference to themore generous triumph of a to-morrow which may never come. She waswisely parsimonious in all things and, daring nothing herself, had nopatience with natures which were more courageous. Much of her ownmoney, and all of her husband's, had been spent by him in hisfruitless explorations of Guiana. Now that he was gone, she discreetlyinvested what was left of her fortune, and deprived herself of allluxuries, so that when the time should come, her boy should have hischance in life unembarrassed by his father's previous recklessexpenditures. She was proud of her son, for he was handsome; but shenever realised that half a day of spoken love and sympathy canpurchase more friendship than twenty years of benefits punctually anddutifully conferred--still less did she recognise the necessity for amother consciously to cultivate a friendship with her boy. Not thatshe was ungentle; she craved his affection, but she made the mistakeof demanding it as her right--all of which is the same as saying thatshe was mentally insensitive, and was unaware that with thoughtfulpeople the road to the heart must first lead through the mind; ofpeople's minds she was incurious. She gave her son the kind ofeducation which befits men to inherit rather than to earn. His wisheswere never consulted; nor even when he went to university was he givenany choice. Like a dumb brute beast he was goaded forward withoutknowledge of his destination, and was expected to be grateful to thehand which kept him moving, and prevented him from turning aside.

  He permitted this well-intentioned despotism not through any lack ofspirit, but partly because it was well-intentioned, and mostly becausehis immediate present seemed of little consequence to him. He felthimself to be an embryo prophet who awaited his hour; when that shouldstrike, he would concentrate. Not until he was twenty-two years of agedid he expostulate, and by that time it was too late; his training hadmade him dependent upon money for success. His mother had the money,and she selected the Bar as a suitable profession for him; then it wasthat he broke his twelve years' silence, and scandalised her with theinformation that his great ambition was to follow in his father'sfootsteps, and to find both him and El Dorado, fulfilling the promisewhich he had given as a child. Startled by this unexpected confession,she had charged him with disloyalty and ingratitude to herself; toavoid complications and a breach which he foresaw would becomeirreparable, he had accepted her choice and studied for a barrister.This utterance of his secret, however, had only served to make himaware of the intensity of his own desire. He could not work, he couldnot rest, he could not apply his mind; always he saw before him thetropic river with its multitude of carnation, crimson, andorange-tawny birds, its low green banks where the deer come down tograze, and far ahead and visionary the swampy lake, built on whoseshore the golden city raises up its head. So books, and law, andLondon became for him the custodians of his captivity--things to behated and despised.

  In the three years which followed he had made one friend, a miningengineer, by name Druce Spurling. In him he had confided, and Spurlinghad responded with a sympathy which did him credit, kindling to theromance of the story. He had tested with his expert knowledge theevidence which Granger had laid before him for the belief that such acity as El Dorado had existed, and he had been satisfied--or, at anyrate, had been made certain that in the watershed of the Orinoco goldwas yet to be found in great quantities, as in the Spaniard's time. Hehad promised that, so soon as he had the capital, he would help him inhis quest. Granger coveted the journey for its adventure, and theopportunity of fulfilling his promise to his father; Spurling only forits possibilities of attaining wealth. In their community of ambitionthis difference of purpose was lost to sight. Then, when Granger wastwenty-five and had just completed his course of reading for the Bar,his great chance came. It was the year of the Klondike gold-rush andSpurling was going out; he wanted a partner, and offered to takeGranger with him if he, in return, would promise to give him one thirdof all the gold he mined. Their idea was that, with the money thusearned, they would be able to provide funds for the following up oftheir dream of El Dorado. Granger accepted the offer at once, partlyinfluenced by his desire to prove to his mother that he _could_ dosomething by himself. After a painful farewell, he had departed toseek his fortune in the North World.

  Ah, how his mother had cried when he went away! He recalled all thatto-day, now that he was in Keewatin, and gazed back incredulously uponthat mistaken former self, wondering whether he could have been reallylike that. London, indeed! What would he not give to be in Londonto-day; to stand in Fleet Street, listening to the roar of the passingtraffic and brushing shoulders with living, companionable men? Ahwell, what good purpose would it serve to think about it! He hadchosen his own fate. Here he was at Murder Point, and he would soon bemarried to Peggy, after which, no matter what avalanche of good luckbefell him, there would be no return. What would his proud old mothersay to a little half-breed grandchild? The mere thought made himsmile. In cynical self-derision, he pictured himself accompanied byhis Indian tribe, knocking at the door of the old red house on ClaptonCommon--and his reception there. He gave a name to his picture, and itwas "_The Return of the Ne'er-do-well_."

  * * * * *

  His brain was getting cloudy; he could not tell whether he was asleepor awake. He felt as if he had been bound hand and foot so that hecould not stir, and had been raised aloft to a dizzy height. He knewthat he was far above the earth, for he was very cold and wasconscious of mists which drifted across his face and left it damp.Suddenly he discovered that he could open his eyes. Looking down, hesaw with supernatural distinctness the entire course of the frozenriver-bed. Far to the north he could descry Spurling, ploddingdesperately on across the thawing ice. A few miles to the west,perhaps an hour's journey from Murder Point, he could see a secondfigure, tall, soldierly, erect, which approached with swift cleanstrides, through the solitude, inevitably as Fate--the symbol ofJustice in pursuit of Crime. He watched with fascination how thedistance between the hunter and the hunted narrowed; only one thingcould save the criminal from capture--the intervention of MurderPoint.

  And then the cloud rolled back again; he closed his eyes, and lostconsciousness in untroubled forgetfulness.