It was an awful time for us; every minute I expected him to burst the door open and come tearing downstairs. Gerald wanted to go up and try to pacify him, but I told him I was too frightened to be left, which, I knew, was the only way of preventing him.
We walked down the garden to see if mother and father were in sight, and then----
"Awfully sorry we missed the train," said a cheerful voice, and _Jack_, followed by another figure, came through the gate!
"You aren't dead then?" was all I could manage to gasp.
"No, rather not! Very much alive. Here's the pater; but first, tell me, why should I be dead?"
Gerald and I began to speak simultaneously, and in the midst of our explanations mother and father arrived, so we had to tell them all over again.
"The question is, who _is_ your lunatic?" said father, "and----"
But just at that moment we heard frantic shouts from Gerald's bedroom window, and found the sham Mr. Marriott leaning out of it in a state of frenzy.
He was absolutely furious; but we gathered from his incoherent remarks that he was getting very late for a conjuring performance which he had promised to give at a friend's house. He vowed that there was some conspiracy to prevent him going there at all; first his bag was lost, then some one pretended to be his friend's daughter, whom he had never seen, and finally he was locked in a room with no means of escape!
Then, and only then, did we realise our mistake! The others seemed to find it very amusing and shrieked with laughter, but the humour of it didn't strike Gerald and me any more than it did the irate conjuror, who was promptly released with profuse apologies, and sent in our car to his destination. It transpired that his conversation which had so alarmed me referred only to a favourite dog of his, and I, of course, had unconsciously misled Gerald.
Mr. Marriott proved to be most interesting and amusing, anything but eccentric; but I shall _never_ hear the last of my mistake, and to this day he and Jack tease me unmercifully about my "dangerous maniac!"
[Sidenote: A story of the Canadian North-West Mounted Police, founded on fact.]
"Our Lady of the Snows" resents the title. It is so liable, she complains, to give strangers an utterly wrong idea of her climate. And yet, at times, when the blizzard piles the swirling snow over fence and hollow, until boundaries are lost, and the bewildered wayfarer knows not which way to turn, he is apt to think, if he is in a condition to think at all, that there is some justice in the description.