Granger recalled these legends as he gazed toward the camp; he watched the figure of the sleeping man--and he thought of Spurling. Was this Spurling? He tried to make out the man's identity by his figure's outline, but the robes which were piled above him forbade that. Yet within himself he was sure that his guess was correct. What was more likely than that Antoine should have met the fugitive wandering up the Forbidden River, perhaps sick and starving, should have taken his confession and compassionately have brought him back? Probably it was Antoine's purpose that they two should be reconciled. He might even have converted Spurling and have brought back God into his life, so that now he was willing to return to Winnipeg to give himself up, and to take his chance of death.
Having run his canoe aground between the bank-ice, he stepped out and grasped the Jesuit's hand.
"God has arrived before you this time, Père Antoine," he said, jerking his head in the direction of the sleeping man; "he has already done your work. I have promised Him that I will do no harm to your companion, so you have arrived too late."
"If it was God who arrived," he said, "I am content."
He spoke significantly, hinting at a further knowledge of which he supposed Granger to be possessed.
Granger, in common with most white men of the district, had fallen into the Indian superstition that Père Antoine was omniscient; it came to him as a shock that he might be unaware of how God had written on the ice. Usually in talking with the priest he took short-cuts in his methods of communication, leaving many things understood but unmentioned, as a man is wont to do when conversing with himself.
"There is no doubt that it was God," he said; "He did not want me to murder this man. He wished that I should leave him alone, to be judged in the forest by Himself. Therefore, if you have brought him here with you to make us friends, I will not do that; but I will promise you, as I have promised God, that I will not be his enemy."
Antoine tapped him on the arm gently, looking him full in the face with his grave, penetrating eyes: "And did not God Himself arrive too late?" he asked.
Granger flushed hotly, for he thought that he detected an under-tone of accusation in the way in which those words were uttered. "Tell me, is he dead?" he asked abruptly.