The messengers in the boat must have brought a telegram from Calgary to her. Perhaps, in her excitement, she had forgotten to leave a message of explanation. But just what sort of news Mrs. Johnson could have received that would make her laugh and “look glad,” as the Indian girl had said, was more than she could imagine.
“Mary,” Miss Stone demanded, “did you see the men give Mrs. Johnson a piece of paper to read before she left?”
“Maybe give piece of paper. Mary don’t know.”
It was utterly no use. The girl could tell her nothing, and her brother Henry, who looked after the boats and cut the wood when he was not engaged in the glorious Indian pursuit of doing nothing, was even more stoically stupid.
After a night of fitful rest, when she had tried to compose her mind that everything would turn out all right, she rose with an ominous presentiment. Even after she had had breakfast and had gone out for a short stroll around the island, the glory of the autumn morning did not tend to dissipate her depression.
As she was nearing the cottage door on her return, the white glare of a large, bell-shaped military tent struck on the clearing of a hill some distance south on the lake-shore caught her attention. Soon picturesque figures appeared about the tent—stalwart-looking chaps in scarlet tunics, stiff-brimmed stetsons and dark trousers with wide gold braid stripes. She instantly recognised them as Canadian mounted police and remembered that Acey Smith had said the day previous that an outpost of the mounties would possibly be stationed somewhere near Amethyst Island.
The young policemen were busying themselves about a small camp-fire, evidently preparing an outdoor breakfast, their gay chatter and outbursts of laughter ringing strangely clear on the limpid morning air. . . . Then from out of the woods there came a single soft stroke of the gong of Nannabijou.
The figures round the camp-fire stood one moment in silent mystification; then, as if they had simultaneously made the discovery, their gaze was turned on the figure of Josephine Stone. One of the men focussed a field-glass upon her, and the girl, embarrassed by the attention she was provoking, moved back into the shelter of the trees.