Before Peter returned, a luncheon-gong boomed from the porch of the hotel, and a number of men came in from their canoes or fishing-punts. One of a small party noticed Power sitting on a shaded seat in the little garden which ran down to the water's edge.
"Isn't that the man with the pretty wife who lives in Granite's shack?" he asked. "He looks as though he'd lost a dollar and found a nickel."
"P'r'aps he's lost his missis," laughed another.
"No fear. They're a honeymoon couple if ever there was one. Why, when he comes here for stores she stands at the door of the hut the whole time he is absent, watching him all the way here and waving to him all the way home again."
The hotelkeeper, noting Power's absence from the dining-room, sent a maid to remind him that the meal was being served.
Power started violently when the girl's soft-spoken words broke in on his reverie. For an instant he dreamed that Nancy had come, that he would feel her fingers clasped over his eyes, hear her voice.
"It is so hot and quiet here," he explained, smiling pleasantly, "that I was nearly asleep. I don't need any lunch, thank you."
Yet never had man seemed more wakeful. The girl thought that surely he must be ill, and in pain, and she wondered why his wife had left him; for Nancy's departure was already known to the hotel servants, since nothing could happen in that secluded nook without their cognizance, and Willard's corner in horse-flesh that morning had been much discussed in the kitchen.
Granite, however, put in an appearance soon, and insisted that Power should eat.
"You'll be headin' for N' York, I reckon," he said, "an' there ain't no sort o' sense in makin' that long trip on an empty stummick. You jest take my say-so, Mr. Power, an' eat yer meals reg'lar, an' you'll size up things altogether different when you set down to yer breakfast tomorrow."
His well-meant advice caused a thrill of agony. Breakfast without Nancy! The dawn of the first day when she was not by his side! The mind often works in grooves, and Power's thoughts flew back to that other day when he lay crushed on the ledge. As he walked to the hotel with the guide, his leg seemed to be almost broken again, and he moved with difficulty.