As for Anne, she lay against the piled-up luggage, silent and thought-bound. She was in the dreary company of pain, and smiled sadly as she glanced back over the years in which it had been her foe or friend, and again, as often before, wondered how long it would last, and she be called upon to bear it with ever-weakening physical power to make the fight less easy.
At the landing, and while they were arranging to go to the station, a man came down the bank and asked for Mr. Lyndsay.
“That is my name. How are you, Carstairs? What is it?”
“This way, sir, a moment. Could you let Michelle come with me for half an hour,—or Tom. The body of a man has come ashore on Caribou Bar. They have taken it up to my barn. Some of the men say it is Joe Colkett. We think one of your people would know.”
Lyndsay called Michelle, and, leaving proper directions, went away with him.
In the barn, after twenty minutes’ walk, he found a number of men, and the local magistrate. Two lanterns lit dimly the threshing-floor.
The men stood about silent; the horses in the stalls beyond changed feet, and the noises of the never-quiet river came up through the night.
On the floor lay the body. Lyndsay took the lantern, and bent over it.
“He is badly cut up by them rocks,” said Michelle, “and his foot.”
“Was it rocks?” asked Lyndsay. “The skull seems broken. Poor fellow!” Then he took the magistrate aside, and they talked long and earnestly.
“Yes, I got your message. Thursday night one of the wardens hailed a dugout, and got no answer. That was below your camp.”
“I passed it also, farther up—two people. It must have been that woman and Joe. They fired their house,—why, I do not know,—and got off with their plunder.”
“We shall catch her. Do you think she killed Joe?”
“Perhaps! As like as not. But, if that woman is alive, you will not catch her.”
“Carington’s evidence you can get, of course. I really have none to give myself. The woman you will never get.” And they did not. No dugout was found, and whether she too was lost or escaped to breed further mischief, none know.
Lyndsay walked swiftly back, and rejoined his people at the station. When at last they were running at speed between Quebec and Montreal, Anne said: