"It's getting worse every day. I can't stand it much longer, looking and looking till I'm half blind and no one but Indian riders all day long. Why doesn't he come? Oh! I know something is wrong."
"Afraid of the Metis," thought I, "and expecting her father. A fine father to leave his daughter alone in the house with the half-breeds threatening a raid. She needs some one else to take care of her." This, on after thought, I know was unjust to her father; for pioneers obey necessity first and chivalry second.
"If he would only come!" she repeated in a half whisper.
"For a week I've been dreaming such fearful things! I see him sinking in green water, stretching his hands to me and I can't reach out to save him. On Sunday he seemed to be running along a black, awful precipice. I caught him in my arms to hold him back, but he dragged me over and I screamed myself awake. Sometimes, he is in a black cave and I can't find any door to let him out. Or he lies bound in some dungeon, and when I stoop to cut the cords, he begins to sink down, down, down through the dark, where I can't follow. I leap after him and always waken with such a dizzy start. Oh! I know he has been in trouble. Something is wrong! His thoughts are reaching out to me and I am so gross and stupid I can't hear what his spirit says. If I could only get away from things, the clatter of everyday things that dull one's inner hearing, perhaps I might know! I feel as if he spoke in a foreign language, but the words he uses I can't make out. All to-day, he has seemed so near! Why does he not come home to me?"
"Mighty fond daughter," thought I, with a jealous pang. She was fumbling among the intricate draperies, where women conceal pockets, and presently brought out something in the palm of her hand.
"I wouldn't have him know how foolish I am," and she laid the thing gently against her cheek.
Now I had never given Frances Sutherland a gift of any sort whatever; and my heart was pierced with anguish that cannot be described. I was, indeed, falling over a precipice and her arms were not holding me back but dragging me over. Would that I, like the dreamer, could awaken with a start. In all conscience, I was dizzy enough; and every pressure of that hateful object to her face bound me faster in a dungeon of utter hopelessness. My sweet day-dreams and midnight rhapsodies trooped back to mock at me. I felt that I must bow broken under anguish or else steel myself and shout back cynical derision to the whole wan troop of torturing regrets. And all the time, she was caressing that thing in her hand and looking down at it with a fondness, which I--poor fool--thought that I alone could inspire. I suppose if I could have crept away unobserved, I would have gone from her presence hardened and embittered; but I must play out the hateful part of eavesdropper to the end.